Getting Tech Law Info Past Filters The Eezy Way

geekotourist writes: " The NYTimes reports that the Tech Law Journal's emailed newsletter started misspelling words to get around filters at "law firms, universities or government agencies." Good to know that this well-informed audience (given the newsletter's content) knows the best reaction to mindless censorship: "...accepted the misspellings as a necessary evil." In future news on how to live with badly designed filters, identity theft victims will be asked to adopt new names ('cause it's a little too hard for credit card reporting agencies to provide authentication and privacy. Just ask Oprah.) And people who can't handle being pulled over for looking different will now be given blond wigs and white makeup to prevent it." (And censorware.net scooped The Times, too.)

Comments

Misspellings to avoid censors corrupting language?

[Anonymous Coward]

I ph33r that the b1ff-1f1c@tion 0v w3rdz 2 g3t ar()un|) c3n50rz |z h4vi|\|6 a d3tr1/\/\3nt4L 3ff3c7 0n the 3n6l15h l4ngu@ge. M@yb33 w3 sh0u|d 8rinG b4ck th3 thorn edh asc and yogh ch4r4ct3rz 3 a1d l337 sp3llin6?

Misspellings to bypass filters

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like CmdrTaco will have employment for some time to come.

Re:nyt article text

[Anonymous Coward]

Seth Finkelstein, a programmer and consultant who has studied filters, is well aware of their limitations. "Ironically," he said, "people are being forced to work around a computer's natural stupidity."

Shouldn't that be either "work around a human's natural stupidity" or "work around a computer's artifical stupidity"?

Re:ROT-13

[mackga]

you

stupid

FUCK!

Re:in that case...

[sjames]

.. and of course it's mostly just 'rude' language/images related to nudity or sexuality (which, for most sensible people, aren't even closely related, knowing how barely covered is often more erotic than completely exposed), not violence.

I was thinking about that the other night. Lethal Weapon was on. We saw beatings, torture, guys being blown up, someone shot at point blank range (complete with blood spray) necks being broken, etc. All of that was fine, but god forbid we should hear the 'F' word.

Re:The ClueStick Hurts Dont It!

[sjames]

I say good fir them! It wouldn't surprise me if some of those law firms and gov't agencies that read the TechLaw Journal are asking themselves, "If our email filter works this poorly, maybe the ones we are lobbying for in libraries and schools are POS' too!"

Nahh. Their sense of justice is too fine tuned. Specifically, it is calibrated to end precisely at the point where nobody they actually know and like gets hurt.

In otherwords they will carefully craft a law that bans the filters that affect them, and redoubles it for everyone else.

Silver lining

[sjames]

This could be a boon for anonymous whistle blowers! Post anonymously, tell all, and make every other word sex. They'll never see it.

I find it amusing (and perhaps telling as well) that the two places you're most likely to see filters to protect the naive minds of children are schools and corperate intranets.

Re:Dread conspiracy

[Defiler]

Unlikely, given that the recount hasn't been completed yet. Not to mention the fact that most of the "evidence" was destroyed before it could be examined..

Re:Reminds me of Mark Twain...

[WWWWolf]

The cool thing about this is that until "Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik..." it actually makes sense, after this it goes a bit too far IMHO.

In many languages words are pronounced more or less as written, and English is so far just about the only language I've had pronouncation problems with. Dammit, even Russian is easier...

If I'd spell that part in Finnish, it'd be "Bai jiör 15 oor sou, it wud fainalli bi possibl tu..." not too far away from the Twain's example, right? =)

Oh boy....

[psychosis]

If there are even three corectly-spelled replies to this article, I'll be surprised!!!!

;)

(and yes, I know i mis-spelled "correctly"!)

Closer than you think

[Ed Avis]

Don't we have the same thing here on Slashdot with people inserting lowercase junk to get past the lameness filter?

Another example was the 'readability checker' in use at one large company - it made sure sentences were short enough on average in all electronic mail. People got round it by adding a row of full stops to the bottom of each message.

Any computer-based attempt to filter human-readable content based on its _meaning_ is bound to fail - at least until AI gets to the stage where computers can understand as well as a human. (In other words, not for a long while...) The only kind of filtering that works is crude looking for strings, eliminating 'fuck' but allowing 'fuq'. Some people would be offended by the former but not the latter, so that kind of filtering might be useful.

Re:Huh?

[panda]

You'll love this then. For a time, I had to maintain a project that had a code module called "Product Analysis" which was mostly implemented in a file called, prodanal.c. The file was origninally implemented by a Midwestern, church-going lady who never understood why two of us younger developers would always snicker when we'd ask her a question about the Product Analysis code. I don't know why she named the file prodanal.c since it lived on the UNIX server. Although, I later found out that there was an 8.3 convention maintained on the UNIX server before I got there because developers started out with DOS/Win 3.1 machines. I started there in 1996 just after the IT dept. made the switch to Win95 and NT.

Thank the gods of UNIX I got fired from that place!

Filters, Much Like Locks, Are Needed

[InitZero]

This highlights the problem with filters; they're incapable of distinguishing between information that is innocuous and information that is objectionable...

This is hardly a reason to protest filters.

For nearly 90 years, my church (founded in 1892) never locked the doors. Anyone seeking refuge or just a quiet place to study long after the libraries were closed could go to the church any hour of the day. It didn't matter what your religion was so long as you had respect for the building and other folks, the church was open.

In 1982ish, after having the church vandalized a few times, the church had to start locking its doors in off hours. In the mid-1990s, it had to install a security system thanks to a serious theft and a few more vandals.

The problems with locks are the same as the problems with filters; they keep the good out along with the bad. As sad as it make me, our society is better with locks than it is without them. The same goes for filters. Filters are needed because not everyone is playing the game by the same set of rules.

Filters aren't censorship. Filters are locks. If you don't like filters, setup your own space on the internet and don't use them. And if you don't like locks, take them off your doors.

InitZero

Re:Filters, Much Like Locks, Are Needed

[Moofie]

No. Door locks would be like filters if the company who manufactured the lock was the one who allowed or disallowed entrance to the facility.

I know what you mean about locks on church doors. Mine does the same thing, and I feel the same way.

Re:Filters, Much Like Locks, Are Needed

[Chandon Seldon]

Locks control access, filters control reciept of information. Big difference.

If you put a lock on a room, that's great. There's no problem doing that, if it's your room. It prevents people you don't know from accessing *your room*.

A filter is a completely separate issue. If you are filtering network traffic, you are deciding what *external information* other people get to view. This is effectively much different from locking a room, as it isn't your information that you are blocking, nor do you have any reason to prevent others from having access to information.

Huh?

[Sloppy]

I just went to that Tech Law page, and one of the first words I saw was "analysis." What the heck kind of filter lets a potentially dangerous word like that through?

---

Re:Uhhmmm... Rot13 Anybody?

[Skapare]

Are you trying to tell me that my stuff isn't safe from Microsoft anymore?

Dread conspiracy

[rde]

Is it a coincidence that this idea was put forward by those defenders of the Status Quo - lawyers? I think not.
Consider, if you will, your average pornster. Next year, when filters are as ubiquitous as fundamentalist christians at a hypocrites convention, the illiterati will become well-versed in the retrieval of hot lesbean aktion. Five years from now, they'll have forgotten how to read english altogether. Soon the only people who'll be able to vote will be those who can read proper English (well, American anyway), and millions of US citizens will be disenfranchised, and the corporations will be able to install their own man, who can run roughshod over teh wishes of the rest of the planet.

Actually, now that I think of it, the idea of votes not counting in the Bastion of Democracy is laughable. Sorry for wasting your time.

Re:Intelligence

[Moofie]

Try to explain that to a high-school English teacher. : )

Grammar Engines, Not Filters

[scotpurl]

We need filters that understand grammar, not just pathetic keyword filters.

If they existed, we'd all actually use them. Search results would be screened. Email would be screened (no more spam, or lame jokes from co-workers). The only part of the news you'd read is what interested you. No more advertising. Those little new nuggets that are hidden away on page 26 (or perhaps never printed) would instead be read.

It's the first, best step toward an intelligent agent that assists the user.

Re:Grammar Engines, Not Filters

[stu72]

Exhibit A.

We get so annoyed with spam/prudish about porn, that we institute spelling filters.

So everyone, including the spammers and the porn kings, learns to misspell to get around them.

Exhibit B.

We worry about network security so we firewall our networks except for port 80.

So everyone, including the virus writers, the script kiddies, & microsoft (.net) learns to use port 80 to do their work.

====

If we had grammer filters, the same thing would happen. People would use incorrect grammar or creative grammar to defeat it.

Everyone says we need more AI, or that filtering will work once AI is perfected. We've already had one better - during WWII, mail/telegrams/etc were monitored and censored by real people with RI (Ral Intelligence) and bad stuff still got through sometimes.

There is no end to this. The only way to win is not to play.

If you don't trust you employees not to surf porn online, maybe you should be thinking about new employees?

The only saving grace is that most people will never be cluefull enough to see this cycle, so the average employee, upon realizing his sexy email has been rejected by the system, concludes that computers are pretty smart and he'd better not try again.

my C$0.02

Re:Grammar Engines, Not Filters

[dasmegabyte]

They wouldn't work. As any rhetorician will tell you, web grammar is worse than regular written grammar due to the speed of the medium, and it's nearly impossible to discern useful messages from spam. Compare, for example, your average marketting news feed (a la PR NewsWire or Business Weekly) with your average spam newsletter...you'd be surprised how similar the two are in essential context.

Furthermore, you can't use a grammar check on "naughty" words because the context in spam would be the SAME as the context in the law journals...you'd be effectively blocking both.

I still think it would

[scotpurl]

I mean, if I can tell the difference between the two, then why couldn't the engine? Maybe grammar engine is the wrong phrase. Maybe "context engine" is more what I'm after.

I don't think it'd take full A.I. to do it. I think the guys like Systran who do translation are 80% of the way there. Their engines understand part of context.

Re:I still think it would

[bobthemonkey13]

Let's take that post and run it through Babelfish (which is run by SYSTRAN).

English -> Spanish -> English:

I mean later, if I can say the difference between both, why could not the motor? The motor of the grammar is perhaps the incorrect phrase. The " motor of the context " is perhaps plus which I am later. I do not think full taking A.I. of it'd to do it. I think to the individuals like SYSTRAN that make the translation is 80% of the way there. Their motors understand the part of the context.

Or English -> Japanese -> English:

If it can say the difference between 2, as for me and the engine which why is not produced it means? it is the phrase which perhaps as for the grammatical engine you make a mistake. What I afterwards perhaps the " context engine " is many. **time-out** that do when I it'd acquire complete A.I. think. As been 80% there of the method SYSTRAN translating, I think of the person. The engine understands the part of context.

Finally, let's try English -> French -> German -> English:

I want to say, if I cannot make the difference between the two then why could the engine? Perhaps the grammar engine is the false printout. Perhaps the " connection engine " is more that thereafter are I. I think the seizure fully A. it'i. d not, in order to make it. I think the types such as Systran, those the translation make am 80% of the way there. Their engines cover a part of the connection.

80%, eh?

---

Yeah, 80%

[scotpurl]

Not as bad as me with translation dictionary -- by a long shot. But I think it's pretty decent. It's not great on context, but it's close.

Better Filters?

[JJ]

Actually, even though I don't agree with filters for general usage, the filter industry couldn't get better news. Well designed filters would be able to handle such a simple end run. The challenge is now, be well-designed or hang it up.

Re:Better Filters?

[lscoughlin]

Which brings up yet another good point... Mommy SHOULD be there sitting next to little johnny while he clicks mindlessly about.

Filtering software is a piss poor prop to proper parenting.

Re:Better Filters?

[Rocinante]

You realize, of course, why that wouldn't work. Right? The point of the internet is that it's so open ended; anyone can publish what they want, and you can never predict what you're going to find. If you're going to restict your surfing to three sites, you might just as well forget the internet and read magazines instead. If Johnny's Mom is going to sit next to him and unblock sites as he finds them, she could just as well forget the filtering software and sit beside him while he's on the internet to make sure he isn't going to objectionable sites. Furthermore, do you want to be the guy in the IT department who handles the 10,000 unblock requests per day from your company?

Which brings up another question: the article isn't talking about filters for little Johnny; it's talking about filters at law firm and universities. Filters for people who read the Tech Law Journal. Presumably, these people are adults, and can decide for themselves whether something is appropriate for viewing at the office. Why do these people need filters? What the hell happened to just firing people who spend their time masturbating to goat porn instead of doing work?

Re:Better Filters?

[clary]

ObCaveat: I am not a fan of filtering software.

That said, it seems to me that the only way to do effective filtering, short of a quantum leap in "automatic content understanding," is to use an opt-in system, rather than a filter-out system.

Little Johnny starts out with a particular set of trusted domain names allowed, say www.barney.org and www.nicecraftprojects.com. If he wants to visit another, say www.dictionary.com, then he asks his administrator (Mom?) to add it to the permitted list. Of course, if Mom is on the ball, she knows that the only reason Little Johnny wants to read the dictionary is to look up dirty words. *grin*

This way, a real-live human being does the filtering, and can decide whether Little Johnny needs to be reading something nasty like the Tech Law Journal.

Why not...

[bdowne01]

Use PGP? I know it's a little out in left field, but if you encrypt your emails then just about any filtering won't do you any good?

Just an idea...

encryption (http)

[dead_penguin]

I know this article really was about content filters on *email*, so this idea would be a bit more difficult to implement in this case... For web pages that are being filtered, though, shouldn't SSL encryption of the http connection beat pretty much *any* censor's filter? As long as the actual text of the URL is kept unoffensive enough, all data transmitted between server and browser should be encrypted. Even a light enough encryption (low number of bits per key) that could easily be broken by someone determined enough should still fool any censorship filter out there.

The only technical issue I could see with this is that the overhead associated with encryption of larger binary data (images) might be a bit too much for some of the smaller web servers. In that case, encryption of only the text (html) data should still provide the same amount of protection.

Unless filtering is done on a per-site basis, I don't see why this shouldn't work against pretty much all content-based filters out there.

The (im)proper fix: noise

[hardaker]

The problem with mis-spellings is that with work, the filter writers can start looking for those too (I've seen intrusion detection boxes look for words like "Warez", "r00tk1t", etc). All of these methods are reversible (via sed).

What we need is noise. You need to take the rule set that the filter(s) are using and any time they find a match on a word, add random noise (letters, whatever) to that word. The important aspect is randomness so that filters can't be written easily to match against every possible permutation. "sex" might become "seex" "seqx" "s3ex" "csex" "soex", etc, using only a "single letter added" type noise introduction rule. Much much harder to filter out misspellings if they're never consistent. Humans, on the other hand, can pick out context from a sentence which our computers can't yet do. Thats why we're so @#%*ing cool. Everyone knows the word I just "didn't-use" just from context.

Re:The (im)proper fix: noise

[dasmegabyte]

Right. So an article about goat sex can turn into goatse.cx.

Re:Those statements

[ttfkam]

1) The Scientology related info was copyrighted - nothing to argue here.

2) Slashdot didn't just pull the post. They reposted non-copyrighted material and links for more info about Scientology.

Despite many Slashdot guffaws and mistakes in the past, I don't count this as one of them. And when was the last time you heard of a paper that never made mistakes? Yeah, Slashdot has had a bad record with checking the validity of their stories, but the comments made in response to an article should serve as a note to the reader that there may be something fishy.

Hint: If you see a bunch of comments moderated to 4 or 5 say something to the effect of "This is bullshit. I work in industry-X and this is just plain wrong," chances are that it's wrong. The only dilemma is that print newspapers usually have no comments and moderation.

Could you imagine what some newspapers would look like if their stories could get immediate response and correction?

ACLU link

[ttfkam]

I'm surprised that there isn't more response to this on slashdot. A bunch of people rant and foam at the mouth because something was released under a BSD license instead of the GPL all the while screaming "Personal Liberty!"

And yet, in the real world, when an article is linked that has both "anecdotal and statistical" evidence that the various police and drug enforcement agencies around the country have been systematically targeted on the highways, people don't respond.

Is this because it is considered an "obvious problem," that folks don't feel the need to respond, are so jaded by the info that they have become apathetic, agree with profiles that follow racial lines, or that slashdoters suffer from such severe attention deficit disorder that they couldn't finish the article? Where are your staunch defenders of liberty and personal freedom!?!

OK... Now I'm finished ranting and foaming at the mouth...

Re:ACLU link

[Jaysyn]

"And yet, in the real world, when an article is linked that has both "anecdotal and statistical" evidence that the various police and drug enforcement agencies around the country have been systematically targeted on the highways, people don't respond. "

Someones targeting the cops? Where do I sign up?

Jaysyn

Re:Why not go a step further?

[civilizedINTENSITY]

Is it legal to use encryption to bypass a content control mechanism? ;-)

Twain conspiracy

[manaway]

Coincidence, conspiracy, elitist? Not at all, it's just a plan initiated by Mark Twain, finally coming to fruition:

Mark Twain: A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling

For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.

Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" - bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez - tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli.

Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.

Quote of the day

[Grumpman]

"You rarely run into someone this good," added Detective Jahmal Daise of the Manhattan South detective squad.

Is that becasue if they were any better, then they WOULDN"T HAVE BEEN CAUGHT?

Re:THIS REALLY SUCKS

[mwalker]

I GUESS I AM!!

THIS REALLY SUCKS

[mwalker]

I wanted to reply in all caps, but I couldn't. Some censorware thingy blocked me.

So just pretend I'm posting in all caps.

nyt article text

[ravrazor]

Compressed Data: Law Newsletter Has to Sneak Past Filters

There is nothing wrong with David Carney's spell-checker. It is on purpose that in his e-mail newsletter, Tech Law Journal, he misspells words like sex (sez) and pornography (pormography) and camouflages the names of computer viruses. If he did not, he explained last week in an editor's note, his journal would never get past the computers at readers' offices that screen incoming e-mail messages for references to sex or network security.

Mr. Carney's newsletter, which is sent daily to more than a thousand subscribers, covers legal and regulatory issues affecting the computer and Internet industries. Most of its readers are at law firms, universities or government agencies -- the institutions most likely to have powerful filtering software on their e- mail server computers.

The trouble is, these filters are dumb: they can't tell the difference between a sexual solicitation sent by e-mail and a news story about restrictions on online pornography or between a computer virus and a story about a computer virus. "I often advise my readers to get a free e-mail account at Yahoo or Hotmail, so they can get the newsletter at home," Mr. Carney said. "It's the only way to avoid these blocks."

Many readers of Tech Law Journal have accepted the misspellings as a necessary evil, but at least one sees a larger issue at stake.

"It's a sad day for journalism -- and for the American public -- when a news organization has to resort to consciously misspelling words in order to reach its readers," said Judith F. Krug, a journal subscriber and director of the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom, in an interview via e-mail.

"This highlights the problem with filters," she wrote. "They're incapable of distinguishing between information that is innocuous and information that is objectionable, let alone making the fine distinction between information that is constitutionally protected and that which is not."

Online content filters that screen e-mail or restrict access to certain Web sites have inspired a variety of creative work-arounds -- some legal and some not. Last year, Beaver College in Glenside, Pa., decided to change its name to Arcadia University, in part because some filters intended to screen out sexually explicit material blocked access to its site. And recently, when the music file- sharing service Napster was ordered to block the access it provided to copyrighted music, some users began renaming titles in a form of pig Latin to confuse the filter.

Seth Finkelstein, a programmer and consultant who has studied filters, is well aware of their limitations. "Ironically," he said, "people are being forced to work around a computer's natural stupidity."

Re:Help Save Us

[vecna_99]

wow. is this meant to be serious?

some of us fantasize about the Internet without Excite, Yahoo!, or Amazon.com, y'know.

-vecna_99

kewl!

[carlhirsch]

d00d! N0w t43y kin 4iN8 l33t wAr3z!

-carl

Re:kewl!

[natefanaro]

That's exactly how you get around filtered internet. I used to have a piece of software that would do that for you. Although I don't think it could change it back to regular text. It might be somewhat of a biatch to read a newsletter like that.

Re:Uhhmmm... Rot13 Anybody?

[Geekboy(Wizard)]

see below....;-)

Hmm...

[rakslice]

Timothy seems to be cherry-picking the story queue in order to show his worth. Congratulations! Keep up the good work.

Misspelling is now illegal

[GreyyGuy]

Doesn't this make misspelling a way of circumventing a content restriction system? So doesn't that make misspelling illegal under the DMCA?

Re:Misspelling is now illegal

[timefactor]

No, the DMCA disallows decrypting encrypted works which would make spell-checking illegal.

Re:Information...

[rapett0]

Amen!

Holy Flerking Schnit!

[Tiroth]

A classic in my book.

Re:So that's why...

[Wiggin]

Yep, so the editors at slashdot were just ahead of there time...

Reminds me of Mark Twain...

[F.Prefect]

Why don't we just adopt the spelling system proposed by Mark Twain? To wit:

A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling by Mark Twain

For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.

Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants.

Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli.

Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.

Makes perfect sense to me!

Re:Reminds me of Mark Twain...

[at_18]

To an English-speaker, it was funny, BUT...

.. this is how many languages on this planet are written: as they are spoken!
For example, I am Italian. If I read the sentence that starts with "Bai Iear 15 or sou..." with Italian reading rules, I get a quite GOOD english out of it.

Re:Reminds me of Mark Twain...

[blair1q]

I meant to follow up to Twain when he posted this, but now's as good a time as any:

U mikst up "x" and "y", yer, budy. It xud be "x" for "sh" and "y" for "th". Du yat, n ye werld wil yank u.

--Blair

Re:nyt article text (Redundant?)

[ozbon]

As always - if you simply log in to the NYT using username : slashdot2000 and password : slashdot2000 - voila you have the story, and you don't have to bother registering yourself.

*Sigh*

what if the encrypted msg includes "sex"?

[lupine]

AFAIK chances are that every once in a while a three or four character combination will appear in a string of gobbly gook encrypted text. Does this mean that censorware will abitrarily filter out clean messages that are encrypted?

Re:what if the encrypted msg includes "sex"?

[Chakat]

Yeah, it'll happen, but MIME encoding will create false positives much less often than a plaintext version of cyberlaw articles. Considering that cyberlaw contains a good deal of sex, it's changing a "sure thing" into an occasional annoyance.

WTF?

[Cheshire Cat]

I post something clever and it gets modded as Off Topic, especially when its *on topic*. So fuck you moderator. Christ I'm going to go to K5 from now on.

unsubscribe

[chrysrobyn]

unsubscribe

on 11:36 Monday 02 April 2001 EST you wrote:
> d00d! N0w t43y kin 4iN8 l33t wAr3z!

Taco should apply for an editorial position there!

[The_Messenger]

Getting Tech Law Info Past Filters The Eezy Way

I know this title was supposed to be clever, but it just looks like one of Malda's stories to me.

--

Re:Intelligence

[Mr. Sketch]

Perhaps they should just train a neural net for the filtering instead of just using a word search. I'll bet that given enough time, a well-trained neural net would make a good filter.

just learn an extra language.

[Sarin]

If a company/university/government is filtering your incoming data,
just look for your stuff in another language than your native one, which is probably English, look for the Spanish, German or French stuff the software will probably not block that.
If you cannot read a second language, you now have the time, since you won't be exploring your blocked content anymore.

Re:just learn an extra language.

[BaShildy]

Este commento es muy estupido. Si tu marcarias un email por muchos personas, no es posible a cambiar la lengua por todos. Él es la problema a mano. Y muchos de las palabras en estes lenguas son similar con las mismas en Ingles, por example "sex" en español es "sexo," y "Pornography" es la "pornografía."

English version: (Took only 2 years of hs spanish)

This comment is very stupid. It is ---- in email for many people, not possible for languages of today. Many languages have words similar to english for example "sex" in spanish is "sexo" and "pornography" is "pornografia" (sorry for the weak translation)

I'd have to agree with dasmegabyte, no matter what latin based language (besides 1337sp34k's ever involving spelling/gramatical structure) you'd try to encrypt your messages in, the filtering software would have a pretty good chance at catching it. The only way to get around it while still using a real language, would be to use a non-latin based language like Chinese/Japanese/et al.. Good luck on getting Westerner's to learn those :)

" Well, you know *shrug* " - Mr. Generic Guy

Re:just learn an extra language.

[caffeinated_bunsen]

A slightly more accurate translation: (4 years of high-school spanish )

This comment is very stupid. If you are going to send an email to many people, it is not possible to change the language for everyone. This is the problem at hand. And many of the words in these languages are similar to the same ones in English, for example (shouldn't that have been 'por ejemplo'?) "sex" in Spanish is "sexo," and "pornography" is "pornografía."

As for the people advocating grammatical filters, it's not very hard to get around that. Just send your text through the fish once or twice, and see if any computer can parse that shit.

English-Spanish-English:
Like for the people who plead the grammar filters, he is not very hard to obtain around that. Hardly it sends its text through the fish once or twice, and sees if any computer can analyze that excrement.

English-German-French-English:
As for the people who support grammatical filters, to receive is not very hard, around whose send simply your text by fish once or twice, and see, if a computer can analyze these Scheisse.

The only trouble is getting humans to recognize it. Alternatively you, could just insert! random punctuation mark's and Capitalization in? Your text". I wonder; if any( filter could understand, this).? Its' human readable-after just? a moment so, it wouldn't be! much more/ of an. obstacle to understanding The message than some people's terrible. Grammar!! Combine, with 1337 sp34k! for Keywords like fuc|< and/ $h1t, and your text! Is completely Filter-?proof.

Re:just learn an extra language.

[dasmegabyte]

Este commento es muy estupido. Si tu marcarias un email por muchos personas, no es posible a cambiar la lengua por todos. Él es la problema a mano. Y muchos de las palabras en estes lenguas son similar con las mismas en Ingles, por example "sex" en español es "sexo," y "Pornography" es la "pornografía."

Re:So that's why...

[andy@petdance.com]

Wel, now we all konw that the misspelings on slashdot are meerly a batle against sensership.

If onley thay had the 4site to spel it "Sientahlugy"...
--

Re:Intelligence

[rjamestaylor]

When I wrote my reply I was vaguely recalling something Samuel Johnson (Mark Twain) said that basically condemned Spelling Bees. Anyway, true intelligence doesn't fuss on others mistakes, but on one's own.

Intelligence

[rjamestaylor]

This (misspelling to bypass filters and reach human readers) is a good way to illustrate the difference between an algorithm and innate intelligence: intelligence can compensate for inexactness quite well.

Information...

[vex24]

Information will always find a way... It's my favorite feature of the internet.

Re:Information...

[agentZ]

Ironic that you tell the author to be quiet while at the same time resorting to the same style of misspelling trick...

So map A to B to A again, already...

[ivi]

Rather than misspell words to sneek them past systems... and stop there... why not -systematically- map them into inert words, get them inside the remote, destination computer & (before displaying the message) map them back to the original non-inert words.

In this modern world of cybertools, who should have to put up with mispelled explicitives, et al.?

The solution exists and is... too easy! ;-)

Re:So map A to B to A again, already...

[billybob2001]

What the monarch sort of a stupid idea, you clueless oak-tree.

I've never heard such a ridiculous load of donuts in my sorry-monkey feather-ruling life.

This is just kebab! Please island off.

Translation: I agree, it's a good idea, and can be used in everyday office chat, if you can remember a small vocabulary of mappings.

So that's why...

[e-Motion]

Wel, now we all konw that the misspelings on slashdot are meerly a batle against sensership.

What you meen?

[Carlos Laviola]

I ahve no idea whatchew talkin' bout!

You're tired of Slashdot ads? Get junkbuster now!

Re:ROT-13

[Carlos Laviola]

ROT-13 is a very interesting idea. Except that the filters might just rot13 their own rulesets, too.

It's like they say:

shpx prafbefuvc!


You're tired of Slashdot ads? Get junkbuster now!

Working with a technically inclined audience?

[CBoy]

I wonder if the solution for a closed organization (or an open one with registered, membersihp) is to use some sort of encryption.

Imagine if everyone who read Slashdot had to be registered (hold on privacy advocates) and submit a public PGP key and or/SSL certificate. All posts submitted to the server would be encrypted with the servers public pgp key. When a page was requested from the server the server could decrypt the post, lookup the requesters public pgp key, and send them the page encrypted (and possibly keep a cache for future requests).
Yeah it might be slow, but I know there are hardware SSL cards available, why not pgp?

On the client side, a sort of java/javascript or OpenSource cross-platform browser plugin would be develeoped to auto-decode posts on the client side and only into ram (the encrypted page served from the server would be stored on disk).

Wouldn't this bypass most filters?

Now for the privacy advocate: Basically you don't require more than the info you usually put into slashdot, and anyhow, you can make a public/private keypair just FOR slashdot. Noone needs your public/private keypair with your "real infos". Slashdot doesn't need to know your true identity. I think this might stop people like C0$ from harassing slashdot as well as MPAA, RIAA etc. Have a "license" agreement made up by a lawyer that requires you to answer a questionairre that asks if you are from <insert typically harassing organizations> and that falsifying information is a "circumvention device". <insert other rules in the license that preserves our free speech rights and freedom from harassment.>

Why not do this for the mailing lists also? The only thing standing in the way of this is "ease of use"

(Yeah I heard about pgp broken from "signatures" but don't sign your posts).

Has anyone implemented this? IS anyone interested in doing something like this?

DMCA Protection?

[StoryMan]

Why couldn't something similar be used to backwards engineer code that (according to the law, at least) is illegal?

(Or is it just the act of backwards engineering that's illegal?)

Anyway, why couldn't someone write code that won't compile -- and is therefore not illegal -- but that would be easy to "fix?" (Introduce specific syntax errors at specific points that would prohibit compilation.)

Is the compilation therefore the thing that is illegal? Does the act of compilation work in concert with the code to create an illegal entity?

What's ironic about all this is that the courts are only going after the "text" -- the actual strings of letters and numbers in filenames and code -- and not (apparently) after that which the text represents (the actual "intellectual content").

The Napster filters seem to be proof of that. What the RIAA is concerned about is artist/filename combinations. Are these the things that are copyrighted? (Yes, I know, there's no way to detect the actual content -- but I would think that the content itself -- not just the strings and letters -- would be the proof of the violation. Just because I decide title all the letters to my sweetie "Enter Sandman - Metallica.mp3" does that make me liable to the RIAA?)

Some quick comments

[Pakaran2]

Okay, to start with I suppose I should say that I'm only a college freshman, and don't really know very much about these issues.

However, if a company has provided email servers to their employees for the express purpose of business, it's reasonable that they wouldn't want those servers being used to display the goatsex pic of the month or something.

I think the real problem comes in only when the sorts of situations described in this article happen. In those cases, when people can't read about security, the company is at a disadvantage - and it's in the company's interest to not use the filtering software.

However, in the final analysis, it's their resource, and they're as right in refusing to allow porn email as they are to allow an employee not to have a pornographic background on their workstation, or to hang pictures in their office.

Re:Human Meat 4 Sale!

[TomV]

i think we should use the homeless and such as a meat source. sure as shit cut down on crime

I thought Jonathan Swift put it rather more elegantly back in 1729. In particular:

"I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout."

Score -1 Redundant.

TomV

Did you see the link

[slashdoter]

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nypost/20010319/lo/ho w_nypd_cracked_the_ultimate_cyberfraud_1.html

how can a site the size of Yahoo name its pages things like "/how_nypd_cracked_the_ultimate_cyberfraud_1.html" ? gives me a headace just thinking about it.

________

HEY!

[slashdoter]

HEY!It works on Napster.

On the other hand I'm going to have to add bom, assinate,kil, and more to my eachelon sig

________

ROT-13

[zettabyte]

Seems like they wouldn't have to change the article at all, right?

I suppose that most users wouldn't know how to deal with that, though.

Re:ROT-13

[agentZ]

And then we could all complain about the stupid filters are blocking us from sites containing cbea and frk. www.articbeauty.com comes to mind... (Yes, I know there's nothing there right now)

Re:in that case...

[EvlPenguin]

The Simpsons have always been the only respectable thing on the FOX Network. (Rather than, "When Alien Autospy Doctors Attack But End Up In Boot Camp XII", featuring John Walsh as young black man from the wrong side of the spoofed lunar landing)

Family Guy was great too, but that seems to have been either canceled or moved into the distant future.
--

You learn something new every day.

[Dreyfus]

Hmmm. And I always thought people on Slashdot were lousy spellers. But it turns out you were just protecting our freedom of speech.

My apologies to you all.

Re:You learn something new every day.

[Novus]

The grammatical errors are there to confuse any attempt at parsing the sentences in order to compensate for the odd spelings.

Example: "All your base are belong to us.". Probably crashes most automatic parsers that expect English. B-)

Re:You learn something new every day.

[NonSequor]

I understand the misspellings, but what are all of the grammatical errors for?

Er... Well, y'know. You can't make an omelette without um... destroying a forest. Or something.

Re:in that case...

[Fervent]

One of the coolest ducks around censorship ever was actually on The Simpsons. I'm surprised nobody caught it.

It was the episode where Homer becomes the new trash commissioner for the town, and Marge gets upset over his methods of getting rid of the garbage.

Marge: "This place is becoming a trashhole!"

Homer: "Marge, ix-nay on the asshole-tray!"

Fox censors be damned.

News Falsh?

[Alien54]

And in a related item it was reported that spammers were resorting to mis-spelled words to get by anti spam filters

And the amount of internet traffic continues to increase, dragging the net to a halt.

a modified/updated Internet Cleanup day is being contemplated, with the intent of deleting spammers from the internet.

Stay tuned

Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip

Slashdot shall hensforth be known as

[ferreth]

Zlazhdot

Re:Slashdot shall hensforth be known as

[vslashg]

Zomething different, eh?

Re:Why not go a step further?

[Gordonjcp]

Yep, that'd do it. Of course, then the powers that be will scream "But they're using evil criminal encryption to defeat our censorware!"

Spelling flame...

[Sodium Attack]

I wasn't aware that "deities" was a word blocked by some filters.

Re:Spelling flame...

[Sodium Attack]

He corrected it after I posted, dear. Changes to .sigs are retroactive.

Re:Spelling flame...

[Chakat]

Sorry, I follow the wisdom of the great president Andrew Jackson:

It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word.

Babelfish it?

[Vuarnet]

"he is not very hard to obtain around that"?? "to receive is not very hard"?? Sounds like the fish has a slightly gay tendency...
(What to do? +1 Funny, or -1 Troll? Decisions, decisions?)
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I

Re:Taco should apply for an editorial position the

[Vuarnet]

The first thing that came to my mind when reading the title was, shouldn't that be:
Getting Tech Law Info Past Filters The Sleazy Way??


Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I

Re:nyt article text (Redundant?)

[Vuarnet]

Guys, come on! Who moderated this as (-1 Redundant)? I mean, there are a few of us who don't want to subscribe to the NY Times online, but would like to know what the article is about.

It's a bit off-topic, I know, but there has been a couple of times when I haven't been able to join the discussion because I couldn't read the original article. So please, don't be so quick on the Moderating, ok? Thanks.

And now, back to the scheduled programming...

Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I

Filtering has no chance to survive, make its time

[Vassily Overveight]

This brings to light a fundamental flaw in filtering. If it relies on correct spelling, it's doomed. I base this observation on the deterioration I'm continuing to see everywhere. When I spotted two misspellings and a punctuation error in the Wall Street Journal the other day, I knew the end was at hand.

Everybody Knows

[Jonathan Byron]

that webcams exist solely for the purpose of transmitting innapropriate images. Is there any coffee in the pot?

Those statements

[BleemZ]

Seem, I dunno, kinda dumb considering /. was backed down by the church of scientology.


Wo

Heh..

[dcigary]

At my employer their outbound URL filtering software claims that my webcam at home is "sexual content" and refuses to let me connect to the page.

I would just like to know when all this illicit content happens, and how the folks doing it get away with doing it on my front lawn without the cops being called on them....and why wasn't I invited?!

=)

in that case...

[kyz]

this shall be the "furst poast"!

(except it's not. oh well)

Re:in that case...

[Bobo the Space Chimp]

I remember Saturday Night Live parodying nudity on TV.

"You can show these:"

"but you can't show these:"

To fight such idiocy, just point out every chance you get how racist the government is, declaring white women pure, needing protection of their sensibles, while those wild, uncultured black people are just so low it's ok to show them.

Re:in that case...

[Bobo the Space Chimp]

HMMMMM, evidently "Plain Old Text" has loads of bugs in it. Specifically, bracketized statements.

Anyhoo...

"You can show these:"

(film of an African native dancing wildly, boobs flopping all over the place)

"...but you can't show these:"

(still photo of a European female.)

The ClueStick Hurts Dont It!

[Fatal0E]

I say good fir them! It wouldn't surprise me if some of those law firms and gov't agencies that read the TechLaw Journal are asking themselves, "If our email filter works this poorly, maybe the ones we are lobbying for in libraries and schools are POS' too!"
While this isnt the most glaring and painfull ramification of censorship it might be the pebble that starts the landslide. I hope so anyway.

Uhhmmm... Rot13 Anybody?

[Bonker]

It seems like this would be a pretty simple feature to add to most, if not all listserv software. Set the rot13 flag to scramble the body of every message sentto you. The last time I looked, every mail and news client except Outlook would also automatically decode Rot13 as well.

I know who can do their newsletter...

[Interrobang]

...pre-misspelled and everything.

You can find out more here!

Suddenly, job prospects for the dyslexic are looking way up! Wonder what they'll do with old spelling-mavens like me...

Eye en tee ee are are oh bee eh? en gee!

better yet, rot-13 the urls

[typical geek]

so we can surf to jjj.grrbhyhgk.pbz

oh baby!

So that's what Bush has been doing

[timefactor]

He's protectifying our Constimatutional freedoms.

One thing this highlights...

[nanojath]

Is a real need for filtering to allow an opt-in feature. Rather than starting with the question of what shall we exclude, a wiser way would be to start with the question of what shall we INCLUDE. Now, in theory, a lot of people get hot under the collar about opt-in as a filtering parameter because on the face of it, it excludes much more content than exclusionary software and hence gets tagged as "censorship." (A side note: something voluntarily applied is not censorship. If you don't like censorware what you dissaprove of is not the technique per se - though you may rightly object to clunky, stupidly designed software on principles- but noone wants to ban fire just because some people like to burn books or rock-n-roll records - what you dislike is how much power schools or parent have over kids, or goverments have over libraries, or employers have over employees. Fight that battle instead so you don't have to refight it every time someone's "brilliant" new filtering solution comes down the pike). Anyway, the point is, by adding an opt-in feature as a preselector for what is actually filtered by the software, the end-user could then lobby whoever is in charge for inclusion of particular content in opt-in list. That content would be exempt from filtering. In general the end-user has little power over filtering in these situations: this could give a little back. Problem: avoiding defrauding the system with fake e-mail return addresses etc. Hey, that's a problem I'd like to see solved anyway. THoughts?

Re:Why not go a step further?

[dasmegabyte]

Because the web is still too young. I'd say the majority of the readers of nytimes.com and even the Tech Law Journal are only semi tech literate, and asking them to integrate PGP with their mail system is way too much. If these people are into the point 'n click paradigm, sending them a message that looks like gibberish and then spouting off to them about how they need to install a third party application (or worse, use *NIX and write a script) is like not sending them the message at all. PGP is still beyond these users' abilities.

Now, a much better option might be to send the messages encrypted in HTML codes. I know, you're saying "huh" and scrunching up your nose. What I mean is, to an HTML based mail viewer, there's a difference between SEX and S>!-- --<E>!-- --<X...but to the viewer of the message, there isn't. Unless your block software renders web page messages before blocking, the second will get through looking the same as the first...this is how I encrypt my e-mail address on my website to avoid spam spiders, and so far it's worked wonders.

Re:Taco's New Employer!

[MSBob]

There you go! Offtopic. Well done moderators! Serves him right for posting stuff that is actually funny on slashdot. Only lame obvious jokes can be moderated as funny. Let's keep the spirit of slashdot intact.

Why not go a step further?

[Chakat]

Why not take the next logical step and simply encrypt the whole message using a public key system like PGP? The NYT encodes their newsletter with a "private" key, and the readers simply decode the message with the "public" key. All you have to do is make the key available on the website, and you no longer have to misspell words in order to get around the assortment of filters.

In This Issue

[LX.onesizebigger]

In This Issue

• How 1337 74y3rz h3lp üniv3r5i7i3z with 13g41 4d\/i(3
• The latest lawz surrounding |\/|0R7G4G35
• W0M3N in H07-5H07 13G41 offices

TH15 15 N07 5P4M!!!

lame Vi-r-us filters

[mr_walrus]

i run a fairly major email digest. it goes out as plain text, no attachments, no mime headers. good old fashioned text email.

so... i have a poor subscriber at dnv.com that doesnt get digests on a regular basis because their lame virus scanner rejects it with a message back to me saying:

"A message with the subject XXX dates DDD was found containing a virus by the DNV Gateway Scanner. Please update your virus scanner and disinfect the message before resending."

uh... text message? no attachment... a virus?
and i dont use a virus scanner on my linux thankyou very much.

on the offchance their lame assed filter ever catches a real one, couldnt they also at least say which virus it THINKS it detected? eesh.

(there was no I LOVE YOU or other obvious text in my digest either)

grrrrr, me hatez lame adminz using lame filterz