Ciphers of Elizabeth I

[John Young]

Well, yes, Kahn's account and the cinema's. Is that
all there is in the PRO?

Seems a bit pat, if not hoarily pre-fabricated.

To be sure, little about cryptology is worth believing
if your life depends on it. That story is as old as secret
writing, not to say non-secret encryption.

Where does one get an unadulterated assessment of
cryptology when all accounts are purposefully corrupt?

Is open source crypto truly any safer than the hidden kind,
or that a modern Elizabethan trick?

Cryptologists are a dirty treacherous lot the haute French 
claim, as with spies, hardly worth serious consideration 
when grave problems of state are to be addressed -- the
guttersnipes are too obsessed with tradecraft and absolutely
paranoid about their mirror-image peers. (That's not my view, 
some of both appear personally hygienic.)