There is good merit in regards to reminding one’s self to the fact that they are never safe in comfort. Mary Queen of Scots and Anthony Babington communicated with this “comfort,” while a double agent, Gilbert Gifford, was secretly taking their encrypted messages to one of England’s leading cryptanalyst and cipher secretary, Thomas Phelippes. To the eyes of maybe her jailor, or another untrained person, the cipher may have been unbreakable, probably impossible, but it was dismantled by Phelippes.
The nomenclature used by Queen Mary and Babington had abstract alphabetic, null, and word symbols used to masquerade the details of every message between the Queen and her henchmen. The false security given by this weak encryption let Queen Mary and Babington fall into a complacency that made them feel that they can write openly and freely about a murderous plot to kill Mary’s cousin, Queen Elizabeth I. The henchmen to Mary and Mary herself were all executed for the crimes of plotting Queen Elizabeth’s death.
Queen Mary’s complacency to write at her pleasure because of her weak encryption lead to her execution, but having little-to-no encryption keeps pressure on a message’s sender and receiver. This pressure does not allow either person to feel comfortable giving too much detail in a encrypted message, out of fear of the message being deciphered. If a message written by someone who is very cautious is also intercepted, one can assume that this message will not shed light onto any major situation that would sabotage a planned action. This implies that people that attempt to use cryptography for secret communication would use it in a way that should hide every possible detail of a message. They use hiding techniques such as steganography to keep messages hidden, and they use almost unbreakable encryptions on their ciphers.
These people know that they can be caught, and their secrets can be released. These are the prices they pay. With all the possible negative outcomes with this form of communication, especially when used in the fashion of Queen Mary and Babington, there should be no room for comfort.
