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Emily Horwitz

Pigeon Code Baffles British Cryptographers - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...es-british-cryptographers.html

knowledge WWII carrier pigeons cryptography british nytimes

shared by Emily Horwitz on 25 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • They have eavesdropped on the enemy for decades, tracking messages from Hitler’s high command and the Soviet K.G.B. and on to the murky, modern world of satellites and cyberspace. But a lowly and yet mysterious carrier pigeon may have them baffled.
  • igeon specialists said they believed it may have been flying home from British units in France around the time of the D-Day landing in 1944 when it somehow expired in the chimney at the 17th-century home where it was found in the village of Bletchingley, south of London.
  • “Unless we get rather more idea than we have about who sent this message and who it was sent to, we are not going to be able to find out what the underlying code was,” said the historian, who was identified only as Tony under the organization’s secrecy protocols.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • s code-breaking and communications interception unit in Gloucestershire, agreed to try to crack the code. But on Friday the secretive organization acknowledged that it had been unable to do so.
  • “Without access to the relevant code books and details of any additional encryption used, it will remain impossible to decrypt,” the Government Communications Headquarters said in a news release.
  • Mr. Martin said he was skeptical of the idea that the agency had been unable to crack the code. “I think there’s something about that message that is either sensitive or does not reflect well” on British special forces operating behind enemy lines in wartime France, he said in a telephone interview. “I’m convinced that it’s an important message and a secret message.”
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