Slashdot Mirror
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.)
Shouldn't that be either "work around a human's natural stupidity" or "work around a computer's artifical stupidity"?
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.
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.
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.
If there are even three corectly-spelled replies to this article, I'll be surprised!!!!
;)
(and yes, I know i mis-spelled "correctly"!)
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.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
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!
Just be sure to wear the gold uniform when you beam down -- you know what happens when you wear the red one.
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
Are you trying to tell me that my stuff isn't safe from Microsoft anymore?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
So long and thanks for all the fish . . . !!!
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.
The next site to slashdot will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and start slashdotting it early!
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...
- I don't need to go outside, my CRT tan'll do me just fine.
Is that becasue if they were any better, then they WOULDN"T HAVE BEEN CAUGHT?
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.
--
What happens when you outlaw guns
d00d! N0w t43y kin 4iN8 l33t wAr3z!
-carl
. We've got computers, we're tapping phone lines, you know that ain't allowed - Talking Heads, "Life During Wartime"
Doesn't this make misspelling a way of circumventing a content restriction system? So doesn't that make misspelling illegal under the DMCA?
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!
--Ford Prefect
unsubscribe
on 11:36 Monday 02 April 2001 EST you wrote:
> d00d! N0w t43y kin 4iN8 l33t wAr3z!
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.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Information will always find a way... It's my favorite feature of the internet.
People shape laws. Not the other way around.
Wel, now we all konw that the misspelings on slashdot are meerly a batle against sensership.
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?
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?)
On the other hand I'm going to have to add bom, assinate,kil, and more to my eachelon sig
________
Does anyone actually have a Java program designed to control air traffic, or for the operation of a nuclear facility?
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.
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.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
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
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Zlazhdot
W9x:Thanks for the make-work project Bill.
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
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
Learning to fly, Pink Floyd.
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)
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.
"If I have seen further than other men, it is by stepping on their glasses." - Michael Swaine
Seem, I dunno, kinda dumb considering /. was backed down by the church of scientology.
Wo
No pleasure, no rapture, no exquisite sin greater.
this shall be the "furst poast"!
(except it's not. oh well)
Does my bum look big in this?
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.
BOSTON SUCKS!
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.
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.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
He's protectifying our Constimatutional freedoms.
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."
Hey freaks: now you're ju
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.
If god had intended you to be naked, you would have been born that way.