  When I was smaller, a five megabyte fixed disk cost $5,000, a 300 bps modem
cost hundreds of dollars, and communication links were intercepted by attaching
devices to the target subscriber's local loop. From then to now there have been
three great implosions: the cost of storage, the cost of bandwidth, and the
cost of surveillance. The wake of the first two implosions sheared away most
obstacles to using one-time pads to encrypt data in flight, and the final
imposition -- I mean implosion -- now makes consideration of one-time pads a
practical necessity.
  So far as assurance of confidentiality is concerned, today's block ciphers
and public key cryptosystems flunk the exam. I don't know how to recover an AES
key or compute the discrete logarithm of an elliptic curve element, but there
exists no proof that another cannot. Moreover, encrypted communications can be
recorded and stored for later attack by algorithms and devices yet to be
discovered. Equally concerning is that when a significant "break" is discovered
for solving either puzzle, the safety of an entire planet's communication and
data dissolves like instant pudding.
  The world is unready to ingest so much pudding. We need balance in our
cryptographic diet, and we need that balance now. In this paper, I discredit
many myths concerning one-time pads, discuss practical steps to address
perceived shortcomings, and shatter the notion that secure generation,
distribution, and use of mammoth cryptographic keys cannot be practiced in
every home, church, school, and business. I also discuss my own
implementations, their capabilities and track record, and where they should
lead.

Cryptography and Security