'At the age of 11, the FBI suspected a Japanese spy,' a veteran computer scientist confessed.
by
Computer scientist Leicester Ernest said, 'I was suspected by the FBI because of the ciphertext I made with my friends in my childhood.'
I Spy
https://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/les/crypto.htm
Born in 1930, Ernest studied electrical engineering at the California Institute of Technology before starting work at the Navy Aviation Development Center, where he was later involved in the development of Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) and Finger Protocols.
Mr. Ernest became absorbed in learning about cryptography on a radio program when he was a child, and he was enthusiastic about breaking and making cryptography with his best friend Bobby Bond. He sometimes read a book full of technical terms and created a ciphertext that only two people could communicate with.
Mr. Ernest and his colleagues created a full-fledged code, copied the key code to decipher it on paper, and had one for each. Mr. Ernest hid the paper in the bottom of the glasses case, but one day when he got on the train, he lost the whole glasses case without knowing it.
My mother contacted the railway company, but I couldn't find it and was about to give up, but about 10 weeks later, a person who claimed to be an FBI agent contacted me, 'Can I see you soon?' Two FBI agents who visited their home in a black limousine showed their glasses cases and asked, 'Have you seen this?'
Ernest didn't know that the glasses case was picked up by a 'patriotic' citizen and was looking at the code inside. In 1942, it was in the midst of World War II, and it was also the time when Japanese Americans were being detained locally. Therefore, the citizen who found the code suspected that it was a Japanese spy and handed it over to the FBI.
At first, the investigator did not believe Mr. Ernest that 'it is not a code that children can make', but eventually one of the investigators began to gently believe it. But the other investigator said, 'For us, this case has been a top priority for the past eight weeks. We spent a lot of money investigating and listening to everything from opticians to doctors, neighbors and friends.' He said he didn't believe me until the end because he wasn't satisfied.
The investigator returned the glasses, but left behind saying, 'If something goes wrong, I can decrypt it,' and said that he brought back the code. Ernest and Bobby devised a new code, this time putting it in their wallet and carrying it around.
'The history of being suspected of being a spy by the FBI only became a problem once later,' Ernest said.
When Mr. Ernest was working at the Research Institute of Electronics, the moment came when he filled out his career on an application asking whether he was appropriate as a secret worker. One of the questions that was written there was 'Have you ever been investigated by the FBI?' I truly checked 'yes' and simply filled in and submitted 'I was suspected of being a Japanese spy' because there was almost no space to write, and the person in charge slowly looked at Mr. Ernest and 'explained.' 'Shiro'.
When Ernest started explaining, the person in charge was so excited that he broke the application into pieces, dumped it in the trash, took out a new application, and said, 'I'll fill it in again without mentioning it, and I'll tolerate it.' I heard that he said. Mr. Ernest ended up filling out a lie on the application form, but it seems that it was not revealed that he had been investigated by the FBI after that.
In addition, Mr. Bond later became a doctor, and the two who reunited after becoming adults focused on revising the rules for bicycle racing as a hobby.
Related Posts:
in Posted by log1p_kr