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CrossReads Book Spotlight

In The Silence

A book/plot that enlightens and inspires

by James Andrew Edske

David and Paul childhood friends all through high school part ways for more than twenty years. Both served in Vietnam, Paul as a foot soldier and David stationed out of harm’s way as an electronic technician. Their lives take up again when Paul, now a priest flies out to Colorado to confront David with some life-threatening news. It seems that not even prayer can help Paul find the forgiveness he is seeking. But, it is David that is in harm’s way, ever since he unlawfully obtained a Clipper Chip decoder box. The little black box contained the MYK78T integrated circuit (IC), the National Security Agency secretly developed to ease drop and unscrambled encrypted messages over telephone lines, just before the end of the Cold War in 1991.

Footnote: The US government claims to have declassified the Skipjack algorithm used in the chip set for the Chipper Chip Decoder box. If that were true, why then do hackers still use an 80-bit key and a symmetric cipher algorithm when they ransom computers? Don’t believe everything the government claims to be true…