-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- In article <9501090353.AA13655@anchor.ho.att.com>, wcs@anchor.ho.att.com (bill.stewart@pleasantonca.ncr.com +1-510-484-6204) wrote:
My initial reaction to "Anonymous video conferencing" was "That's when you wear black ski masks and use voice scramblers and call from video payphones", i.e. not very useful. ("Subcomandata Marcos here...")
I thought so too, at first; but then I thought of this obvious application: The scene is a bare room, with a single chair in the middle. Seated on the chair is THE VICTIM, whose head covered in a hood. The victim's hands are bound to the armrests, and the legs to those of the chair. A KIDNAPPER enters the scene and walks over to the victim. The kidnapper's face is obscured, either by a hood or ski mask, or by digital scrambling of the image. The kidnapper's voice is scrambled digitally. The kidnapper pulls the hood off of the victim's head, and speaks. KIDNAPPER: Okay, you're on! Talk! The camera slowly zooms in on the victim's face. VICTIM (tentatively): Mom? Dad? It's me. DAD (voice over): Is that really you, son? Are you all right? VICTIM: It's me. I'm okay. This is no picnic, but they're treating me okay, considering. Listen, have a message they want you to pass on to the President. DAD: I don't know if I can get it to him. It's not like we play golf together. VICTIM (nervously): You have to. You'll find away. Tell the President that he has to pull the troops out of Belgrade. If the U.S. forces aren't pulled completely out by the end of this month, they say they're going to cut me into pieces and send them to you piece piece. . . . etc. Whether technology is going to be developed for the convenience of kidnappers and terrorists is an open question. But there is clearly at least this one clear use for anonymous video conferencing. There are probably more. | PROOF-READER, n: A malefactor who atones for Alan Bostick | making your writing nonsense by permitting abostick@netcom.com | the compositor to make it unintelligible. finger for PGP public key | Ambrose Bierce, THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY Key fingerprint: | 50 22 FB 46 41 A3 17 9D F7 33 FF E1 4E 1C 89 79 +legal_kludge=off -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.1 iQB1AgUBLxG1reVevBgtmhnpAQH+jwL/cAzxwneTG6Wl7H9VCasFBH8X4daM8NUx ORKp06DYybTv45h2baQtINvpDceD4nHt3OThvIEMVg6FCGNq2fBolZHOqTwYP1K6 66QNxEjlyKiQ5dkNKPlwgabFZ6pR0H5y =sbqg -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----