From: tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May)
Date: Fri, 15 Apr 94 00:49:31 PDT
To: albright@scf.usc.edu (Julietta)
Subject: Re: Little known facts about the infohigh....
In-Reply-To: <199404150646.XAA06382@nunki.usc.edu>
Message-ID: <199404150750.AAA15508@mail.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Julie Albright wrote:

...
> on "terrorist activities" in the homes of our American citizens. I just
> finished reading "1984" to get me in the mood for a paper I am working on
> concerning computer surveillance...and now I receive this post regarding
> the use of TV technology being used to create the infamous Orwellian
> "Telescreen" which can hear and see our every move. Does anyone on this
> list have any further information about this? Perhaps (and I am crossing my
> fingers here) this was a post- April Fool's Day gag.. trouble is- it seems
> just feasible enough to make me worry.

Rest assured, that's just another wildly implausible paranoid rant.
The red LED on a VCR or cable box is no more capable of acting as any
kind of t.v. camera than doorknobs can act as palmprint scanners. (I
mean, they _can_, but only with expensive reengineering.) This "cable
boxes are spying on us" tale has been reposted several times in
various groups. Kind of like the "IDealOrder" psychic t.v. broadcast
people and their claims.

It perhaps has been given superficial credence because some of the
television ratings companings (Arbitron, Nielson (sp?). etc.) are
toying with the idea of installing "body sensors" in their ratings
boxes that would tell them how many people were actually in fron to
the t.v. As these ratings families voluntarily agree to be part of the
sample, any such system would be voluntary. (And I intend no irony here.)

Monitoring people inside their homes is something not even Denning and
Sternlight are arguing for.

----

And now for a rare opportunity for a _reverse_ spelling flame:

> "Now, unless the government makes such private encryption illegal (such as
> PGP), Clipper is going to foment (sic) entrepreneurial digital
                            ^^^^^^^^^^^^

I don't know who added the "(sic)" after "foment," but foment is
indeed the right usage here, meaning to "incite." As in "fomenting
revolution." An alternative might be "ferment," which is perhaps what
the (sic)-adder thought the word was meant to be, but that would be a
much less appropiate usage.

--Tim May


-- 
..........................................................................
Timothy C. May         | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,  
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Higher Power: 2^859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available.
"National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."