FBI Surveillance Software to be Part of Windows XP Updates (fwd)
Graham Lally
scribe at exmosis.net
Fri Dec 14 05:47:13 PST 2001
georgemw at speakeasy.net wrote:
> On 13 Dec 2001, at 22:33, Jei wrote:
>
> This has to be a joke/hoax.
Aye, but by whom, on whom?
"A _tongue_in_cheek_ announcement from the group claims that cDc 'has
more targeted experience than anyone else in this field'."
(emphasis is mine)
For me (and thus, naturally, subject to vague romanticisings), the whole
article casts an underlying impression that the cDc are using the
opportunity to legally advance in their chosen field of expertise. And,
from their point of view, why not? (Not to say that I agree with the
closed-source obscurity involved in any way.)
Bizarrely(?), the article originally posted to the list by Jei, and that
pointed to by the URL in the same message bear discrepancies - quite how
these subtle additions worked their way in or out I'm not sure, but the
noticeable ones are the headline/author/date, and the addition in the
message body of allusions to a RIAA-oriented front rather than an
unseen, unpatriotic nemesis that the FBI has so far been concerned with:
The web article quotes...
Reid Fleming, a cDc member, said: "Never before has the US faced a more
troublesome enemy. To meet this growing challenge, the FBI has announced
an ongoing effort to create and deploy best-of-breed electronic
surveillance software.
Compared to the message body...
"...To meet this growing challenge _of_fileswap_terrorism_, the FBI has
announced..."
Checking out the cDc's press release at
http://cultdeadcow.com/details.php3?listing_id=425
reveals some further details, including the idealised purposes of the
project:
"The new system will be designed to guard against internet fraud,
identity theft*, unauthorized system access*, virus writing*, industrial
espionage*, child pornography, information warfare*, public
corruption**, composing hate speech, and other serious felonies which
threaten the security of our nation and the safety of its citizens."
* Oh, the infathomable irony!
** Or awareness. Whichever comes first.
OK, so no copyright detection techniques in there. Yet.
It then goes on to describe the plans for an established "plug-in"
technique to enable plug-n-play spyware, such as Image Analysis (for
recognising naughty pictures), trigger word monitoring, and (IMHO most
interestingly) this one:
"LOGIC AND GRAMMAR ENGINES will be able to detect telltale signs of
mental disturbance. In conjunction with the text search capability, this
feature will weed out the merely neurotic from the dangerously insane."
All thats needed now is to tie it neatly into the N-Gram thread...
But where was the media?
- graham.
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