[ExI] inserting backdated posts, was RE: Who is safe?

[Darren Greer]

>Randomly insert a few Rick Astley videos<

I know you didn't mean it this way, but cultural coding is the way to go, if
you really want to keep something secret. Forget Navaho and game theory and
enigma and secure networks. If I wanted to communicate something to someone,
and it was important that no-one but myself and the person
I'm communicating to understands, I first teach them a new language by
sending them images and symbols on unsecured networks with heavy social
traffic based on shared experience that I know they will eventually decode
but no-one else simply looking in can or would want to.
An exercise in semiotics.

If you were dealing with a scientifically-minded person, you might start by
sending them a .gif of Sagan's pioneer plaque, and keep resending it, until
they got the idea that you were trying to communicate with them in a
completely new way. Once they got the message, perhaps by sending you a
photo of Jack Derrida or an mp3 of a goldeberg variation back, you are in
business. If they don't get it, forget 'em. They're not your man. If they
do, you've established the beginning of secure network because it's
safely fire-walled behind someone's subjective experience and perception.
It's clumsy, slow and needs time to be developed, but it could work, if you
were committed enough. All the junk on the 'net becomes your language, and
the key to decoding it is locked inside your recipient's head in the form of
their own experience, which you can begin to manipulate once you've
established a secure connection.  I've been working on such
a language concept for a new book, and have been having fun with it. I
expect if we had telepathic abilities we'd communicate more in this way than
through cursive symbols anyway. And it has occurred to me that this speed
of light internet communication is a species of technologically-assisted
telepathy. It will become more so when we can relocate these
clumsy pieces of hardware into our evolutionary software. Or vice-versa.

Everyone in a while I imagine that what we are witnessing with the 'net is
not just an explosion of information technology, but rather the decline of
cursive symbolism as the dominant mode of recorded communication for
mankind.

Just every once in a while.

Darren

On Sun, Dec 12, 2010 at 5:21 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:

> ... On Behalf Of David Lubkin
> Subject: Re: [ExI] inserting backdated posts, was RE: Who is safe?
>
> Spike wrote:
>
> >>I agree.  The story itself contains contradictions.  We hear of
> >>classified information that was taken from an unsecured link, but ...I
> suspect it
> >>was counterfeit, or was liberally mixed with intentionally counterfeit
> posts.
>
> >A tweet led me to a URL with an odd "document", allegedly from the State
> Department leaks: <http://www.ding.net/wikileaks/234867.txt>.
> >Was this an actual DoS document that some clown classified? Or is it a
> hoax
> page? -- David.
>
> David we've been Rick rolled.  {8^D
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rickrolling
>
> It did give me an idea.  Wikileaks wants information to be free.  Very
> well,
> we shall consider everything on wikileaks free.  For some of you
> coderdemalions it will be child's play to code the following:  download the
> entire contents of wikileaks, copy all, paste to  a separate file, randomly
> change the post date, append to the original file, sort by date.  Now we
> have twice as much information as wikileaks, and we are just getting warmed
> up.  Take the resulting file, copy all, paste to a separate file, the code
> takes paragraphs or sentences and randomly changes their order within the
> post, and randomizes the date.  Append to original file, sort by date.  Now
> we are four times the size of wikileaks.  Now copy all, paste to a separate
> file, randomly mix paragraphs from randomly chosen posts, change date,
> sort.
> Append to original file, to make 8 times the paltry gigabyte in wikileaks.
>
> Randomly insert a few Rick Astley videos, so that now one can legitimately
> claim to have *over* 8 times more "information" than wikileaks.  Depending
> of course on how one defines the term "information."  Is corrupted
> information information?
>
> Sell advertisement space on the site to make actual money off of all that
> free information.  Everyone wins.
>
> spike
>
>
>
>
>
>
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-- 
"In the end that's all we have: our memories - electrochemical impulses
stored in eight pounds of tissue the consistency of cold porridge." -
Remembrance of the Daleks
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