On Sat, 17 Feb 1996, Damaged Justice wrote:

Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 09:20:30 -0800 From: sasha1@netcom.com (Alexander Chislenko) Subject: Re: Computer unmasks Anonymous writer...

I ran my essays through Word grammar checker a while ago, and was surprised how stable the grammar statistics were. Complexity of the text (grade level) was the same to the decimal point, average length of sentences was consistent, etc. People also use the same styles of smileys or *highlights*, make consistent spelling errors, have their habits of indentation, etc.

My suggestion at the time was to have randomizing output filter that would substitute synonyms, change spelling, modify paragraph formatting, etc. - Style anonymizer, I'd call it. Also, if small random changes are applied to every copy of the message you send out, and you keep track of what recipient got which version, you will find it easier to identify the leaks if you send private messages. A dishonest recipient, to protect himself, would have to further randomize the message, which has apparent consequences for the ease of your identification and attributability of the message.

A similar method was (is?) allegedly used by H.M. Government depts (and no doubt others) in restricted documents: the apparently even spacing of letters along a line to acheive proportional spacing was in fact slightly uneven and different on each copy, so a whistleblower (or spy) who photocopied and leaked a document in their posession could be identified if the copied document were examined. -- John Stumbles j.d.stumbles@reading.ac.uk Computer Services, University of Reading http://www.rdg.ac.uk/~suqstmbl +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ Just pray that there's intelligent life somewhere out in space - because there's bugger all down here on earth!