Student Uncovers US Military Secrets 484
karthik_r085 writes "According to The Register, An Irish graduate student has uncovered words blacked-out of declassified US military documents using nothing more than a dictionary and text analysis software. Claire Whelan, a computer science student at Dublin City University was given the problems by her PhD supervisor as a diversion. David Naccache, a cryptographer with Gemplus, challenged her to discover the words missing from two documents: one was a memo to George Bush, and another concerned military modifications to civilian helicopters."
WMD!! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:WMD!! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:WMD!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Next stop for her: Guantanemo Bay...
The government has already proven it will detain people just for what they know, without criminal charge, without provocation, without family access, without legal representation, without regard for international criticism, without regard for international laws and norms, without safeguards for personal safety, without justification or oversight by the courts.
I doubt the G goons will be sweeping up this particular researcher, but what small and subtle distinction really lies between this case and others? What shred of humanity protects her from the inhumanity of the Bush/Rumsfeld/Ashcroft three-ring circus? Oh, she has red hair and freckles? Alrighty then.
Re:WMD!! (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll explain the difference for you.
One is a sick and disgusting act by a few individuals who lack the ability to turn their anger into something constructive. The other is a violation of international law and generally recognized human rights condoned by a government who doesn't want to talk about what those terrorists and the
Re:WMD!! (Score:5, Funny)
We must liberate all of that innocent Guinness from the oppressive Irish regime.
Re:WMD!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Take a representative sample of Irish people and ask them whether they want stronger economic and social ties with the United Kingdom or a reunited Ireland, and I can guarantee that over two-thirds will say they want better ties to the UK.
The idiots in the North are no more representative of Irish culture or political identity than those in the UK's BNP.
Re:WMD!! (Score:5, Insightful)
I am not sure that the IRA == the Irish, any more than Al Qaeda == the Muslims.
Re:WMD!! (Score:4, Insightful)
History cannot be examined in isolation.
Irish != IRA (Score:5, Informative)
Ingenious... (Score:5, Interesting)
This is why I don't work for an intelligence agency. On the other hand, I'm still probably better qualified than people who think blacking out a few words in a document strips them of contextual information...
Re:Ingenious... (Score:5, Interesting)
how righteous of you. in fact, if you look and know a little about intelligence analysis techniques, i think you'll find that the NSA already know about this approach for 'interpreting' typewritten redacts, even as far back as the 50's.
what this story really seems to point out is the naivete of a lot of people about computers, and the powerful simplicity to seemingly difficult problems that they offer
it wasn't so long ago that the idea of having massive dictionaries in ram and font and calculations on this order to make a practical approach was considered relatively 'resource difficult'.
but moores laws and fry's electronics has certainly changed that.
for the price of a nice night out, i could buy an extra computer for brute-force hacks against any target, stick it in my closet and forget about it. used to be, not so long ago you had to have a halon system and power room to do things like that
Re:Ingenious... (Score:5, Interesting)
I just wish the intelligence community and their unintelligent sycophants the press would stop using redact [onelook.com] to mean elide [onelook.com].
Especially as a noun, because a "typewritten redact" is like a copy editor with ink hammered onto him, somewhere.
Re:Ingenious... (Score:5, Insightful)
"In January, the State Department required that its documents use a more modern font, Times New Roman, instead of Courier"
That my friends is what is know as "progress".
Re:Ingenious... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not just release retyped docs with placeholders for blocked out sections.
For instance:
Original:
It seems that the president wishes us to bomb the hell out of iraq. He's pissed off that saddam wanted to kill his daddy. also there's the issues of controlling the oil flow, and protecting israel. god forbid anyone thinks that the israilies are the biggest part of the problem out there.
Released with blocks:
It seems that XXXXXXXXXXXXX wishes us to bomb the hell out of iraq. He's XXXXXXXXXX that saddam wanted to XXXXXXXXXXXXXX. also there's the XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX the XXXXXXXX, and XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX. god forbid XXXXXX thinks that XXXXXXXXXXXXX are the XXXXXXXXXXXX XX XXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.
My proposal:
It seems that |CLASSIFIED| wishes us to bomb the hell out of iraq. He's |CLASSIFIED| that saddam wanted to |CLASSIFIED|. also there's the |CLASSIFIED| the |CLASSIFIED|, and |CLASSIFIED|. god forbid |CLASSIFIED| thinks that |CLASSIFIED| are the |CLASSIFIED| |CLASSIFIED| |CLASSIFIED| |CLASSIFIED|.
I think this simple step would go a long way towards soving the problem. The process could probably even be automated somewhat by using some type of OCR software on the original blocked out documents.
Is there some law against this? Like that TPTB have to release the original doc?
wbs.
Re:Ingenious... (Score:5, Funny)
Sounds quite like the Nixon transcrpits released during the Watergate investigation, but instead of "classified" there was "expletive deleted" back then.
Re:Ingenious... (Score:5, Funny)
It seems that |cheeney| wishes us to bomb the hell out of iraq. He's |not convinced| that saddam wanted to |give up all wmd's|. also there's the |belief in the cabinet that| the |american people will fall for the wmd story and never look back|, and |will even go for a cooked up al queda link as well|. god forbid |the UN security council| thinks that |our phony iraq facts| are the |crap that they are| |or else we're going to have to go in there even though we're going to piss off every enemy and friend we have| |lose all integrity as a nation| |and give the whacko terrorists even more popular support in the arab world and more of a reason to set off bombs inside the continental united states|.
wbs.
The one to Bush.... (Score:5, Funny)
"Please please please let the army attack Iraq"
Apparently the word that was blacked out was please.
This information isn't even blacked out! (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, it's real, it's there, you can see the names, the documents, it's written clearly, and the mass controlled media won't hardly ever mention it. I've seen very brief mentions at the best. I have yet to meet anyone in meatspace who has ever heard of them or their documents though. Wonder why that is? And I know it's been posted on slashdot several times, by various people, as well as on literally thousands of other forums and blogs. Radio talk show hosts all over have been clued in, but only a small handful even bother to acknowledge it, let alone come to the obvious conclusions looking at it. Journalists by the thousands have been clued in, yet there's a severe lack of coverage by most of the big names out there.
No I don't blame democrats, or republicans, I blame the US people in general for being so unbelievably stupid and naieve and un-caring for this disaster. We are a nation of sports and entertainment addicts more than anything else. No one gives a crap. They are taught from the time they are toddlers to NOT give a crap. They are taught to parrot one of two party lines that are always essentially complete lies, and to be happy with that, and to never go further than to keep corralled into one of those two parties and to swallow down the 6 o clock news pablum. So they do it, brainwashing since being able to understand human speech is quite effective apparently. They simply refuse to learn from history,and they refuse to acknowledge reality, and that's why we generation after generation keep getting hosed. You are force fed you are either a liberal-democrat, or a conservative-republican and that is SUCH A LOAD OF CRAP. I am so amazed people keep falling into that trap.
oh well...
Then maybe I'm stupid too (Score:4, Insightful)
I also never found a position paper advocating a conquest of the middle east and theft of their oil. For pity sake, americans want to buy the mideast's oil, not seize it (if the US military seriously wanted to take it, there'd be little to stop them... but that's not how americans see themselves on the world stage).
One can attempt to argue whether American prominence is good for the world... but I would challenge you to put forth a better choice (China? Russia? Iran?). It's the nature of world affairs for the dominant powers to emerge... I would also submit to you that "the United Nations" is not an appropriate alternative... the UN's lack of action has resulted in much pain and suffering around the world, and their ludicrous committee appointments (Sudan and Cuba in the human rights group, for example) bring the credibility of that body into serious doubt.
The US is the "big boy" on the block, and an easy target for derision... but on the whole I'd consider the US a force for good in the world... our track record in confronting various evils, and settling/winning various wars and conflicts speaks for itself.
Granted, whether we have the political will to make Iraq work out remains to be seen. We certainly have the physical ability, but unfortunately that's not america's achilles heel... it's politics.
Re:Then maybe I'm stupid too (Score:5, Insightful)
Keep telling yourself that. Its simply not true. Chat with the average person in Iran, Guatemala, Argentina, Chile, Haiti, Dominican Republic, the Phillipines.
The Phillipines endured a brutal, genocidal occupation by the U.S. from the end of the Spanish American war up to World War II. After World War II the U.S. backs the massively corrupt rule of the Marcos regime. I'll post this same link I post everytime an American says how good they've been to the world:
http://www.isp.nwu.edu/~fprefect/politics/timel
Some parts of it are overdone and a stretch but it has all the names and dates for all the misery the U.S. has inflicted on the world in the last century which you can corroborate easily if you choose to not believe this source.
In 1953 Iranian Nationalists gained power at a time when the British were looting 88% of Iran's oil revenues. The Iranians demanded a more equitable deal and offered the British 25%. Blockeds and boycotts ensued. The British ran crying to the U.S. and Truman. Truman ignored them. When Eisenhower took power it happened the Dulles brothers, head of the CIA and Secretary of State were lawyers form Anglo-American oil. The Dulles brothers used the CIA to topple the Iranian government and installed the Shah of Iran, who was every bit as despotic as Saddam was as far as the secret police, torture and disappearing people went. Rather than giving the British their oil contracts back they were given to, you guessed it, American oil companies. The reason the U.S. Embassy in Tehran was seized was revenge for all the misery the U.S. inflicted on Iran under the Shah.
This also points out that the U.S. has in fact been using its military and intelligence power to win control of oil fields for American companies since World War II at least. The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor because the U.S. was embargoing Japan's access to U.S. controlled oil fields in Indonesia.
To date control of oil fields has been primarily for the economic benefit of the seven sisters(the big oil companies formed from the break up of Standard Oil though there are a lot less than seven now thanks to mergers). They have immense influence in U.S. politics, especially on the Republican's. George H.W. Bush's main career before politics was at Zapata Oil which built off shore oil rigs and ships to do contract drilling for the big oil companies and many foreign governments. Its widely suspected Zapata was also a CIA front, since there ships tended to be parked just offshore of every hotspot in the world. Zapata is also a key factor in the closeness of the Bush family to the royal families in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Halliburton's oil operations closely resemble those of Zapata.
In the future as oil reserves start to run out strategic control of the oil fields will determine the economic winners and losers of this century at least until somebody comes to their senses and starts investing billions in developing alternative energy sources instead of fighting over the current fossil fuel sources.
China's oil consumption in particular is exploding at double digit annual percentage growth and its a contibutor to the current tight oil market. The Neocons are in fact looking ahead to when the day there isn't enough oil to meet demand. When that day comes they will look pretty smart when they have the U.S. military sitting in the middle of all the old oil fields in the Middle East and all the new ones in Central Asia. When that day comes some people will get the oil their economies need and some nations will go dark.
Re:Then maybe I'm stupid too (Score:5, Insightful)
The U.S. did subsume the Phillipines for about 90 years. It wasn't until 1986 when Marcos was toppled and 1992 when the U.S. removed its huge military bases that it achieved something resembling real sovereignty.
Apparently you've never read the history of the initial American occupation of the Phillipines. The U.S.replaced Spanish tyranny with American tyranny.
U.S. Brig. Gen. Jacob H. Smith: "I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn, the more you kill and burn the better you will please me. I want all persons killed who are capable of bearing arms in actual hostilities against the United States."
Major Littleton W. T. Waller: How young?
Smith: Ten years and up.
--Exchange on October 1901, quote from the testimony at Smith's court martial by the New York Evening Journal (May 5, 1902). General Smith, a veteran of the Wounded Knee massacre, was popularly known as "Hell Roaring Jake" or "Howling Wilderness".
The civilian causalties as the U.S. fought the Phillipine insurgency was most probably in the hundreds of thousands.
"Most of the mideast prior to the actions of western oil companies were vaste wastelands traversed by ignorant nomads. The western oil companies discovered the oil, gave it value, and it then was stolen by the disgusting murderers that call themselves governments in the mideast."
Are you American, British or Israeli. Thank you for once again proving what an arrogant, imperialistic, bunch Westerners are. Some of the "murders that call themselves governments" are close friends of the Bush family and the best of allies of the U.S., the Saudi royal family, the Emir of Kuwait, etc. Either your respect the sovereignty of nations or you don't. If you think a western company can enter a country and take all its resources with little or no compensation to the country which owns the resources you are a blatant imperialist.
Mossadegh. The head of Iran the U.S. overthrew was Time "Man of the Year", fairly progressive, anti-communist and Truman wouldn't even consider overthrowing him, the Dulles brothers on the other hand could care less when there was a chance to seize control of Iran's oil for U.S. oil companies.
Not sure how well you are versed in history but Iraq sits on top of the cradle of civilization. There were great civilizations there when your Western ancestors were living in caves or sod huts and running around in animal skins.
The number system you use today, though possibly Indian in origin, was introduced to the West by Arabs. They have had rich civilizations, great empires, and some of the world's best scholars. There have been periods when Arab culture was far more advanced than Europe's.
Many of the misfortune's of the Arab world can be traced to military interventions from the West, including the Romans, the Crusades, British imperialism and now U.S. imperialism.
Re:Then maybe I'm stupid too (Score:3, Insightful)
Cruel individuals exist within all societes. The merit of a civilization lies in how it how it treats those who act with cruetly. In the United States prosectute them, which speaks well for us.
The above statement is an example of a false dichotomy [wikipedia.org].
In fact, there are any number of posible policies for respect of sovereignty. For example, a nation could choose to respect the so
Re:Then maybe I'm stupid too (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you suggesting the U.S. is entering its decline?
I hate to break it to you but "illiteracy, poverty, religious fanaticism and government oppression" could pretty easily be used to describe the trend in the U.S. today though it certainly hasn't reached epidemic proportions in all categories yet. I'm pretty nervous with the the extent to which fundamentalist Christianity has inserted itself into the Bush administration. Everyone has their right to religious preference but they should be leaving it at the home and in the church when they enter government. The Founding Father emphasized the separation of church and state because many of them were well aware of religious persecution in Europe at the time.
As for you ramblings about first mover advantage I don't really see the point. All civilizations rise and fall. So will American and Western European civilization, fall that is. You seem pretty eager to condemn China to the dustbin of greatness but all indications are that today they are a juggernaut that will pass the U.S., E.U. and Japan in economic supremacy, at least, and in the not to distant future.
"From those facts you nonsensically conclude that Romans are partly accountable for Arab misfortune and the relative ascenadancy of the west. Europeans were ultimately defeated in the crusades by Arabs."
On this point I conceede and punt. Arab history is so complex and poorly understood by this Westerner I'll have to admit I have no clue how they reached the nadir they did in the early 20th century.
Re:Then maybe I'm stupid too (Score:5, Insightful)
When G W Bush was a candidate, his way of speaking used to set my teet on edge: kind of a rote, up and down sing-sing reading of the teleprompter. He doesn't do that since 9/11: he speaks with the true conviction of a man who is convinced he has a personal mission.
I liked the old way better. The new Bush is frightening.
I would love it if the US were a force for good in the world. But I dont' believe that as a nation we know enough about the rest of the world to decide what is good for them. Freedom; yes. Democracy: yes. I strongly beleive these are good for any people of any culture. However, we don't really understand people in a place like Iraq to effectively promote these ideas. We don't even have national memory of the way these ideas were used in the past as self righteous fig leaf for ruthless exercises in the application of power. Rhetoric that is inspiring to us only reminds them of bitter disappointments in the West going back to Sykes-Picot. The more stirring a project sounds to us, the more it will incite fear and revulsion on the people we plan to impose it upon.
So, I'm very disturbed by any kind of messianic program to drag the unenlightened into accepting our values. What is even worse than telling seductive lies is being seduced by them yourself. In the first case you discredit yourself. In the latter case you discredit yourself and your ideals.
I'd much prefer a policy which frankly pursued our national interests, but tried to do it in a modestly ethical way.
Re:Then maybe I'm stupid too (Score:3, Insightful)
The tactics and strategy of occupation are somewhat independant of the reasons or validity for going to war in the first place, as well. I agree that the rationale for going to war was paper thin at best, but whether you or I want it to happen, it'
Re:This information isn't even blacked out! (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040524fa
This SAP (Specal Access Program a.k.a Top Top Secret) was a highly successful program to kill, capture and use exceptional interrogation techniques, especially sexual humiliation tactics, against high value Al Qaeda targets in Afghanistan. Apparently there is an old book call "The Arab Mind" the neocons are using as their bible on how to interrogate Arabs.
Unfortunately Rumsfeld and his deputy Cambone decided to apply the same techniques on taxi drivers in the prisons in Iraq. They went from using highly secure interrogation sites to a big insecure prison in the middle of Iraq. They went from using highly trained, disciplined and cleared special forces to do the interrogation to untrained, undisciplined Army reservists(ordinary people). The CIA was so disgusted with Rumsefeld and Cambone's efforts they withdrew, both because they knew the secrecy would be blown thanks to DOD sloppiness and they ethically objected in taking these extra legal tactics from use on top Al Qaeda, who probably deserve it, to Iraqi prisoners in a conventional war. The Army's own number suggest 60% of the Iraqi prisoners are wrongfully detained. The Red Cross thinks its more like 70-90%.
All indications are Rumsfeld, Myers, and Cambone are between a rock and a hard place, they either commit perjury in front of Congress by denying knowledge of this project or rat it out and commit treason by exposing a top secret project. George W. is the only one who can declassify the program so the people really responsible are held accountable and that appears to be Rumsfeld, Meyers and Cambone.
If this article is true, and it appears its sourced by people in the CIA and DOD who are exacting revenge on Rumsfeld and Cambone for there arrogance and stupidity then Rumsfeld is flat out lieing when he pretends like he didn't know about what was going on in Iraq and in fact ordered it. Its fundamentally wrong to charge a bunch of reservists, ordinary citizens, for following orders when they implemented this top secret program.
Re:This information isn't even blacked out! (Score:5, Informative)
Now read this letter [newamericancentury.org] published on their website in May 1998 :
From the PNAC document 'Rebuilding Americas Defenses [newamericancentury.org]' dated September 2000 :
The document also :
For those that are interested (and that should be every free-thinking person) I've collected a lot more associated evidence which I published in an article [diplo.co.uk] on my website.
Reasons for Iraq invasion and who is behind it? (Score:4, Insightful)
One can enumerate the reasons for Iraq's invasion as follows:
Establishing a precedence for preepmtive war. Now America has bybassed the UN, and global opposition to this unilateral action. If the will to build an empire arises, then it will be done without any regard to what the rest of the world think or say. You can read the following articles too:
The True Rationale? It's a Decade Old [washingtonpost.com] by James Mann, March 7, 2004
PBS had a good program before Iraq was invaded called the War Behind Closed Doors [pbs.org]. You can watch the entire program [pbs.org] in 30-60 minutes intervals:
Specially interesting is this page in the Project for the New American Century Statement of Principles [newamericancentury.org] where you can see who signed this document. Interesting to note that all of them are either now in the Pentagon (Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, ...etc.), or are
aids to Cheney (Libby, Abrams, ...etc.)
An overview of who is who in the neocons circle of power [csmonitor.com].
Securing cheap oil. That is obvious. Bush's family history in oil makes that an easy one to figure.
Complete Dad's job. The personal desire of G.W. Bush to continue where his father has left, to finish the job, and do better.
The Israel Factor. Read the Israel connection, and how Zionism influences US foreign policy [dissidentvoice.org]. If you take a look at the players in the PNAC above, and you will find them all staunch Zionists, whether Jews or Christians.
Construction Contracts. The Infrastructure contracts for US corporations to rebuild Iraq is a lucrative business. Of course the Halliburton link has been reported several times (Cheney used to be its manager or director). The defence spending, plus the contracts should fuel the US economy for a while, or that is what they thought would happen.
The planning to invade Iraq was done before September 11, 2001 attacks, as ex-secretary Paul O'Neill has revealed [www.cbc.ca]
As many would notice, Bush is not running the show. Bush is the ideal front for such an operation. He thinks he is doing the right thing, and that God has to do something with it. You can see this PBS program The Jesus Factor [pbs.org].
There are two factions grappling for Bush's attention. The moderate pragmatics (Powell, Armitage), and the extremist ideologue (Cheney, his subordinates, Rumsfeld, his subordinates). Powell's position is almost identical to Shimon Peres when he was the Foreign Minister in the Sharon government, a rational pragmatic dove amid the ideologue extremist hawks.
What is funny and sad at the same time, is that the US Foreign policy is now crafted by the Pentagon and the Vice President in accordance with neocon think tanks like the PNAC. No role whatsover is given to the Department of State (where it should really belong), and Powell is merely a messenger (go tell the UN we are doing so and so, try to sell it diplomatically, ...etc.). No wonder Powell has said that he will not seek a second term even if Bush gets reelected [washingtonpost.com] (and repeated it a few weeks ago). Not nice thing being in his shoes I guess.
I would not go as far as to say that they intentionally planned and executed the September 11 thing. But the neocons sure did exp
3/4ths didn't vote for Bush (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, we have an electoral college, they actually decide. It varies state to state how they do that though.
I support "no professional politicians". Single terms for every elected office. No more than 10 years total government service or involvement, and no pensions whatsoever. Medical and survivors bereavement benefits for veterans, or people in current employ only. L
Re:Reasons for Iraq invasion and who is behind it? (Score:4)
There we go: AC labeling legitimate criticism as anti semitism to silence dissent and end the debate!
No one said anything about Jews here. The criticism is for "unconditional support Israel at any cost", "Israel can do no wrong" mentality, and the pro-Zionist neocons engineering it all.
I guess Godwin's Law [wikipedia.org] has to be amended with an "Anti Semite" corollary.
Re:This information isn't even blacked out! (Score:5, Informative)
from wikipedia.org [wikipedia.org]:
"Critics, mostly from the far-left and the far-right, frequently quote out of context a line from Rebuilding America's Defenses which refers to the possibility of a "catastrophic and catalyzing event -- like a new Pearl Harbor" (p. 51), citing this as being suspiciously prescient of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and suggesting that the PNAC or its associates wanted, knew about, or even were involved in the attacks. This quote is considered by some to be part of the evidence of a plot to use the attacks as a pretext for the implementation of their policies. Many even incorrectly claim that the report directly states that this "new Pearl Harbor" is needed to justify war on Iraq. However, a full reading of the text shows it says nothing of the sort. The line is in the middle of a discussion about the military's employment of emerging information technologies, and the report guesses that full transformation to new technologies is likely to be a slow process, absent some "catalyzing" event which would presumably cause the military to upgrade much more quickly."
good for her (Score:2, Insightful)
If that's all.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:good for her (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:good for her (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:good for her (Score:3)
What happened was the insertion of civilian ideologues into the analysis process. They cherry-picked what Bush wanted to hear, disregarded the rest, forced analysts to shut up or resign. On the Wilson matter, they outed the analyst's wife as a CIA agent, crippling a front company and endangering many lives -- just to make sure that any CIA boy who cared to call them liars would know how they would be deal
What happens to here research? (Score:2, Funny)
An example of the program in use.
G.W Bush is the ____________ of the United States of America.
After the program
G.W Bush is the idiot of the United States of America.
*her* research may be stopped (Score:2)
And yes I can make fun of your typos.. nothing better then the kettle calling one black...
obvious solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't see how this is a big threat.
Re:obvious solution (Score:5, Insightful)
'iiii' probably has the same width as 'MM' in some variable width fonts.
On the other hand, fixed width fonts allows calculation of the exact amount of letters to fit in.
In any case, the 'official' font of the US Government was Courier New 12 for quite some time.
re: obvious solution (Score:2, Interesting)
That's no solution at all. You can still determine the word based on the context and the character count. It's just that the pool of possible solutions will be a little bigger.
Re:obvious solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:obvious solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:obvious solution (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe its just me, but the way I see it, is if you know that a word is 5 letters long, then you know its x pixels long (knowing the width of one character and you them all with monospaced). With a variable width font you know the length, but you don't know the number of characters. This means you go from 26^5 permuations, for the previous example, (26^n generally), to how ever many different letters fit in that space. For example 'will' with take up as much space as 'iiill', so you have a combination of multiple powers, in this case (26^4 + 26^5). For longer words you have more possible variations.
Re:obvious solution (Score:3, Informative)
Re:obvious solution (Score:5, Insightful)
How many 5 letter words are there in the English language? According to
It'd be an interesting exercise to perform. Luckily for the researcher, the word preceding the blacked out word was "an", which implies that the next word starts with a vowel. So that narrowed it down to only 7 potential words based on pixel length and dictionary lookup, and the one that seemed to work best was Egyptian. However, if all you knew was that it was an 8 letter word beginning with a vowel... you'd be looking at 6089 possibilities (again, according to
Re:obvious solution (Score:2)
Parent is confused (Score:3, Informative)
If you read the article, the seven words that were found to be a possible fit range from seven to ten characters, implying that the document was printed in a variable width font.
Re:obvious solution (Score:2)
Guess that change wasn't such abright idea after all!
Re:obvious solution (Score:3, Interesting)
The folks at typografica suggest the "ransom note" [typographi.ca] type fonts
Re:obvious solution (Score:3, Informative)
LS
wake-up call (Score:2)
hmm, maybe this is wakeup call for govt. to maybe use a variable font size and spacing in classified documents. not sure how often they use 'blacking out' though.
Re:wake-up call (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:wake-up call (Score:3, Funny)
Re:wake-up call (Score:3, Funny)
So as to counter the terrorists' latest methods for conducting espionage against our great nation, all official documents will now be composed in a combination of Wingdings 3 [identifont.com] and MS Comic Sans [help4web.net].
Sincerely, The Management
Re:wake-up call (Score:3, Funny)
Re:wake-up call (Score:2)
plain-text-1 white-space-1 blacked-out-text white space-2 plain-text-2
Measure from the end of plain-text-1 to the start of plain-text-2.
This includes exactly two white-spaces plus the blacked-out-text.
It doesn't matter how accurate the black Sharpie is.
old news (Score:4, Informative)
Re:old news (Score:2)
Re:old news (Score:3, Interesting)
(The = The (English), El = The (Spanish), Al = The (Arabic)). :-) :-)
No real Secrets were harmed... (Score:5, Insightful)
And, since the information was known, we're sure that she did come up with the correct solutions.
Re:No real Secrets were harmed... (Score:2)
Perfect. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Perfect. (Score:2)
Re:Perfect. (Score:3, Funny)
Text message lingo (Score:5, Funny)
Perhaps the US government should start using text message lingo in their memos.
"An Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) operative told an Egyptian srvic @ d sAm tym dat bn l@n wz plnin 2 exploit d operatives acces 2 d us 2 mount a terrorist strike"*
Could make decoding sensitive documents much more difficult and at the same time provide jobs for teenage cryptologists.
*lingo courtesy of transl8it.com [transl8it.com]
Re:Text message lingo (Score:5, Funny)
Combined we get security through ignorance.
Re: Text message lingo (Score:3, Funny)
Couldn't one just.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Or if you wanted to be really sneaky, randomize the length of the blacked out box, to spur wild goose chases.
Paper? (Score:2)
Anyone know if there's a paper on this? This news came up on another site a couple of days ago, but they didn't even mention the researchers name, only implied it was presented at EuroCrypt'2004 [ibm.com] in Switzerland. I looked though the list of accepted papers, but nothing stood out.
A search on IACR will give a single hit [iacr.org] on the author, but it isn't this report/paper/work.
Other Secrets (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Other Secrets (Score:3, Funny)
You're getting it all wrong... it's spelled OSWALD...
Number one redaction (Score:5, Funny)
Dictionary-based approaches seem to miss this one for some reason.
More examples (Score:5, Interesting)
If you film a person in backlight, his face will be dark when you see him on tv. Cranking up the contrast (in most cases, just the contrast on the tv will do) shows the face clearly.
If you pixelize the face of a person, he's not recognizeable. But unless he stands completely still, his movements will give enough info to calculate the originating pixels after a couple of minutes.
If you apply a standard mixer filter to a persons voice, it sounds dark and unrecognizeable... Until you run the reverse algorithm.
If you black out sentences with a marker, it's often just a question of holding the paper up agains the light to read it.
I never understood this behaviour anyway. Why show a person on TV that obvoiously not want to be recoznized (however carefully concealed by the production)?
As for documents - I'm pretty sure most documents are available electronically. Why not just delete the stuff you don't want people to see?
Re:More examples (Score:2)
Re:More examples (Score:2)
That one is easy. It is always better to display the subejct of the story, like the raped in a rape case etc. than to obectify them. The story becomes more interesting and draws a larger crowd. It is also a part of the evidence chain, like interviewing a witness or other part. The viewer get closer to the story, even though i is just a large blob with a strange voice.
Re:More examples (Score:3, Insightful)
You have an example of this? something tells me you'll have a very hard time identifying changes in pixelation, like if you took a photograph and moved behind a pixelation mask, and changes in the image itself like lips moving, eyes blinking, turning (X-axis)/lowering & rising (Y-axis)/rolling (Z-axis) his
Re:More examples (Score:3, Funny)
secrets indeed (Score:3, Interesting)
"An Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) operative told an XXXXXXXX service at the same time that Bin Ladin was planning to exploit the operative's access to the US to mount a terrorist strike."
and from the article itself:
"This eliminated all but seven words: Ugandan, Ukrainian, Egyptian, uninvited, incursive, indebted and unofficial. Naccache plumped for Egyptian, in this case."
AH-HAH!
so an egyptian operative told an *egyptian* service....
man this is some tricky work! uncovering covert secrets for sure!
seriously though the technique is pretty awesome
there's a lot of redacted FOIA documents... (Score:2, Interesting)
And what if.. (Score:4, Insightful)
What would have been funnier... (Score:3, Funny)
----- Post! (Score:3, Funny)
Source? (Score:3, Funny)
Ooops, never mind
Steve
One solution (Score:3, Interesting)
One nice thing about being paranoid, you're never bored.
Solutions . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
Nowdays, most, if not all, classified documents are created electronically. Perhaps the source document should be kept in an archive. When it is declassified, they just delete the text needed to lower the classification, or maybe replace the text with a few '#' to show were text was missing (but never a one-for-one character replacement). Then the released document is a little harder to crack.
Any photos of this lass? (Score:3, Funny)
The Super Important Message (Score:5, Funny)
The Memo Went like this:
URGENT: MSG from GEORGE W. BUSH
TO: JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF
1. ATTACK IRAQ
2. ____???____
3. PROFIT!!!
Claire has finally revealed the second step!
Read the article to find out.
Don't Try This At Home (Score:3, Interesting)
The proposed method depends on the calculated length of the missing word(s).
I believe that the "memo to George Bush" is the now infamous PDB of 8/6/03 (it was released in a PDF format). In this, the actual letters in the missing words were changed to nonsense characters (including non-alphanumeric symbiols) before the black box was drawn in. So the spaced taken up by the "redactions" have nothing to do (except by chance) with the length of the original words.
Sorry. Try again.
US governments solution for everything #156 (Score:4, Insightful)
Completely Unimpressive (Score:5, Insightful)
Silly question... (Score:4, Interesting)
There are two simple solutions that go beyond and below high technology.
Unless they crank down the brightness as far as possible, most photocopiers put down a varying amount of toner to paper. A cloth soaked in, say, spirit solvents, when wiped across the page, will expose part, if not all, of the text. Similarly, this can be done with most magic marker inks.
Example from Chile (Score:3, Interesting)
During the reign of Pinochet, writer Ariel Dorfman used to convey the extent of the official censorship of his articles by incorporating the censored sections as blacked-out text and photos, with the understanding that people could fill in the blanks for themselves based on the surrounding text, knowing where the blanks were.
What's left out is as significant as what is included.
Re:This headline is a bit hyperbolic (Score:2)
So speaks some clueless twonk who didn't think through the technique at all. If it's a photostat then it will have all the text positioned based on the exact width of the word you want to hide - blacking out the word, no matter how much black you put on either side (even if it's right up to
Re:This headline is a bit hyperbolic (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:This headline is a bit hyperbolic (Score:3, Interesting)
What's wrong with that headline? She is a PhD student, she was able to deduce what properly lay under the black marks, and the uncovered material was classified, probably at a fairly high level.
Re:Well? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think you'd be surprized how much irrelevant 'intelligence' ends up classified. Often, it's stuff which is already public (although not always general) knowledge but which the administration wants to deny.
A lot of ass-covering, basically.
But it gets even stranger. For instance the case of the de-classified CIA documents [gwu.edu] relating to the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile. (Whups, now there's a piece of flamebait..)
Anyway, a bunch of these documents have been re-classified by the current administration, apparently to hide such disturbing secrets like what Señor Pinochet's favorite drink was. (Scotch)
Re:Well? (Score:3, Informative)
The threat -- purported to come from a then- and still-unknown group calling itself the "Group of the Martyr Ebenezer Scrooge" -- was contained in a classified compilation of intelligence on possible terrorist attacks produced by the CI
Re:...obligatory Irish joke... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Whoah O_O (Score:2, Insightful)