Another Mystery Solved

Juliana was right about the mysterious bout of vomiting ravaging her home. Our doctors were able to trace the source of the illness and we have taken appropriate steps to ensure that it will not happen again.

We have also tracked those responsible for this unconscionable act and detained them. We expect that they will go through a trial, that is, after they are arraigned and charged and all the preliminary hearings and what-not. I, for one, have trouble understanding the intricacies of the criminal justice system in its current form. Won't it be much nicer when the guilty can be punished without all of this deliberation and caution? Once we are fully in power we will establish a much simpler justice system; one which you will not have to be a lawyer to understand. We will follow the principles of the open-source model and create a system where the guilty are punished and the innocent are set free with total accuracy. How, you may ask, will we accomplish this? The answer is simple, and is the same concept used by cryptographers to ensure that their codes are uncrackable. But first, a little about cryptography.

Cryptography, or the study of codes, is a very old science. People have always needed ways to send messages to each other without everyone knowing about them. Cryptography ranges from simple methods, such as putting your letter in an envelope, to complex methods, such as those used in modern computer encryption. Some people have relied on keeping their codes secret in order to keep people from reading it (they won't know the letter is inside this new thing called an envelope! They'll be confused when it doesn't say anything!), but invariably people find out how the code is done, and, unless it is impossible to break, easily crack the code. Modern cryptographers agree that the best way to ensure that a code is unbreakable is to let everyone see the method and agree that there is no way to break it. (People still have secrets, called keys, but that's a different discussion.)

Anyway, back to the justice system. Instead of trusting twelve people with no knowledge of the facts pertaining to the case to decide the fate of the defendant, we will leverage the collective knowledge of all citizens of the world. We could go into much more detail about our GNU Public Justice System, but that will have to wait. The financial crisis is still calling (and the logo contest is unfortunately still suspended). All of us here wish Juliana and her family a speedy recovery. We're nothing if not compassionate.