this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2025
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Wouldn't be the first time a government banned a number
Lol just add 1 to every digit, voila, its no longer the same number.
Or use words to code numbers.
Like the using the first letter of a word to denote a 0/1 bit, and length of the word to denote a second 0/1 bit.
6 bits is enough to depict 64 latin/roman based characters (I mean like A-Z), plus symbols and numbers
3 words is 6 bits
3x5 is 15 words, 15 words is enough to say "hello"
you could further increase the bits per word by also factoring in the last letter of the word
Keep doing that and you'll have steganography hidden in words.
Are they gonna ban... writing words?
No worries, just encode it in music.
You cannot ban everything, you can hide 1 and 0s anywhere lol.
Like they'll need a money system (assuming they remain capitalist). Don't worry big brother, I'm just sending my friend a 89 Euros and 64 cents and saying in the memo "Remember Our Anniversary", nothing to see here... (8964 = 1989, month 6, day 4, aka: Tiananmen Square Massacre).
Is that number banned? Oops, sorry, I'll just send my friend 78 Euros and 53 cents (caesar shift of -1). (As an example, of couse actual encryption should be more complex)
The only way they can stop all of it is to jail everyone in vibration-proof/soundproof rooms.
They can snatch a few people, but what if everyone starts doing that?
Well designed steganography would not be easy to detect if the authorities don't know what they are looking for. Do they just beat random people to find out if they are sending hidden messages?
Okay you caught the person, so what?
XCGHJ DFVBN TYGBJ
With OTP, it could either be
KILL THE EMPEROR
or it could be
Bring the Condom (something that's embarassing and plausible to want to hide, but not overthrowing the government)
or it could be any 15 character value, just think of any plausible thing you could possibly hide, to downplay what the real message is.
Deniable encryption like that will be a lifesaver if things get bad enough. Though I'm thinking more the kind where the encrypted content on a computer disk is indistinguishable from free space, and you have multiple passwords that decrypt different parts of the filesystem. That way you can be interrogated and/or beaten, "give up" and unlock your computer (using the decoy password), and still hide any incriminating evidence since those files remain hidden with no way for adversaries to even detect that they exist.
Inb4 I get arrested for butt texting.