A mime appears, collects [imaginary] eggs and puts them into a basket.
Then the mime transforms into a peasant woman, dressed in 14th century clothing, who is carrying a [real] basket full of eggs to a late Medieval market. She trips and her basket and the eggs in it fly out from her, the eggs flying ahead of the basket. Motion stops; the eggs become white streaks that have not yet hit the ground.
Belgium, May 1940
German tanks are advancing against Belgium opposition. The tanks come upon a Belgium fortress.
[ — (I forget the name of the fortress and the exact date when this happened; it was during the 1940 Blitzkrieg.) ]
The fortress stops the advancing tanks and troops. It looks impregnable.
Then German troops land on the concrete that is the roof of the fortress.
[ — (I think they used gliders, but they may have used short take off and landing (STOL) aircraft or been parachutists; I do not remember). ]
The top of the fortress is flat. The Belgiums have no troops there nor any way to shoot those on the roof. The German soldiers use shaped charges to blow holes in the roof. They kill those inside the fortress.
The German Blitzkrieg goes forward.
Belgium and France surrendered in ... weeks.
[ — (I don't remember how many weeks it was exactly.) ]
The next scene is Fort Knox, in the United States. The name of the Fort is shown, its gold, guards, and its over all look.
The United States government stores much of its gold in Fort Knox. So far, no one has stolen the gold. No one as attacked the fort, no one as burgled it, or bribed enough guards, or blackmailed or bamboozled them; no one has been hired those whose beliefs would lead them to take the gold.
A fortress can successfully guard value, so long you guard it well.
The next scene is a 1950s office with an `infinite' row of filing cabinets, fading off into the distance. An older man says to a younger man, `the information is here; all you have to do is find it'.
The younger man pulls open three drawers one after another, looking at folders, then sits down on a chair and goes into a dream. During the dream, the office background fades and the young man transforms into a mime.
The mime opens [an imaginary] cabinet and pulls out a folder. He looks at the papers, and then accidentally drops them. While scooting around for the papers, which have blown around, he comes upon a brick or concrete block. You can tell it is something big and heavy from the way his hands shape it. He picks it up, but then drops in on his toe. That hurts and his jumps up and down on one foot, holding the other. As he is hopping, he goes through a semi-transparent wall and becomes a man sitting in front of a computer terminal, smiling gently to himself.
Then suddenly, a gangster — you can tell from his stereotyped dress and look — comes in with a blank CD. The gangster pulls a gun and forces the man at the computer terminal to copy data to the CD. As he leaves, he speaks:
Don't tell anyone you made the copy. Remember, this CD will tell us the address of your family and friends. If you talk about this, we will take revenge. No one will know that you made a copy.
This was an armed robbery — and as the robber pointed out, with a little skill, no one will learn about the copy since nothing vanishes.
Besides robbery or burglary, other traditional ways to steal are bribery, blackmail, bamboozlement, and making use of someone's belief.
The `old five-some' are burglary, bribery, blackmail, bamboozlement, and belief. These are dangers both to old fortresses and to new data repositories.
Think of all your and all others' information in one data base — or in several interconnected data bases. To be useful, tens of thousands of local police, customs' agents, state police, medical aids, and others must have convenient access. Are you confident that none of these people will ever be bribed, blackmailed, or bamboozled, or that no `mole' will obtain a job, appear honest and helpful, and copy the information for an enemy?
And then, of course, there is accident....
Eggs flying from basket. Fade out.
From Software Freedom: An Introduction
If you want your country well defended, and if you want to feel secure personally, then you must insist that neither a government nor a private company nor any other organization collect your information in one place, or permit information in several places be accessed by an `interconnect' method or group of methods. ....
....
Traditionally, governments have thought to increase their and their citizen's security by centralizing information. Police and other agencies then access and use this information. Unfortunately, this is the wrong approach. The more successful a government is at collecting information and providing access to it, the more that access is worth to a crook or spy.
A central information repository is like a single, central fortress; once infiltrated, corrupted, or captured, the fortress falls. When a fortress contains information, capture may mean `copy'; there may be no visible indication that anything is wrong. The legitimate users may carry on happily and blindly.
.... Not only do ... defenses keep out enemies, they hinder friends. Segmentation is expensive. Segmentation raises the cost of information inputs to those who try to help.
....
Clearly governments can and have kept some secrets well. ... [but] such endeavors are expensive. Moreover, they become more expensive as they become more useful to the `good guys'.
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