Secret Alan Turing cryptanalysis papers released by GCHQ

GCHQ, the UK government's communications headquarters, has published a set of code-breaking papers written by Alan Turing during WWII. The papers had been held in secret since they were written. The papers are c"The Applications of Probability to Crypt" and "Paper on the Statistics of Repetitions" and they deal with cryptanalysis techniques to optimize breaking Nazi ciphers. They're displayed at the National Archives at Kew. The BBC has more:

According to the GCHQ mathematician, who identified himself only as Richard, the papers detailed using "mathematical analysis to try and determine which are the more likely settings so that they can be tried as quickly as possible..."
Richard said that GCHQ had now "squeezed the juice" out of the two papers and was "happy for them to be released into the public domain".

Alan Turing papers on code breaking released by GCHQ (via /.)

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MORE: bletchley park • computer science • crypto • History • math • uk • war • WWII

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HahTse

Awesome! And about fucking time!
stephenl123

Are there any candidates or clues as to who ‘Richard’ was, or if it might be a pseudonym?
- Raj77
  
  Richard is a currently serving GCHQ analyst, hence the secrecy.
Coderjoe

Is there any chance that the papers can be scanned and released online? I would hate for something that is supposed to be in the “public domain” to still be locked up inside some museum.
http://www.facebook.com/lee.williamson Lee Williamson

If you’re a U.K citizen or live in the U.K. sign the petition to have Turing’s conviction for “gross indecency” (he had sex with another man) pardoned by the British government. Turing helped win WWII when he broke the Nazi’s “Enigma” code and invented the modern computer. He committed suicide by taking cyanide in 1954 after having undergone government-ordered chemical castration for his “crime”.

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/23526