From: Alex Strasheim <cp@proust.suba.com>
Date: Sat, 17 Feb 1996 05:14:53 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Computer unmasks Anonymous writer...
In-Reply-To: <199602161525.KAA28647@access1.digex.net>
Message-ID: <199602161745.LAA16950@proust.suba.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text


> The Feb 16, 96 edition of the Baltimore Sun announces that a computer
> program similar to one used to attribute unknown poems to William
> Shakespeare has been turned to solving the mystery of who wrote
> the best selling book, _Primary Colors._

Suppose you didn't trust the from fields in usenet articles, and you
wanted to index everything so that you could pull up articles that appear
to have been written by the same person.  How would you go about doing
this?  Would you set up n statistical measures for text, assign each
article an n-tuple, and look for points that are near each other? 

Isn't this a similar problem to indexing satellite photos or 
fingerprints?  How good are the spooks at doing that sort of thing?