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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."
The Monde (famous French newspaper) published an article on the story a few days ago. An English translation can be found here.
A fixed-width font (like courier) uses the same width for all characters. A document printed in a fixed-width font would make the process easier, because you would know with certainty how many letters fit into a black box.
If you read the article, the seven words that were found to be a possible fit range from seven to ten characters, implying that the document was printed in a variable width font.
The threat -- purported to come from a then- and still-unknown group calling itself the "Group of the Martyr Ebenezer Scrooge" -- was contained in a classified compilation of intelligence on possible terrorist attacks produced by the CIA (news - web sites) in late 1974, according to the documents.
"A new organization of uncertain makeup using the name 'Group of the Martyr Ebenezer Scrooge' plans to sabotage the annual courier flight of the Government of the North Pole," the CIA said in its December 17, 1974 "Weekly Situation Report on International Terrorism."
"Prime Minister and Chief Courier S. Claus has been notified and security precautions are being coordinated worldwide by the CCCT working group," it said, identifying the night of December 24-25, 1974 as the date for the planned "sabotage."
It was not clear whether the CIA had learned of a prank threat to Santa, or if the analysts compiling the report had inserted it as a holiday joke.
Along with the threat to Santa, the situation report included deadly serious incidents and warnings including intelligence detailing potential terrorist attacks in the Middle East, possible bombs at the British embassy in Buenos Aires and a plane hijacking.
Despite the dubious nature of the threat to Father Christmas, the CIA blacked out all references to it when the situation report was declassified in 1999, according to the documents.
The documents, which include the original report as well as the redacted version released to the public in 1999, were released by the National Security Archive as part of its campaign against the "overclassification" of government files.
"The CIAs secret Santa leads the archives lengthy compilation of declassified documents that illustrate the arbitrary and capricious decision making that all too often characterizes the US governments national security secrecy system," it said in a statement.
The National Security Archive, part of the George Washington University in the US capital, is a private research group that seeks the declassification of government documents through the Freedom of Information Act for historical purposes.
The Cheese Stands Alone.
iiill would never get chekced, because it isn't in the dicinoairy. What your doing is dividing all the word in a dicionairy into for example 147 catagories (3-150Pixles) instead of say 40 (1-40 letters). Now you do the math from here.
from wikipedia.org:
"Critics, mostly from the far-left and the far-right, frequently quote out of context a line from Rebuilding America's Defenses which refers to the possibility of a "catastrophic and catalyzing event -- like a new Pearl Harbor" (p. 51), citing this as being suspiciously prescient of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and suggesting that the PNAC or its associates wanted, knew about, or even were involved in the attacks. This quote is considered by some to be part of the evidence of a plot to use the attacks as a pretext for the implementation of their policies. Many even incorrectly claim that the report directly states that this "new Pearl Harbor" is needed to justify war on Iraq. However, a full reading of the text shows it says nothing of the sort. The line is in the middle of a discussion about the military's employment of emerging information technologies, and the report guesses that full transformation to new technologies is likely to be a slow process, absent some "catalyzing" event which would presumably cause the military to upgrade much more quickly."
jjq writes "A decryption of the so-called Bush Memo, see the CNN news, http://edition.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/10/bush .briefing/ was presented at Eurocrypt 2004 (Interlaken) during the rump session. David Naccache shown how to recover words from removed text in several memos. See more about this story at Lemonde.fr (sorry, it is written in French)." Just use the the fish.
First paragraph on page 63:
RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdfDon't you think that if they had the insight to convert a censored document to fixed width, that they would also make all the blacked-out spaces of the same length, and give NO information to potential cryptographers?
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
Now read this letter published on their website in May 1998 :
From the PNAC document 'Rebuilding Americas Defenses' dated September 2000 :
The document also :
For those that are interested (and that should be every free-thinking person) I've collected a lot more associated evidence which I published in an article on my website.
Also, considering the political state of Northern Ireland (which is part of Great Britain, etc.) last year, most of these terrorist groups have just become glorified drug gangs, since a major way they go their money was through the drug cartel, now with a cease fire, there is more infighting and killing between the protestant militant groups over drug issues, than between the catholic and protestant groups.