Digital Fortress Chapter 6

Although Ensei Tankado was non alive during the Second World War, he carefully studied every(prenominal) intimacy well-nigh it- specially around its culminating event, the blast in which 100,000 of his rural areamen where incinerated by an atomic bomb.Hiroshima, 815 a.m. August 6, 1945-a deplor able-bodied act of destruction. A senseless give away of power by a country that had already won the fight. Tankado had get intoed all(a) that. But what he could neer accept was that the bomb had robbed him of ever go throughing his stupefy. She had died with pincer(p) birth to him-complications brought on by the shaft poisoning shed suffered so many another(prenominal) elderly age earlier.In 1945, before Ensei was born, his mother, same(p) many of her friends, traveled to Hiroshima to volunteer in the force out centers. It was there that she became one of the hibakusha-the radiated people. Nineteen age later, at the age of thirty-six, as she put in the delivery room hemo rrhage internally, she k mod she was finally going to die. What she did not realize was that death would spare her the final horror-her precisely if claw was to be born deformed.Enseis induce neer even saw his son. flummox by the loss of his wife and shame by the arrival of what the nurses told him was an imperfect child who probably would not survive the darkness, he disappeared from the hospital and never came back. Ensei Tankado was placed in a foster home.Every night the young Tankado stared down at the malformed fingers holding his daruma wish-doll and swore hed have revenge-revenge against the country that had stolen his mother and shamed his father into abandoning him. What he didnt know was that destiny was about to intervene.In February of Enseis one-twelfth year, a computer manufacturer in Tokyo called his foster family and asked if their crippled child might take cave in in a streamlet group for a new keyboard theyd developed for handicapped children. His fami ly agreed.Although Ensei Tankado had never seen a computer, it seemed he instinctively knew how to procedure it. The computer opened orbits he had never imagined possible. Before long it became his entire life. As he got older, he gave classes, earned money, and at long last earned a scholarship to Doshisha University. concisely Ensei Tankado was known across Tokyo as fugusha kisai-the crippled genius.Tankado eventually read about Pearl Harbor and Japanese war crimes. His hatred of America slowly faded. He became a devout Buddhist. He forgot his childishness vow of revenge forgiveness was the only path to enlightenment.By the season he was twenty, Ensei Tankado was somewhat of an underground cult participate among software engineers. IBM offered him a work visa and a post in Texas. Tankado jumped at the chance. third years later he had left(a) IBM, was living in New York, and was authorship software on his own. He rode the new wave of mankind-key encryption. He wrote alg orithms and made a fortune.Like many of the top authors of encryption algorithms, Tankado was courted by the NSA. The irony was not missed on him-the opportunity to work in the heart of the government in a country he had once vowed to hate. He decided to go on the interview. whatsoever doubts he had disappeared when he met Commander Strathmore. They talked frankly about Tankados background, the potential hostility he might feel toward the U.S., his plans for the future. Tankado took a polygraph test and underwent five weeks of rigorous psychological profiles. He passed them all. His hatred had been replaced by his devotion to Buddha. four- distributor point months later Ensei Tankado went to work in the cryptography division of the National Security Agency. despite his large salary, Tankado went to work on an old Moped and ate a traction lunch alone at his desk sooner of joining the rest of the department for establish rib and vichyssoise in the commissary. The other crypto graphers adore him. He was brilliant-as creative a programmer as any of them had ever seen. He was kind and honest, quiet, and of impeccable ethics. Moral integrity was of paramount importance to him. It was for this reason that his bagging from the NSA and subsequent deportation had been such a shock.Tankado, like the rest of the Crypto staff, had been working on the TRANSLTR project with the understanding that if successful, it would be utilize to decipher E-mail only in cases pre-approved by the Justice Department. The NSAs use of TRANSLTR was to be regulated in much the said(prenominal) way the FBI needed a national court order to install a wiretap. TRANSLTR was to include programming that called for passwords held in escrow by the Federal Reserve and the Justice Department in order to decipher a file. This would prevent the NSA from listening indiscriminately to the own(prenominal) communications of law-abiding citizens around the globe.However, when the time came to ente r that programming, the TRANSLTR staff was told there had been a change of plans. Because of the time pressures often associated with the NSAs anti-terrorist work, TRANSLTR was to be a free-standing decryption device whose day-to-day operation would be regulated solo by the NSA.Ensei Tankado was outraged. This meant the NSA would, in effect, be able to open everyones mail and reseal it without their knowing. It was like having a bug in every phone in the terra firma. Strathmore attempted to draw Tankado see TRANSLTR as a law-enforcement device, alone it was no use Tankado was adamant that it be a gross violation of gracious remedys. He quit on the spot and within hours violated the NSAs code of secretiveness by trying to contact the electronic Frontier Foundation. Tankado stood poised to shock the world with his story of a secret railcar capable of exposing computer users around the world to unthinkable government treachery. The NSA had had no choice but to stop him.Tanka dos capture and deportation, widely publicized among on-line newsgroups, had been an unfortunate public shaming. Against Strathmores wishes, the NSA damage-control specialists-nervous that Tankado would try to convince people of TRANSLTRs existence-generated rumors that washed-up his credibility. Ensei Tankado was shunned by the global computer community-nobody certain(p) a cripple accused of spying, particularly when he was trying to buy his granting immunity with absurd allegations about a U.S. code-breaking machine.The oddest thing of all was that Tankado seemed to understand it was all part of the intelligence game. He appeared to harbor no anger, only resolve. As security escorted him away, Tankado rung his final words to Strathmore with a scary calm.We all have a right to keep secrets, hed said. Someday Ill see to it we can.