MovieChat Forums > Mercury Rising (1998) Discussion > The whole premise... they'd never wack o...

The whole premise... they'd never wack out a kid with those abilities


Why wack out a 10 year old kid that can decipher the "most sophisticated code known to man?"

We all know they'd have this kid in a room somewhere deciphering other govmt's codes.

The end.

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Yes. Thank you!

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Applause.

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thats what i thought while watching the beginning it wouldn't make sense to kill him.

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Also they put a code in a magazine to see if anyone could break it. So did they plan to whack everyone who could break it? Suppose the code wasn't very good and 400 people broke it? What about someone broke it and decided not to call? a bad premise for many reasons

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Ha, so true!

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The number to the hotline was 555-GET-WHACKED.

No, not really, but it would be funny if it would be.

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[deleted]

Kudrow wanted to prevent other gov't agencies from discovering that the very expensive 'Mercury' code was broken by an autistic kid. An 'embarrassment' to say the least. They would not have instituted use of the code, ruining Kudrow entirely. Kudrow was acting on self-interest; it was not the NSA as a whole.

Kudrow did not authorize the magazine 'test', that was the cryptographers' idea. It's actually quite plausible.

'When you hang a man, you better look at him.'

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didnt they say the code was already in use protecting around 30 agents identities? hence the kid had to die. Presumably in case the kid decides to move to the middle east , join a cult and spill all the beans.

Why were they already using a new code not yet tested?

And if one 9yr old can break it then the codes useless (wether ot not the kids dead or alive) because you dont know how many other people could do it.

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Kudrow did not authorize the magazine 'test', that was the cryptographers' idea
I now remember that. Kudrow got on his ass for publishing it without his authorization.

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Actually, they would likely give the kid a medal and a reward for showing them their code is insecure. Code-developers spend a lot of effort doing just this.

If a nine-year-old kid can break a cypher, inevitably somebody less friendly can also do it. Best to know early. For one thing, you can introduce additional security measures, which might be as simple as increasing the length of the key.

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they usually would kidnap such people and use them, maybe this was their intention.

i mostly will not be able to answer your reply, since marissa mayer hacked my email, no notification

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Yeh but he's not a 9 year old kid is he, not the way you are making it sound. He is a savant and age is irrelevant. Anyway even if they didn't want to use him to break codes they wouldn't kill him because he was a complete spazz it's not like he would tweet the code.

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I find the O,P's original post both carpatious and infrangic.
I have never been impomptunious in reaction to a post before, but what he says about Cryptography is ardunctle and inseptidious in the very least.

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The whole premise is anaspeptic, even compunctuous. To allow such persons as Nick Kudrow to cause pericombobulations in the intelligence community is frasmotic at best. The whole affair would cause pendigestatory interludicule in the upper echelons, leading to Kudrow's velocitous extramuralisation.

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I partially concur, but if you visually examine it from a morateric perspective, Kudrow's actions may have been pericombobulatory but ultimately prudavalent for the broader intelligence community, including the embedded agents. Would you agree that it was a classic "moralis-aleam" premise? As for the larger issue of cryptography in the movie, I found it utterly trivimonous and its treatment rather palmercurial (pun intended!) by the filmmakers.

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Hardyharhar. Your sense of humor is rather circumebobalatory! Hardyho! I haven't had such a drouthsquitous laugh in nary a plombnight. I must agree with your exagulated assessment of the movie. While it is no doubt a ralleypacious picture, it is somewhat lacking in vumbritious quillpilitence. The cryptography is portrayed in a surrtrulious manner, while a true cryptographer knows that the art is much more mousepie

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The kid could see the deciphered code he did not crack it, it was how his brain was wired. Just because he could see through the Mercury code does not mean that he would be able to see through ANY other codes even the most simple substitution codes, statistically it would be virtually impossible that another person would exhibit the same abilities.. You really have no idea about autism or cryptography for that matter.

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Using your information, there no reason to kill the kid, right?

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Why the most sophisticated code ended up in a puzzle magazine is beyond my understanding, but maybe that was what Hitchcock used to call the McGuffin?

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The creators of the code, Crandell and Pedranski published it in order to test it, it's stated in the film itself.

Pre-launch testing is standard practice in coding. The beginning of the film makes it clear that its not in use, yet Kudrow chews them out claiming it is in use. So it was used untested? This movie is unadulturared codswallop on burnt toast. No wonder it tanked commercially and critically. Baldwin only did out of contractual obligation, and that shows.

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I was thinking the same thing!

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