Penn & Teller    PCC articles by Penn Jillette        Reprinted with permission.

Who Cares What We Write?

by Penn Jillette
I have all my personal files encrypted to CIA specifications. If Hussein wanted to know about that crush I had on the smart blonde production manager, his intelligence staff, working around the clock for a year could not break the code and read my diary. Of course, any bubble head that spent an evening listening to me rant could guess the password quicker than they could figure why I like Russ Meyer better than Steven Spielberg. So much for privacy.

What the hell do I have to hide? Is someone going to pay a cryptographer to discover I couldn't find a date to Ghost, so I went with Rob "Running" Elk and we both thought it was a piece of dog dirt? I mean, what am I worried about? And what are you worried about? We don't have to protect our privacy until we get that menage a trois going with Uma Thurman, and I for one am not holding my breath.

You don't even need the encryption, just name all your private text files - *.COM. This would mean your memoirs of the summer you spent in Paris as a street mime would be called something like FORMAT.COM (it's only right to warn you that if you type "format" and FORMAT.COM is a text file - you will crash your machine, but who cares?) If you have all boring COM extensions on your sneaky stuff, all you have to do is create lots of bogus files with names like CHEERLDR.SEX, SECRET.MAP, MAFIA.HIT and THURMAN.UMA for misdirection. I shouldn't have to tell you this but don't be a fool and leave these files empty. It's too easy to check the file size. Just take all the boring READ.ME files, arc them together, and leave it under all those names.

But again, I'm lying to you and we're all lying to ourselves. As I said, this is a non-issue. No one gives a good goddamn what we're writing. Let's face it, all of us PC Computing readers could die simultaneously and we'd barely get a mention in Newsweek. I doubt Kurt Loder would even find out about it. So much for people snooping on us.

But there is one place even our pitiful privacy can be violated and that's on an airplane. You fly, you know what I'm talking about. On the airplane you sit next to someone. And that someone often wants to talk to you about your computer. And that someone is never someone with whom you want to hang. You never have anything in common with people sitting next to you on an airplane. People next to you on airplanes don't even know they're doing a remake of "Night of the Living Dead," let alone have an opinion on it. They say stuff like, "Oh, you have a computer? I refuse to use a computer. I'm boycotting them. I think the world is too impersonal, empty, and high tech already. Look what computers have done to the rain forests." So, you offer them free membership in a pro-vivisection organization just to shut them up and you get to typing. But they read over you're shoulder. They always read over your shoulder and if you hate that as much as I do, I have an idea - Type something like the following into a file and pull it up when the person with no life next to you tries to share the little bit of life you have:

Candy Honey,

I feel like I'm living in the future. Being out of society nine and a half years makes you really appreciate the freedom in the modern world. I love flying, it's so great to be soaring free in the air after all those months in solitary.

I was good and didn't violate my parole when airport security took away my buck knife and colors. It wouldn't have bothered me at all except the buck knife was a freedom present from the motorcycle club. But, I don't need a knife to protect my privacy - I still have my Green Baret training. I remember once in 'Nam I tore out that man's heart with my bare hands and showed it to him before he was dead. I didn't want to kill him but it made me crazy that he was looking at the pictures I was scratching in the dirt. And I think I would do the same thing again if the situation came up. I can't stand busy bodies, prying eyes, nosey people. Why can't people keep to themselves?

You say the information on this computer is safe and the screen doesn't allow anyone to read over my shoulder. I hope you're right because I'd rather not have to kill again and go back to prison. But I will if I have to. And if the second offense means I get the chair - so be it. What I write is for you and me and you and me alone.

For Your Eyes Only,

Johnny Death