From: Jonathon Blake <wd803@freenet.victoria.bc.ca>
Date: Tue, 18 Jul 95 21:25:53 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Automatic Rant generator
Message-ID: <Pine.2.2.9507182108.A29780@vifa1>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----


Date:     Mon Jul 17, 1995  5:22 pm  GMT
From:     Timothy C. May
Subject:  Automated Rant Generators and Letter Generators
 
At 7:35 AM 7/17/95, Martin Hamilton wrote:
>MONTY HARDER writes:
>
>| Anyone who has read MAD Magazine could put such together. As an added
>| bonus, use variable margin settings, and none of the letters would be
>| exactly the same. Appropriate Imail => FAX software on a puter in DC
>| (local call that way) with the phone number of the sender filled in on
>| the top line for ID (izzat legal?) so it doesn't look like a form letter
>| at all.
>
>Plus - choose the fonts & point sizes at random too ? :-)

    Tim May > Cypherpunks could probably have an effect on
    Tim May > hastening this "denial of service" attack on the 
    Tim May > efficacy of letter-writing by releasing an easy-to- 
    Tim May > use package that does all this letter writing at 
    Tim May > the click of a button....just type in some key
    Tim May > words, for the topics, and it does the rest.

    Tim May > An interesting project, actually.

    Actually, your little project could cause some major problems 
    in a area you may not anticipate  --- personnel selection.

    Specifically, the use of Handwriting Analysis as a tool for 
    personnel profiling.

Date:     Mon Jul 17, 1995 11:48 pm  GMT
From:     Harry Bartholomew
Subject:  Re: Automated Rant Generators and Letter Generators
 
    Harry > A final step might be to interface the output to old 
    Harry > pen plotters like my HP7470A with an ascii-to-
    Harry > handwriting program.  Akin to the White House
    Harry > souvenir signature generator, but with a set of
    Harry > parameters to mimic different "hands".  Knuth's
    Harry > Metafont tricks come to mind. 

    Making the little problem Tim presents, a major headache for 
    somebody else --- handwriting analysts.

Date:     Tue Jul 18, 1995  1:18 am  GMT
From:     Timothy C. May
Subject:  Re: Automated Rant Generators and Letter Generators
 
    Tim May > Bart's comments about using Knuth's typographic
    Tim May > work are interesting, to the extent that letters 
    Tim May > need to look handwritten. In the Mac market, it's 
    Tim May > possible to send in some handwriting samples and 
    Tim May > get back a font that emulates the handwriting!

    Actually, True Type fonts of your handwriting are available, 
    for any platform that accepts that font type.  I don't have 
    the URL for them, but there is a pointer to it at 
    HTTP://www.ntu.ac.sg/~tjlow/gclub.html
    
    Tim May > I don't think the pen plotter is actually needed- 
    Tim May > - and few  people would use it--as most fax can

    Using it would play hell for handwriting analysts, though.  
    And if it was programmed to change the pen pressure as well 
    --- the possibilities are staggering.  Can a pen plotter 
    change pressure?

    Tim May > be emulated with laser printers (due of course to
    Tim May > the limited dots per inch resolution). In fact,
    Tim May > most fax modems can directly fax from any screen 
    Tim May > that can produce printed output. So, the
    Tim May > combination of handwriting fonts, automated rant 
    Tim May > generators (of varying rabidities), and fax
    Tim May > capabilities gives a pretty good start. Using lots 
    Tim May > of handwriting samples, various other fonts, and a 
    Tim May > mix of styles in the letters will help.

    Tim May > Anyway, where this all gets interesting is the
    Tim May > following: * Can a kind of Turing Test be tried
    Tim May > here?

    But of course.
    

    Tim May > That is, in this limited domain of "letters to the  
    Tim May > editor/Congressmen," can a letter generator be
    Tim May > implemented which generates letters effectively
    Tim May > indistinguishable from letters and fax generated 
    Tim May > by actual human beings? ("Effectively
    Tim May > indistinguishable" in the sense that a human reader 
    Tim May > could not sort a set of letters into human- and
    Tim May > machine-generated subsets with statistically
    Tim May > significant certainty better than guessing).

    I don't remember the title, but at least one french novel was 
    rumored to have been entirely generated by computer.  

    Tim May > Of course this is also similar to the "style
    Tim May > detectors" we so  often talk about.

    I don't remember the program name, but there is software 
    available now, that analyzes a document, and figures out who 
    wrote it --- based on the frequency count of the letters of 
    the alphabet.  Secondary measures are frequency counts of 
    letter pairs.  Words, phrases, sentences etc are totally 
    ignored.  So what you'd need to do here, to pass your pseudo- 
    Turing Test is a program that generates different statistical 
    results, for allegedly different people.   

    Tim May > The crypto relevance has to do with detecting
    Tim May > patterns in  letters and rants, in emulating these 
    Tim May > patterns, and (perhaps) in speeding up lobbying. 
    Tim May > (Though I agree that widespread adoption of
    Tim May > automated letter-writing, such as the direct mail 
    Tim May > folks are already doing, will eventually just kill 
    Tim May > off letter writing as a means of lobbying.)

    Tim May > This may also hasten the adoption, someday, of
    Tim May > digital  signatures. Congressmen and their aides 
    Tim May > may check incoming letters against databases of
    Tim May > their constituents who have "registered" with them 
    Tim May > (lots of issues here).

    Or might just subject all mail to various automations, which 
    accept/reject mail, based on what it looks for.  << If it 
    passes the congress person's Turing Test, it is read, as being 
    authentic --- although I doubt half the people in the capital 
    could actually pass a Turing Test to begin with.  >>

    Tim May > Merely counting the "yes" and "no" letters has long 
    Tim May > been  problematic, as the Republicans have been
    Tim May > leading in direct mail campaigns since at least the 
    Tim May > mid-70s (recall Richard Viguerie...). Increased
    Tim May > automation will just make it even more obvious.

Date:     Tue Jul 18, 1995  5:23 pm  GMT
From:     Timothy C. May
Subject:  Re: Automated Rant Generators and Letter Generators
 
    Tim May > David Conrad told me he meant for this to go to the 
    Tim May > whole  list, but only sent it to me by mistake. So 
    Tim May > here is his post.


At 4:14 PM 7/18/95, David R. Conrad wrote:
>Tim May <tcmay@sensemedia.net> writes:
>>Bart's comments about using Knuth's typographic work are interesting, to
>>the extent that letters need to look handwritten. In the Mac market, it's
>>possible to send in some handwriting samples and get back a font that
>>emulates the handwriting!
>
>I suppose the resulting font has only one form for each letter?  (Although
>I understand that when you send them a sample, you send several instances
>of each letter; a friend was showing me an add for this.)  The fact that
>each letter is the same every time would be a giveaway.  We need something
>like Metafont, or at least choose from a number of different shapes.
>
>>                                                 ... So, the combination of
>>handwriting fonts, automated rant generators (of varying rabidities), and
>>fax capabilities gives a pretty good start. Using lots of handwriting
>>samples, various other fonts, and a mix of styles in the letters will help.
>
>Another factor that would make it appear more authentic would be spelling
>and grammar errors.  The grammar errors could be built into the rant
>generators (an occasional dangling modifier, an incomplete sentence or two);
>spelling errors could be done by post-processing the output of the rantgens.
>It's important to take into account the different types of spellos that
>occur: commonly misspelled words (aquired, beleive); wrong homophone (their,
>they're, there; two, to, too); transposed letters (transpoesd); near-misses
>on qwerty keyboards (nesr-mosses); and words left out.
>
>--
>David R. Conrad, ab411@detroit.freenet.org, http://web.grfn.org/~conrad/
>Finger conrad@grfn.org for PGP 2.6 public key; it's also on my home page
>Key fingerprint =  33 12 BC 77 48 81 99 A5  D8 9C 43 16 3C 37 0B 50
>No, his mind is not for rent to any god or government.

    Actually, the usual give away, is in letter and letter pair 
    frequencies --- not spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, 
    etc.

    However, there a technique called _Scientific Content 
    ANalysis_ that looks at how things are said, to judge their 
    "truthfulness."  A good program will not show that the text 
    was randomly generated, nor show that the author is off-the- 
    wall, so to speak.

    You may have bitten off a bit more than you can chew here.  
    OTOH, a group that tries to crack keys, knowing that the 
    possibility of success is slim to non-existent, can probably 
    pull this one off --- if only because the possibility of 
    success is pretty good.  

    Er, how did the cracking of the key go?   Last I read 60+%, 
    and no hints of it being broken.   << I almost want to 
    participate, but with a dx25, running NovellDos, I'm not sure 
    what that platform could do.  << I''ll graduate to Linux, 
    after I buy some more memory, and a new hard drive for that 
    sytem.  >>  >>  

    xan

    jonathon


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: 2.6.2

iQCzAwUBMAyFtaVRQvz57IB1AQF25wTvQD+eQVxvKOwin+Izb4d5c0u7i6JWWSZR
BoY9T3b7BEhiU6EfKgP4BZabi8gHTM742ROCXAvCZQusWAxLfXSOKwjmUs5ieaD7
f6cEB8/D+EZu395qa0bCu28/hLmKslQvXvsWoMpxcHzhjEHJhYs/0BQxHZoZMsrM
PrfFLqrhdJzhPYn5iy83nhBB54GlKnCIBgfEqaZnHjjC2hzZJJo=
=GyP/
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----