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Student Uncovers US Military Secrets
karthik_r085 writes "According to The Register, An Irish graduate student has uncovered words blacked-out of declassified US military documents using nothing more than a dictionary and text analysis software. Claire Whelan, a computer science student at Dublin City University was given the problems by her PhD supervisor as a diversion. David Naccache, a cryptographer with Gemplus, challenged her to discover the words missing from two documents: one was a memo to George Bush, and another concerned military modifications to civilian helicopters."
Oh OH, i can see it coming already, text analysis and dictionary software declared as Weapons of Mass Destruction! That, and Ireland is going to become the next member of the "axis of evil"
...said
"Please please please let the army attack Iraq"
Apparently the word that was blacked out was please.
Can gov stop her research on National Security grounds.
An example of the program in use.
G.W Bush is the ____________ of the United States of America.
After the program
G.W Bush is the idiot of the United States of America.
Perhaps the US government should start using text message lingo in their memos.
"An Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) operative told an Egyptian srvic @ d sAm tym dat bn l@n wz plnin 2 exploit d operatives acces 2 d us 2 mount a terrorist strike"*
Could make decoding sensitive documents much more difficult and at the same time provide jobs for teenage cryptologists.
*lingo courtesy of transl8it.com
So...can they now tell us how REALLY killed Kennedy?
Before they release it they should convert the blacked out parts to 1337 speak...
Everybody dies frustrated and sad and that is beautiful
Nuculer.
Dictionary-based approaches seem to miss this one for some reason.
I personally think she discovered it while her computer was infected with the Irish Virus
MEMORANDUM TO ALL EMPLOYEES OF THE DHS AND US INTELLIGENCE SERVICES:
So as to counter the terrorists' latest methods for conducting espionage against our great nation, all official documents will now be composed in a combination of Wingdings 3 and MS Comic Sans.
Sincerely, The Management
...would have been if the censored bits were revealed by running the document through the spelling and grammar check in Word!
they won't know to mod this down
Le Pedant has spoken.
She didn't get these US Military secrects off of a BDSM site with pictures of women dragging men around on a leash did she?
Ooops, never mind
Steve
or "the la brea tar pits" ("the 'the tar' tar pits")
No, that would be security through bureaucracy, a highly effective method.
* And remember, it's spelled N-e-t-s-c-a-p-e, but it's pronounced "Mozilla."
I don' think that would work. Didn't SCO already try this already?
$cat
Another great one that's been in the news lately is doing redaction by drawing black squares over the top of words in a PDF document. The words are still there beneath the black rectangles, sort of like redacting a paper document by using electrical tape. =P
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Has anyone any photos of this geek girl? Yes, I tried Google images, but I don't think she looks like a puppy.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
The Memo Went like this:
URGENT: MSG from GEORGE W. BUSH
TO: JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF
1. ATTACK IRAQ
2. ____???____
3. PROFIT!!!
Claire has finally revealed the second step!
Read the article to find out.
It sems that |CLASSIFIED| wishes us to bomb the hell out of iraq. He's |CLASSIFIED| that saddam wanted to |CLASSIFIED|. also there's the |CLASSIFIED| the |CLASSIFIED|, and |CLASSIFIED|. god forbid |CLASSIFIED| thinks that |CLASSIFIED| are the |CLASSIFIED| |CLASSIFIED| |CLASSIFIED| |CLASSIFIED|.
Sounds quite like the Nixon transcrpits released during the Watergate investigation, but instead of "classified" there was "expletive deleted" back then.
Weapons of Mass Disclosure?
my tragically bad spelling is a security feature?
OK, it's been a few hours. Here's how I fill in the blanks:
It seems that |cheeney| wishes us to bomb the hell out of iraq. He's |not convinced| that saddam wanted to |give up all wmd's|. also there's the |belief in the cabinet that| the |american people will fall for the wmd story and never look back|, and |will even go for a cooked up al queda link as well|. god forbid |the UN security council| thinks that |our phony iraq facts| are the |crap that they are| |or else we're going to have to go in there even though we're going to piss off every enemy and friend we have| |lose all integrity as a nation| |and give the whacko terrorists even more popular support in the arab world and more of a reason to set off bombs inside the continental united states|.
wbs.
Huh?
Oooh! Mad libs!
It seems that |Cthluhu| wishes us to bomb the hell out of iraq. He's |insinuated| that saddam wanted to |'get busy' with a monkey|. also there's the |weird recurring dream| the |druggies in the apartment across from me keep having|, and |angsty teen shows|. god forbid |if that Illuminati guy from Deus Ex| thinks that |potato chips with Olestra| are the |'bomb'| |all your| |base are| |... ah, you get the picture|.
--
"Rather makes the Creator look like a sadistic ten-year-old, doesn't it?"