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I love Sneakers, but you have to admit that the central MacGuffin is nonsense. A magic literal black box that decrypts literally anything when you touch a solde

I love Sneakers, but you have to admit that the central MacGuffin is nonsense. A magic literal black box that decrypts literally anything when you touch a solder plate...um ok. If the film itself were poorly done, this would be ridiculed to no end.

Angostura 5y ago
Quantum Blockchain - that's all you need to explain it.
thakoppno 5y ago
The scene depicting the NSA tracing the phone call also seems very dubious from a technical standpoint.
- Ansil849 5y ago
  Yes, exactly. And them knowing which relay points the NSA had tracked. Don't get me wrong, I think it's a great film, but I feel like because it's a great film overall, technical-minded folks sweep all the technical bullshit in it under the rug. Whereas a film that everyone can agree is hot garbage, like Swordfish, gets ridiculed for having ridiculous crap in it, while Sneakers is (rightly so, I think) given a pass.
  - naasking 5y ago
    I think the the shear volume of technical garbage plays an important role here. Artistic license lets you skip and fudge some technical details that would detract from the story if you covered them properly, but you can only take that so far.
- nullc 5y ago
  Long distance phone tracing used to require calling from switch operator to operator while the circuit was active, -- the only unrealistic part is their visualization of the trace progress and the era-inappropriateness of that kind of tracing. One could imagine knowing trace progress if one imagined they'd also compromised the transit exchanges well enough to see if someone was accessing the service console.
sumtechguy 5y ago
Considering who the consultant on the movie was I think they had a pretty good idea that it was bogus. https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1409687/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1409687/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm
- Ansil849 5y ago
  And Hackers had Emmanuel Goldstein, and Wargames had Willis Ware as consultants. But all three were still Hollywood films, which means they mixed in a heavy dose of nonsense alongside some technical accuracy. Doing it 'knowingly' doesn't particularly matter.
  - packetslave 5y ago
    and "The Fast and the Furious" had Craig Lieberman but they still overrode him and put in dialogue / plot-points that he TOLD them were bull, but sounded good coming out of the actors' mouths. Movies are well-known for sacrificing technically accuracy for story/plot/stupid reasons.
nitrogen 5y ago
It's kind of fun to imagine "what if" in these situations. Like, what would it take for such a box to be real? It doesn't seem all that far off from a low pin count bus, or from a modern game console mod chips that spike the voltage outside normal ranges at just the right time. You could extend that idea and wonder if a single contact would be sufficient, given the right out-of-spec, no holds barred, analog waveform, to both read from and write to an arbitrary circuit. Maybe the single contact is just for establishing a common ground level, and all the magic happens with ultra-high-angular-resolution wireless beamforming. Like, just imagine what you could do with a bidirectional 2D beamforming array with the same resolution as a cell phone camera sensor.

Angostura 5y ago

Quantum Blockchain - that's all you need to explain it.

thakoppno 5y ago

The scene depicting the NSA tracing the phone call also seems very dubious from a technical standpoint.

Ansil849 5y ago
Yes, exactly. And them knowing which relay points the NSA had tracked. Don't get me wrong, I think it's a great film, but I feel like because it's a great film overall, technical-minded folks sweep all the technical bullshit in it under the rug. Whereas a film that everyone can agree is hot garbage, like Swordfish, gets ridiculed for having ridiculous crap in it, while Sneakers is (rightly so, I think) given a pass.
- naasking 5y ago
  I think the the shear volume of technical garbage plays an important role here. Artistic license lets you skip and fudge some technical details that would detract from the story if you covered them properly, but you can only take that so far.
nullc 5y ago
Long distance phone tracing used to require calling from switch operator to operator while the circuit was active, -- the only unrealistic part is their visualization of the trace progress and the era-inappropriateness of that kind of tracing. One could imagine knowing trace progress if one imagined they'd also compromised the transit exchanges well enough to see if someone was accessing the service console.

sumtechguy 5y ago

Considering who the consultant on the movie was I think they had a pretty good idea that it was bogus. https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1409687/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1409687/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm

Ansil849 5y ago
And Hackers had Emmanuel Goldstein, and Wargames had Willis Ware as consultants. But all three were still Hollywood films, which means they mixed in a heavy dose of nonsense alongside some technical accuracy. Doing it 'knowingly' doesn't particularly matter.
- packetslave 5y ago
  and "The Fast and the Furious" had Craig Lieberman but they still overrode him and put in dialogue / plot-points that he TOLD them were bull, but sounded good coming out of the actors' mouths. Movies are well-known for sacrificing technically accuracy for story/plot/stupid reasons.

nitrogen 5y ago

It's kind of fun to imagine "what if" in these situations. Like, what would it take for such a box to be real? It doesn't seem all that far off from a low pin count bus, or from a modern game console mod chips that spike the voltage outside normal ranges at just the right time. You could extend that idea and wonder if a single contact would be sufficient, given the right out-of-spec, no holds barred, analog waveform, to both read from and write to an arbitrary circuit. Maybe the single contact is just for establishing a common ground level, and all the magic happens with ultra-high-angular-resolution wireless beamforming. Like, just imagine what you could do with a bidirectional 2D beamforming array with the same resolution as a cell phone camera sensor.