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Clever Workaround: Visual Cryptography On Austrian Postage Stamps
An anonymous reader writes Have you heard of personalized postage stamps? You pay the value of the stamps plus a fee and the post office prints official stamps usable for postage which show (almost) anything you can put into a jpeg file. An Austrian Tibet supporter found out what 'almost' means. He submitted a picture of the Dalai Lama with the text 'His Holiness the Dalai Lama,' but the Austrian post office refused to produce these stamps. Stampnews and the Neue Zuercher Zeitung (autotranslation) reported that this had been due to pressure from the Chinese embassy in Vienna. Now there is a video showing how visual cryptography has been used to get around this attempt at censorship [caution: organ music] .
I had to squint really hard to see anything at all.
Now the ineffectiveness of their censorship is so conclusively destroyed they will surely lament and not censor anymore.
Sure, but the post office could still reject this custom crypto-stamp based of the fact that it's obvious something covert is going on. And you can bet that when that envelope arrives in China, they will take great interest in it, and its unfortunate recipient.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
To come up with this brilliant invention?
No no, the organ music makes it better!!
And this is why we should refuse to do any business with dictatorships. Not only do we help fund the oppression of the Chinese by their government, but that oppression also spreads like a disease and infects our countries as well. And all for the sake of corporate profits, yet even those who reap them ultimately risk reaping Chinese-style political trials and subsequent executions as well.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
It says
HH THE
DALAI
LAMA
when you overlap the two stamps (and it's pretty difficult to see that). That's neat and all, but you would have to know to remove the stamps, remove them cleanly, overlay them, and shine a light through them to even see it. And there's no message at all if you have only one stamp. I think the censorship was still basically achieved.
^ pics or it didnt happen
At least initially: Video not available, click here to see why (or similar) - this BS happens often.
Now it works.
really stretching the definition here...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Is it a slow news day? The two linked articles are from years ago and don't actually mention anything about this design your own stamp attempt.
Most places won't allow you to generate products like these stamps with pictures of famous people on them as they don't want to get sued by said person. Royal Mail definitely won't as they've got two explicit rules that cover it so should be start screaming about censorship there also? "2.2 you have obtained the permission of any person (or their parent or legal guardian) who appears in the material, for their image to be reproduced." and "4.5 it promotes any particular religious beliefs or may offend against any person’s religious beliefs;"
Anyway, does it even count as getting around censorship when you need to do something obscure to see the result? Just writing under the stamp would have been easier and much easier to read than the final result. This is like a schoolkid method of trying to get one up on somebody else. "Tee hee. They don't know that if you combine my two stamps then you get something that they don't like!"
When people call Obama a war criminal or a hypocrite, that's a criticism, not a compliment, even if some people's thinking is so warped that they think it's the other way around.
I want a postage stamp with a portrait of Iggy Pop.
In fact, a series of 70's punk rockers would be great. Iggy Pop, each of the four Ramones, Johnny Rotten and maybe a group photo of the New York Dolls.
I wonder if this has already been done by some Micronesian country where these guys are worshiped as gods. That would be cool. Easter Island statues in the likeness of Iggy.
You are welcome on my lawn.
How is it possible? That kindly, neutral, perfect European nation is censoring free speech critical of a totalitarian regime? Say it ain't so!
Authoritarianism applies to democracies and dictatorships as well as communism, socialism, and corporatism (which Mussolini called Fascism which is not the same as Nazi Fascism which is not definitive Fascism.)
China is quite corrupt but they've long used the democratic process. Communism doesn't exclude using the democratic process; there are lots of ways it can be done, limited, etc. Look at religious states like Iran or arguably Israel who are democracies but have hugely powerful religious forces at play (officially or unofficially.)
Then you have the USA which uses the democratic process but is no longer a functional democracy. So officially it has the label but practically it is too dysfunctional to really be one. Direct democracy is for annoying strict constructionist types who think there is only 1 kind of democracy.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Here's a nice anecdote for all you 'dotal subversives.
Used to be that the Royal Cunt of The Netherlands (the one possessed by you [didn't] know whom) was 'off limits'. Taboo. Verboten. As in burn the entire edition.
These days however that concept is nearly a physical impossibility.
Censorship creates clever communications.
There are many clever ways to override the censors. It's an arms race the governments never win.
Austria should have told China that Austria's stamps are none of their business, instead some politician overruled the Austrian post office, and this is a form of rebellion, not against China, but against the dick who overruled them.
Now he should be removed from office, and they should do the Dalai Lama stamp properly.
The idea that China can dictate what is on Austrian postage stamps is the thin edge of a wedge.
Nah, Halo sucks. I think you should give her diddy kong racing and ken griffey jr baseball, for n64. And go back to IGN.
Groan. Something about this reminds of the scene in Monty Python's 'The Holy Grail', where a rather pestilential peasant is yelling 'I'm being oppressed'. Look, it's not always censorship when some company or government service refuses to be the medium for somebody's political propaganda; or if you insist on calling it censorship, then I have to say that not all censorship is bad.
But I don't think it applies in this situation - nobody has a right to have things printed for them, not even in a news paper. And just like a paper can refuse to print an article or an advert for any reason they like, the postoffice can do the same, of course. They have to make a business decision - why should they print a postage stamp, if they have reason to believe it may harm their business or their reputation? Freedom of speech doesn't mean that everybody has to help you spread your opinions, it only means that the state guarantees that they will not punish people for doing so.
Brainsurgery might help.
This may be a stupid question, but why is the Austrian government calling up the Chinese embassy in Vienna to ask permission to print an Austrian citizen's image on a custom postage stamp?
The chinese communist party is on its last straw of survival, facing stress from: 1. external opposite forces from all other countries in the world. 2. internal pressure from all chinese places e.g. mainland, hong kong, taiwan, xinjiang, macau etc. 3. its own economy no more development from absence of law and moral. 4. its inner problems all surfacing e.g. debt, lack of soft power, no morals whatsoever.