FBI Surveillance Software to be Part of Windows XP Updates (fwd)

[Graham Lally]

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.