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Breaking the Codes In Oslo Terrorist's Manifesto
repvik writes "The 1500-page manifesto of the terrorist who killed 77 people in Oslo and on Utøya two weeks ago contains a series of seemingly encrypted URLs. There are 46 of them, and the initial part of the URLs appear to be GPS coordinates. An effort to analyze the codes have been launched."
they all lead to goatse
The alleged perpetrator of the terrorist attack posted the manifesto online himself before going on his rampage, and everything in there is on the internet and people have been reading and analyzing it since.
If he explores all forms and substances Straight homeward to their symbol-essences; He shall not die.
Most likely its being made public just in case this is some sort of instruction system for various cells.
I imagine the reasoning behind it is to let anyone who might be thinking of following the instructions know that they're onto the fact that there is something here.
There is also benefit to crowd sourcing it this way in that someone may have been involved and may be able to use "figuring out the code" as an excuse without incriminating themselves to come forward and help prevent whatever these codes may set into motion.
Keeping it secret and trying to solve it with limited resources isn't going to do much good. So, rather than being idiots, they've taken the logical route.
The goal here is to prevent any further atrocities. They may not catch the cells this way, but they may dissuade them from acting at all, or they may catch a guilty conscience that helps solve the whole thing for them rapidly.
If the whole point is saving lives, then I feel, as they obviously do, that this is the best way to go about it.
Here's the problem:
If i had a grudge against humans, or a certain set of humans, or something really stupid like that and I wanted to do something that will get me remembered, for whatever reason, in the history of man, I'd do some crap just like this. Make up a "manifesto" of probably gibberish, encyrpted and whatnot, so peeps would spend many hours of discussion and get me remembered.
So do we think we'll get a better understanding of the dude who killed those people by figuring out his stupid manifesto? And that will help his victims how exactly? I mean, i'm sure their families are probably helping figure this manifesto out and twitting it to all their friends. (yes, i'm being fucking sarcastic here).
Crazy people are, well, crazy. It doesn't matter their reason for doing stuff like killing people. That shit ain't cool, and shouldn't be going on, no matter the reason. But very little we will do, will stop the crazies from doing the crazy shit.
Sometimes there are signs, and sometime we recognize crazy before crazy gets killing. But most the time, we don't. We don't realize that crazy is just under the skin of that person we talk shit to all the time. We don't realize that everyone has crazy in them, and sometimes, the littlest things set crazy off.
Of course, i could be wrong. This murder might have the answer to life, the universe and everything in his manifesto. And even if it did, it's not worth our time trying to find out. Dude went out and killed a bunch of people to get attention for his manifesto and here people are, giving it attention.
what dude did worked, and your showing that to every wanna be "terrorist" with a grudge against something and a chip on their shoulder, that if you want attention, kill some peeps and you'll get it.
Be seeing you...
Good theory, so I just checked in Word. It will automatically hyperlink a DNS-looking URL, but it will not automatically hyperlink a numeric address. Also, although you don't need to type the http:/// Word just applies the correct hyperlink as a style; it does not add the http:/// to the text you typed.
Breakfast served all day!
Considering the FBI and MI6 don't have jurisdiction in Oslo, very probably.
Also, why would terrorist cells communicate via secret text in 1,500 page manifestos? It just doesn't make any sense. Encode some data into witty photos posted on Reddit photoshop contests. Mix some in torrents. Or, gasp, talk to people. Let's be honest here, most terrorists don't communicate by massively arcane technological methods. Most just talk on forums, make phone calls, or chat through chat programs.
Anything embedded secretly in a 1500 page highly public manifesto is basically advertising intended to keep people excited and talking about the manifesto. And at that, the nutjob wins. But the idea of some form of meaningful project-based communication between terrorists happening secretly via 1500 page manifestos is ascribing a degree of power to them that I personally have trouble stomaching.
The ______ Agenda
Because anyone who is going to use this information to do harm already knows it. The thing people seem to forget whenever something scary happens is that the "bad guys" aren't stupid. Terrorists know how to use a computer. It's better that everyone knows the information so that everyone can use it to prevent whatever attack it might indicate.
The two choices are NOT:
1. Keep the information secret and the bad guys will never find it
2. Release the information and the bad guys will use it to do bad things
The choices ARE:
1. Keep the information secret and everyone is caught with their pants down when the bad guys, who figured all this out on their own, do bad things.
2. Tell everyone the information so that any Tom, Dick, and Harry knows what the bad guys are going to do and they can take appropriate measures.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
B.E.S.U.R.E.T.O.D.R.I.N.K.Y.O.U.R.O.V.A.L.T.I.N.E.
and, to accommodate Slashdot's filters...
b.e.s.u.r.e.t.o.d.r.i.n.k.y.o.u.r.o.v.a.l.t.i.n.e.
#DeleteChrome
I am sure that this will be lost time. Worse. Spending time with his manifesto is exactly the thing, the killer wants us to do. He is not worth the time and effort, his manifesto is also not worth it.
The murders were his PR campaign. Don't fall for it. I know that a "damnation memoriae" will not work, but don't help a killer with additional attention.
I don't want to know about his childhood, i am not interested in his home stories, i don't want to see his pictures or see his manifesto publicly discussed.
If you want to spend time, do it for his victims. What where their dreams, ideas, visions? Try to use your words to keep their memory alive, not some sick bastards.
Yours, Martin
Your points remind me of a fortune I read recently:
"A commercial, and in some respects a social, doubt has been started within the
last year or two, whether or not it is right to discuss so openly the security
or insecurity of locks. Many well-meaning persons suppose that the discus-
sion respecting the means for baffling the supposed safety of locks offers a
premium for dishonesty, by showing others how to be dishonest. This is a fal-
lacy. Rogues are very keen in their profession, and already know much more
than we can teach them respecting their several kinds of roguery. Rogues knew
a good deal about lockpicking long before locksmiths discussed it among them-
selves, as they have lately done. If a lock -- let it have been made in what-
ever country, or by whatever maker -- is not so inviolable as it has hitherto
been deemed to be, surely it is in the interest of *honest* persons to know
this fact, because the *dishonest* are tolerably certain to be the first to
apply the knowledge practically; and the spread of knowledge is necessary to
give fair play to those who might suffer by ignorance. It cannot be too ear-
nestly urged, that an acquaintance with real facts will, in the end, be better
for all parties."
-- Charles Tomlinson's Rudimentary Treatise on the Construction of Locks,
published around 1850
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
Sheesh, don't bother going to the trouble. You've got the killer, just try a little waterboarding and save the time and money.
That is not the Norwegian way. Norwegians are a people of honor, who won't stoop to the level of the evildoers in order to fight evil. The reaction to the deed was one of sorrow, reflection and (and this is hard to understand for outsiders) love and openness instead of hatred and retaliation. In the days after the attack, the prime minister and mayor of Oslo walked around in public with less protection than before, precisely to show that the terrorist would not win by changing Norway for the worse.
In polls, Norwegians are overwhelmingly against the death penalty, torture and revenge, and more so now after the UtÃya tragedy. Norwegians want to distance themselves from everything the perpetrator stood for, and retaliate by doing the opposite of what Mr Breivik thought he would achieve.
The great majority of Norwegians want him to have the same rights as any other accused, and be judged and sentenced for what he did in a fair trial, and not risk jeopardizing justice by the police overstepping their limits. If the police can torture Mr Breivik today, they can torture you tomorrow. Punish him by exposing him to a fairness he never showed others. He will have plenty of time to reflect on how what he did hurt his cause, due to Norwegians being Norwegians, and not Americans.
I've read some of his book. I won't finish it (not enough time in my life), but it's worth reading at least the first couple chapters and skimming the rest. It's scary to do because you'll find that it's not "incoherent ramblings" as the media tells you - quite a bit of it is eloquently written (I suspect it's stitched together from multiple sources) and presents some decent arguments. I'm pretty far to the socialist side, and he's hard-right, but I agree with some of what he's saying, even if I think the conclusion that he reaches (that it's time for Europe to rise up against the oppression of the current ideological regime) is bunk.
This tragedy isn't caused by simple Crazy. An important ingredient is Ideology. To prevent future killings in this form - lone wolf, keeping a low profile - you have to fight the ideological reasons that drive them to do such a thing.
The amount of Crazy this takes is not Batshit Insane. It's a lack of critical thinking about the flaws in their ideology, the conclusions they've reached, and the worth of the actions they will undertake; nurtured a supportive environment which will encourage his thoughts; but still enough sanity for long-term planning and preparation without raising red flags.
Police work does not find these types. Some idiots will fuck up and get caught, but there are lots of people out there who are lacking in the critical thinking department. Some will always slip through.
The way you defend against this is not to brush him off as Crazy; but rather to dive into his mind and try to understand what drove him to kill 77 people. And once you do, you, a rational thinker, need to talk with other people who may hold radical ideologies and help them to understand where the flaws in their beliefs are before the real Crazy takes hold and they start shooting.
And you can't until you let yourself really understand his ideas, rather than just getting the two sentence blurbs. Know - deeply, intellectually - your enemy.
That must have been one big cookie!
nauseating
The really nauseating thing is that he is, of course, exactly right about some of what's in there. That the truth is mixed up in crazy land is part of the problem with guys like this - because when they're calibrating their world view, even their irrational minds can find some confirmation of their suspicions/projections, and it happens just often enough to keep them going on the loonier stuff.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.