https://scienceblogs.com/ en https://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2013/08/14/i-thought-we-solved-this-nsa-thing-long-ago <span>I Thought We Solved This NSA Thing Long Ago</span> <div class="field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field--item"><p>Or, at least, I'm surprised that this earlier implemented solution has not been mentioned in all the discussion about NSA spying. </p> <p>Richard Stallman invented an approach to obviating the NSA's attempts to spy on email. He included it in emacs, the world's greatest text editor. Here how it works, from the manual. The "M" is the "alt" key (for all practical purposes) and "M-x followed by a word implements the command attached to that word. </p> <blockquote><p><strong>32.6 Mail Amusements</strong></p> <p><em>M-x spook</em> adds a line of randomly chosen keywords to an outgoing mail message. The keywords are chosen from a list of words that suggest you are discussing something subversive.</p> <p>The idea behind this feature is the suspicion that the NSA¹ and other intelligence agencies snoop on all electronic mail messages that contain keywords suggesting they might find them interesting. (The agencies say that they don't, but that's what they would say.) The idea is that if lots of people add suspicious words to their messages, the agencies will get so busy with spurious input that they will have to give up reading it all. Whether or not this is true, it at least amuses some people.</p> <p>You can use the fortune program to put a “fortune cookie” message into outgoing mail. To do this, add fortune-to-signature to mail-setup-hook:</p> <p> (add-hook 'mail-setup-hook 'fortune-to-signature)</p> <p>You will probably need to set the variable fortune-file before using this.</p> <p>________________________<br /> Footnotes<br /> [1] The US National Security Agency.</p></blockquote> <p>That is from the current, on-line emacs manual but it also appears in my hard copy of the manual which I believe dates to the last quarter of the 20th century. </p> </div> <span><a title="View user profile." href="/author/gregladen" lang="" about="/author/gregladen" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="">gregladen</a></span> <span>Wed, 08/14/2013 - 11:17</span> <div class="field field--name-field-blog-tags field--type-entity-reference field--label-inline"> <div class="field--label">Tags</div> <div class="field--items"> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/emacs" hreflang="en">emacs</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/technology" hreflang="en">Technology</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/email" hreflang="en">email</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/nsa" hreflang="en">NSA</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/technology" hreflang="en">Technology</a></div> </div> </div> <section> <article data-comment-user-id="0" id="comment-1453655" class="js-comment comment-wrapper clearfix"> <mark class="hidden" data-comment-timestamp="1376537589"></mark> <div class="well"> <strong></strong> <div class="field field--name-comment-body field--type-text-long field--label-hidden field--item"><p>I don't want to make the suggestion that you are a bunch of idiots is just that your idiotic suggestions are!<br /> I will only imagine that the NSA are there for a particular reason, the next time another sep 11 happens you will thank your smart ways to their success.</p> </div> <drupal-render-placeholder callback="comment.lazy_builders:renderLinks" arguments="0=1453655&amp;1=default&amp;2=en&amp;3=" token="FaXUo2YV4vecw-7WXeekG9_EE7LLeNwlLGjDYLFhv2U"></drupal-render-placeholder> </div> <footer> <em>By <span lang="" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="">LeonardoV59 (not verified)</span> on 14 Aug 2013 <a href="https://scienceblogs.com/taxonomy/term/5793/feed#comment-1453655">#permalink</a></em> <article typeof="schema:Person" about="/user/0"> <div class="field field--name-user-picture field--type-image field--label-hidden field--item"> <a href="/user/0" hreflang="und"><img src="/files/styles/thumbnail/public/default_images/icon-user.png?itok=yQw_eG_q" width="100" height="100" alt="User Image" typeof="foaf:Image" class="img-responsive" /> </a> </div> </article> </footer> </article> <article data-comment-user-id="0" id="comment-1453656" class="js-comment comment-wrapper clearfix"> <mark class="hidden" data-comment-timestamp="1376542194"></mark> <div class="well"> <strong></strong> <div class="field field--name-comment-body field--type-text-long field--label-hidden field--item"><p>So let me get this straight. You put these terms into your email to deliberately get NSA to read your email (that they would not have done without the terms automatically inserted). And this will overload NSA so terrorists can avoid detection and bring down a plane over the Atlantic. Very clever. Fortunately, NSA will figure this out and develop an algorithm to defeat it.</p> </div> <drupal-render-placeholder callback="comment.lazy_builders:renderLinks" arguments="0=1453656&amp;1=default&amp;2=en&amp;3=" token="cDlpdNBM0WhLCL4GtoarN19Vqe5wYT9vdjsuuQ52I4w"></drupal-render-placeholder> </div> <footer> <em>By <span lang="" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="">bobh (not verified)</span> on 15 Aug 2013 <a href="https://scienceblogs.com/taxonomy/term/5793/feed#comment-1453656">#permalink</a></em> <article typeof="schema:Person" about="/user/0"> <div class="field field--name-user-picture field--type-image field--label-hidden field--item"> <a href="/user/0" hreflang="und"><img src="/files/styles/thumbnail/public/default_images/icon-user.png?itok=yQw_eG_q" width="100" height="100" alt="User Image" typeof="foaf:Image" class="img-responsive" /> </a> </div> </article> </footer> </article> <article data-comment-user-id="0" id="comment-1453657" class="js-comment comment-wrapper clearfix"> <mark class="hidden" data-comment-timestamp="1376627910"></mark> <div class="well"> <strong></strong> <div class="field field--name-comment-body field--type-text-long field--label-hidden field--item"><p>"I’m surprised that this earlier implemented solution has not been mentioned" -- that's because this is no solution. At best, it's showing them the finger. I presume they don't care.</p> <p>Furthermore, the whole scheme rests upon the assumption that The Observers have limited resources. This might have been true ten years ago, but these days, they have -for all practical purposes- unlimited means.</p> </div> <drupal-render-placeholder callback="comment.lazy_builders:renderLinks" arguments="0=1453657&amp;1=default&amp;2=en&amp;3=" token="Ua7RdgVjqdfXIx1XPLZ-bpLRHbQiZdNyRbtQLyTYCNU"></drupal-render-placeholder> </div> <footer> <em>By <span lang="" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="">Laie (not verified)</span> on 16 Aug 2013 <a href="https://scienceblogs.com/taxonomy/term/5793/feed#comment-1453657">#permalink</a></em> <article typeof="schema:Person" about="/user/0"> <div class="field field--name-user-picture field--type-image field--label-hidden field--item"> <a href="/user/0" hreflang="und"><img src="/files/styles/thumbnail/public/default_images/icon-user.png?itok=yQw_eG_q" width="100" height="100" alt="User Image" typeof="foaf:Image" class="img-responsive" /> </a> </div> </article> </footer> </article> <article data-comment-user-id="0" id="comment-1453658" class="js-comment comment-wrapper clearfix"> <mark class="hidden" data-comment-timestamp="1376822304"></mark> <div class="well"> <strong></strong> <div class="field field--name-comment-body field--type-text-long field--label-hidden field--item"><p>This only works if enough people do it to drive the signal to noise ratio close to 1. If only a few people do it, then NSA simply spends more CPU cycles looking at their e-mail--which is no big deal for them.</p> </div> <drupal-render-placeholder callback="comment.lazy_builders:renderLinks" arguments="0=1453658&amp;1=default&amp;2=en&amp;3=" token="2tSwcGlxJknVcLYLB3r_XKvsmbYdLgpkWuQDglXwTw0"></drupal-render-placeholder> </div> <footer> <em>By <span lang="" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="">Eric Lund (not verified)</span> on 18 Aug 2013 <a href="https://scienceblogs.com/taxonomy/term/5793/feed#comment-1453658">#permalink</a></em> <article typeof="schema:Person" about="/user/0"> <div class="field field--name-user-picture field--type-image field--label-hidden field--item"> <a href="/user/0" hreflang="und"><img src="/files/styles/thumbnail/public/default_images/icon-user.png?itok=yQw_eG_q" width="100" height="100" alt="User Image" typeof="foaf:Image" class="img-responsive" /> </a> </div> </article> </footer> </article> <article data-comment-user-id="0" id="comment-1453659" class="js-comment comment-wrapper clearfix"> <mark class="hidden" data-comment-timestamp="1377238758"></mark> <div class="well"> <strong></strong> <div class="field field--name-comment-body field--type-text-long field--label-hidden field--item"><p>@Eric<br /> Actually, I don't think this noise will be mistaken for a signal. I'm not sure wether it even qualifies as noise.<br /> A single block of keywords, like "bomb gun sword ambush", is easily filtered. If the keywords were distributed over bomb the entire body of the gun message it might be more effective, but would ambush be disruptive even for the intended audience. Sword.</p> </div> <drupal-render-placeholder callback="comment.lazy_builders:renderLinks" arguments="0=1453659&amp;1=default&amp;2=en&amp;3=" token="zSuOSLdH0oWKJeSfXYbfutAF9cQ_9ejBhvQNks7YGqA"></drupal-render-placeholder> </div> <footer> <em>By <span lang="" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="">Laie (not verified)</span> on 23 Aug 2013 <a href="https://scienceblogs.com/taxonomy/term/5793/feed#comment-1453659">#permalink</a></em> <article typeof="schema:Person" about="/user/0"> <div class="field field--name-user-picture field--type-image field--label-hidden field--item"> <a href="/user/0" hreflang="und"><img src="/files/styles/thumbnail/public/default_images/icon-user.png?itok=yQw_eG_q" width="100" height="100" alt="User Image" typeof="foaf:Image" class="img-responsive" /> </a> </div> </article> </footer> </article> </section> <ul class="links inline list-inline"><li class="comment-forbidden"><a href="/user/login?destination=/gregladen/2013/08/14/i-thought-we-solved-this-nsa-thing-long-ago%23comment-form">Log in</a> to post comments</li></ul> Wed, 14 Aug 2013 15:17:08 +0000 gregladen 32841 at https://scienceblogs.com https://scienceblogs.com/grrlscientist/2009/08/24/why-email-was-invented <span>Why eMail was Invented</span> <div class="field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field--item"><p><span style="font-size: 10px">tags: <a target="window" href="http://technorati.com/tag/cultural+observations" rel="tag">cultural observations</a>, <a target="window" href="http://technorati.com/tag/email" rel="tag">email</a>, <a target="window" href="http://technorati.com/tag/pets" rel="tag">pets</a>, <a target="window" href="http://technorati.com/tag/humor" rel="tag">humor</a>, <a target="window" href="http://technorati.com/tag/funny" rel="tag">funny</a>, <a target="window" href="http://technorati.com/tag/fucking+hilarious" rel="tag">fucking hilarious</a>, <a target="window" href="http://technorati.com/tag/streaming+video" rel="tag">streaming video</a></span></p> <p>This short video gives you a fly-on-the-wall view of why email was invented: pets!</p> <!--more--><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/pLb14MnIbtw&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1&amp;rel=0" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/pLb14MnIbtw&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1&amp;showinfo=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object></div> <span><a title="View user profile." href="/author/grrlscientist" lang="" about="/author/grrlscientist" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="">grrlscientist</a></span> <span>Mon, 08/24/2009 - 00:59</span> <div class="field field--name-field-blog-tags field--type-entity-reference field--label-inline"> <div class="field--label">Tags</div> <div class="field--items"> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/cultural-observation" hreflang="en">cultural observation</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/humor" hreflang="en">humor</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/streaming-videos" hreflang="en">streaming videos</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/animals" hreflang="en">animals</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/email" hreflang="en">email</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/funny" hreflang="en">funny</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/mail" hreflang="en">mail</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/pets" hreflang="en">pets</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/streaming-video" hreflang="en">streaming video</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/video" hreflang="en">Video</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/why-email-was-invented" hreflang="en">why email was invented</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/cultural-observation" hreflang="en">cultural observation</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/humor" hreflang="en">humor</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/streaming-videos" hreflang="en">streaming videos</a></div> </div> </div> <section> <article data-comment-user-id="0" id="comment-2069460" class="js-comment comment-wrapper clearfix"> <mark class="hidden" data-comment-timestamp="1251091232"></mark> <div class="well"> <strong></strong> <div class="field field--name-comment-body field--type-text-long field--label-hidden field--item"><p>I think they're on to us. The Beast ate all the emails in one of my accounts whilst I was away.</p> </div> <drupal-render-placeholder callback="comment.lazy_builders:renderLinks" arguments="0=2069460&amp;1=default&amp;2=en&amp;3=" token="PyV1_1_I8A5LGrIfeIcHJeKZRnILJ8IgAcMD2h-OMlM"></drupal-render-placeholder> </div> <footer> <em>By <a rel="nofollow" href="http://network.nature.com/people/boboh/blog" lang="" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="">Bob O&#039;H (not verified)</a> on 24 Aug 2009 <a href="https://scienceblogs.com/taxonomy/term/5793/feed#comment-2069460">#permalink</a></em> <article typeof="schema:Person" about="/user/0"> <div class="field field--name-user-picture field--type-image field--label-hidden field--item"> <a href="/user/0" hreflang="und"><img src="/files/styles/thumbnail/public/default_images/icon-user.png?itok=yQw_eG_q" width="100" height="100" alt="User Image" typeof="foaf:Image" class="img-responsive" /> </a> </div> </article> </footer> </article> </section> <ul class="links inline list-inline"><li class="comment-forbidden"><a href="/user/login?destination=/grrlscientist/2009/08/24/why-email-was-invented%23comment-form">Log in</a> to post comments</li></ul> Mon, 24 Aug 2009 04:59:12 +0000 grrlscientist 89495 at https://scienceblogs.com