NationStates Jolt Archive

Science News ran an interesting article this week about various methods of "digital fingerprinting," from counting keystroke patterns to measuring mouse movements. I recommend reading the whole article, but the part that seemed immediately relevant to NSG is here:

Chen and his colleagues identified 270 features of English usage and then used a computer program to pick those that most successfully distinguished among writers on bulletin boards. They then employed those 134 features to analyze bulletin board messages. They also chose features valuable for analyzing messages written in Chinese and Arabic.

The team generated a graphic representation, called a writeprint, which showed how consistent each writer was in traits such as punctuation and word length. To do this, the program broke each message into chunks of 50 or 60 words, analyzed the chunks individually, and then plotted the most revealing aspects of the writer's habits. Subsequent messages from that author would be expected to show a similar pattern.

The researchers reported in the April 2006 Communications of the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) that after running an analysis on 30 to 40 messages from any known author, the program could identify subsequent messages by that author with 93 percent accuracy in Chinese, 95 percent in Arabic, and 99 percent in English.

Chen says that he isn't free to discuss details about how his system has been used for law enforcement. He offers only, "We've been successful at bringing up clues that will alert authorities about suspicious people."

He acknowledges that his team's creation could be employed in ways that raise privacy concerns. Governments "could use it to probe political forums or to create a profile of people," he says. "That's the part we want to avoid."

Peter Eckersley, staff technologist with the Internet-privacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco, worries that writeprints will have a chilling effect on whistle blowing and public speech in general. "From this point on," he says, "the writer who would remain anonymous in the face of serious scrutiny will have to take unusual recourse to the thesaurus and a syntactic scrambler."

Eckersley has additional worries about the writeprint program's future potential for abuse. "If a malicious linguist decided that she didn't like a particular Muslim community leader, what would stop her from making anonymous, terrorism-inciting posts [to the Web], deliberately crafted to match his writing style?" asks Eckersley. "Could she get his home raided just by doing that?"


http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20070113/bob9.asp

Be afraid. Be very afraid... :p

It's inevitable that these technologies will be developed. It's also inevitable that technologies to counter them will be, too.

It's inevitable that these technologies will be developed. It's also inevitable that technologies to counter them will be, too.

You just need to be sure to type using little or no patterns whatsoever.

And unfortunately, tEh GheTto FaD of TyPin' LiKe 'Dis MaY ProVe UseFul in BreAkinG uP KeYstRoke PatTerns.

It sure as hell breaks up the way I read it.

Nah. It's all bollocks. And old hat.

There are plenty of ways to circumvent that.

You just need to be sure to type using little or no patterns whatsoever.

And unfortunately, tEh GheTto FaD of TyPin' LiKe 'Dis MaY ProVe UseFul in BreAkinG uP KeYstRoke PatTerns.


Luckily for all of us whose brains hurt when trying to read that nonsense, from what I understand, that actually would only be an effective way to make your keystroke patterns look unlike you as long as you didn't get used to it. As soon as TyPiNG lIke ThIS beCaMe HaBiT, iT wOulDN't WoRk anYmOre.

So, in short, there is still no sane reason to type like that.

So we'd finally be able to prove that Eve online really is Deep Kimchi!

Luckily for all of us whose brains hurt when trying to read that nonsense, from what I understand, that actually would only be an effective way to make your keystroke patterns look unlike you as long as you didn't get used to it. As soon as TyPiNG lIke ThIS beCaMe HaBiT, iT wOulDN't WoRk anYmOre.

So, in short, there is still no sane reason to type like that.


I don't see how I can ever get used to that. Its rediculous. Maybe just type it out on a word processor and copy and paste it into the blog/email etc? They can probably trace the word processor keystrokes too, can't they?

So we'd finally be able to prove that Eve online really is Deep Kimchi!

Heh. I bet the people creating this technology haven't even thought of all the uses it could have for mods and curious forumites...

So we'd finally be able to prove that Eve online really is Deep Kimchi!

No. Because none of these test will ever prove anything to metaphysical certitude. They are, at best, no more or less than a polygraph test, i.e. not conclusive and basically worthless.

Deep Kimchi is Eve Online however. Their claims about things that they know little or nothing about are so identical that the chances of them being two different individuals are vanishingly small.

I could see this being used as evidence in court, at least. It'd be pretty useless for people that are expecting it (cnsidering hwo easilcy pelope deciper midley scrmlebed text, making a program that'd slightly randomize text with the seed slowly shifting over time would probably break it), but for the common criminal/idiot, it's just one more tool. Particularly considering the... ahem... "creative" typing styles some people use, a decent one too.

I'd think they'd need a lot of samples for it to be accurate, however. O.o

Deep Kimchi is Eve Online however. Their claims about things that they know little or nothing about are so identical that the chances of them being two different individuals are vanishingly small.
You only say that because the thought of two 'Deep Kimchis' being out there is too horrifying to comprehend.

One could always compare random posts by both - not just on opinions (which are identical), but writing styles. A statistical analysis of the two would show how similar they are (words used, length, frequency and so on).
Something similar was done in an effort to prove Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass and Samuel Clemens were one and the same.

You only say that because the thought of two 'Deep Kimchis' being out there is too horrifying to comprehend.


While it is horrifying - though no doubt less horrifying than the thought of two lacadaemons - I don't base it on that.

Deep Kimchi and Eve Online have given me identically uninformed opinions about specific things. The chances of two different asshats spewing the same nonsense about the same stuff overseas (by which I mean the UK) is almost zero.

They are the same person. Though I notice that Eve is less into wife swapping. Something about which I cannot comment.

Ha! But what if I type in a matter so incoherent and inexplicably unencryptable, the machine explodes, destroying all traces of this technology? Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, my new language.


Meow meow mew mewo, Miao, mew mew meow mew meow... meooow meoww meow miao miao Bagel meooooow mew mew mew moew Fruit salad


Technology, you have met your match.

99% chance, sounds good, does it? It is one fake in 100, and ten in 1000. Now if all the 100k Nationstates users would have posted at least occasionally, that'd be 1000 misassignments. So... while sounding impressive, it is not really.

While it is horrifying - though no doubt less horrifying than the thought of two lacadaemons - I don't base it on that.

Deep Kimchi and Eve Online have given me identically uninformed opinions about specific things. The chances of two different asshats spewing the same nonsense about the same stuff overseas (by which I mean the UK) is almost zero.

They are the same person. Though I notice that Eve is less into wife swapping. Something about which I cannot comment.

Don't get me wrong - I'm in total agreement with you over Eve/DK.
It becomes more apparent with each posting and thread he creates. Not only the opinions he spouts, but the way he says it and the arrogant condescending way he dismisses anything that is contrary to those opines.

The only thing he hasn't mentioned is, as you said, his forays into swinging. Maybe his wife has stopped that. Or (more likely) it was just a secret fantasy of his he enjoyed writing about anomonously. The idea of a middle-aged ultraconservative ex-military church-going Christian gun-nut in a diehard red Bible belt town being into wife-swapping and sex parties was just too ridiculous to accept.

Why he continues the facade of denying being DK is beyond me. I guess he gets somethng out of it.

99% chance, sounds good, does it? It is one fake in 100, and ten in 1000. Now if all the 100k Nationstates users would have posted at least occasionally, that'd be 1000 misassignments. So... while sounding impressive, it is not really.

To be fair, if I understood the research correctly, that's a 99 percent chance of correctly matching the author of any one post (let's call him "A") to an established author (let's call him "B"). Assuming A contributes more than one post, as he is likely to do, the odds of being able to correctly determine whether or not he is the same individual as B would go up astronomically. If 248 of A's 251 posts came back as positive matches for B, I'd be fairly convinced, wouldn't you? :)

Don't get me wrong - I'm in total agreement with you over Eve/DK.
It becomes more apparent with each posting and thread he creates. Not only the opinions he spouts, but the way he says it and the arrogant condescending way he dismisses anything that is contrary to those opines.

The only thing he hasn't mentioned is, as you said, his forays into swinging. Maybe his wife has stopped that. Or (more likely) it was just a secret fantasy of his he enjoyed writing about anomonously. The idea of a middle-aged ultraconservative ex-military church-going Christian gun-nut in a diehard red Bible belt town being into wife-swapping and sex parties was just too ridiculous to accept.

Why he continues the facade of denying being DK is beyond me. I guess he gets somethng out of it.

I think his wife left him - he has changed his address and such - but that was always going to happen if you fast forwarded his movie in your head.

Now all he has left is NSG. :(

Then again, maybe he is just a brilliant NSG wind up character.

Now all he has left is NSG. :(
In the end, isn't that all any of us have?

In the end, isn't that all any of us have?

I suppose. :(

Did I ever tell you about the three wives I have :) :) :) :) ?

I suppose. :(

Did I ever tell you about the three wives I have :) :) :) :) ?
Do tell and I'll tell you about the Lamborghini I have in my attic I won playing a game of pontoon with a one-eyed man from Tunisia.:)

Haha you bastards im capable of changeing my text patternifications at will ull nevar catch me LOL

;)

actually, I have two advantages here with yr text scanning thing.

I am ambidextorous. And dyslexic.

I am teh rule.

You just need to be sure to type using little or no patterns whatsoever.

And unfortunately, tEh GheTto FaD of TyPin' LiKe 'Dis MaY ProVe UseFul in BreAkinG uP KeYstRoke PatTerns.

It sure as hell breaks up the way I read it.
That is far too much intelligence.
For your own good i suggest you don't make such comments least you be spirited away in the dead of night.

I feel both vulnerable and targeted.

I feel both vulnerable and targeted.

You aren't to worry.

To do this, the program broke each message into chunks of 50 or 60 words, analyzed the chunks individually, and then plotted the most revealing aspects of the writer's habits.

But, in general: There've been endless threads on this little programm 'determining' your gender based on a piece of writing which have been very popular, and countless 'who's this puppetmaster?' debates hung up on spelling/grammar/syntax issues, so I really don't understand why everybody gets so upset now, as if it were something new.
The idea's been there long before, law enforcement uses (oral) speech pattern analysis to a highly sophisticated degree already, and it's really just an upgraded programmed version of what we all do every day - plainly, I don't see the fuss.

I feel both vulnerable and targeted.

Yah. But I thought you liked that.

Haha you bastards im capable of changeing my text patternifications at will ull nevar catch me LOL

;)
TRACE_ERROR: failed trace in variable $textstyle, database @styleusers exceeds $max_questions resource (set: 72000)
Too many users, retrying...

ERROR: A semicolon on line 32 exploded, igniting square and curly brackets in lines 30-35.

You aren't to worry.
Zing! :p

Hmmm.... not a gun nut either... don't live in a Bible belt town... I'm married...

hmmm...

Don't get me wrong - I'm in total agreement with you over Eve/DK.
It becomes more apparent with each posting and thread he creates. Not only the opinions he spouts, but the way he says it and the arrogant condescending way he dismisses anything that is contrary to those opines.

The only thing he hasn't mentioned is, as you said, his forays into swinging. Maybe his wife has stopped that. Or (more likely) it was just a secret fantasy of his he enjoyed writing about anomonously. The idea of a middle-aged ultraconservative ex-military church-going Christian gun-nut in a diehard red Bible belt town being into wife-swapping and sex parties was just too ridiculous to accept.

Why he continues the facade of denying being DK is beyond me. I guess he gets somethng out of it.

ya but

deep kimchi has had several other incarnations and has never denied who he was in any of them.

why would he start now?

(if its so that he can stop claiming to be an exmilitary pentacostal lawyer who swings, im all for it.)