Codes

In both Rubicon and Sherlock last week, by bizzare coincidence, the plots involved the use of something called a Book Code (in Rubicon, one of the characters refers to it as "old school"). The method is simple.

Say you want to communicate with someone secretly. You both buy the same copy of a book, To Kill a Mocking Bird, by Harper Lee. It has to be the same edition, identical. You want to send the message "Meet me tomorrow at the station". "Meet" is on page 31, and is the second word on line 33, "me" is on page 183, the fourth word on line 7 (this is not the first occurance), and so on. "Station" doesn't occur in the book, but "stationed" does, page 112, line 5, fourth word. It'll do. You end up with a string of numbers:

31, 2, 33; 183, 4, 7;...

In Sherlock, these are translated into ancient Chinese numerals; in Rubicon, a string of letters by splitting the numbers up into groups that add up to less than 26. In the example:

3, 12, 3, 3, 18, 3, 4, 7, ...

which becomes:

CLCC RCDG...

In Rubicon, the protagonist figures out straight away that the letters represent numbers, probably because of the number of C's, D's etc. The receiver of the code reverses the process. The strength of the code is that without the book, the code is meaningless.

The KGB and GRU (Russian Army Intelligence) used a similar method. They had a purpose designed code book using four figure numbers, so "meet" would have been 5268, "me" 171, and so on. If there was a word that wasn't in the code book, the letters would have specific numbers, "a" 358, "b" 1051, etc. Encoding the example would, again, give a string of numbers:

5268, 171, 5454, ...

The agents had what was called one-time pads. These had random numbers printed on celuloid, which burns very quickly, and which were unique to each agent. These numbers would be added to first string, only being used once, thus the name. If we add the random numbers 8235, 2760, and 6473, modulus 10000 to give us four figure numbers, to the example we get:

3503, 2931, 1927...

These can then be translated into letters as before to make transmitting in Morse easier.

Sherlock and Rubicon

There have been two TV programmes recently which have caught my attention. One is very popular, prime-time fare and the other is obscure and possibly the best I've seen in a while.

Sherlock

Most of the people I've spoken to have complimented the latest adaption of Conan-Doyle's creation, transporting the Victorian sleuth and his companion into 21st century London. I've now watched it and I have to say that it's a very slick, knowing production. A sincere homage, from the Afghan War parallels to references to Study in Scarlet. The actors are good and well cast, from Martin Freeman's Doctor Watson and Mark Gattis' Mycroft Holmes to the lead played by Benedict Cumberbatch, who makes a very good Holmes. Even 221b Baker Street looks like the Victorian original.

I think that it will do until an original drama comes along, which doesn't seem to be happening any time soon. BBC drama seems to like grave robbing at the moment, ripping off The Sweeney (Life on Mars), A For Andromeda, Doctor Who, Quatermass and now Sherlock Holmes. They do it very well and it seems aimed for consumption by the American market.

If you look at the BBC web site from outside the UK, you get a totally different perspective on the organisation. Click on the TV section from outside and you don't get a list of the UK channels, what programmes are on when and how the licence fee is being spent. You get a (large) list of the commercial channels the BBC provides. The bedrock of BBC funding is the licence fee (£145 per household, per year), but the rest of the funding is increasingly coming from abroad, particularly the USA and Canada. The BBC is becoming a player, albeit a minor one, in the lucrative commercial American market. That's why Sherlock Holmes has been turned into CSI London.

Rubicon

So after that little rant, it seems a bit much for me to go on about an TV series just starting in the States. Rubicon is something you don't really get in the US, and something we used to do rather well. It's a paranoid conspiracy thriller, and a very good one it is too. The premise is very similar to an old Robert Redford film, Three Days of the Condor, but updated for the 21st Century and with a Grand Conspiracy, like the Illuminati, thrown in for good measure. It's got Peter Gerety, from Homicide and The Wire, and even Miranda Richardson (Queeney from Blackadder 2). I like it already.

Remember, you heard it here first.