The return of SpookWords; a protest against the Bush Administration
Back in the early nineties BW (Before Web) there was a general belief that the National Security Agency (NSA) was monitoring email and Usenet posts. (Remember Usenet? If you don't remember think Google Groups, because that is actually Usenet with a Googley front-end.) The story went that the NSA was building a database of email addresses by looking for certain keywords in Internet traffic.
I don't know if this actually happened or if it was just another conspiracy theory, but I do know that many people decided to fight back by adding noise to the system. These were called SpookWords or NSA Fodder and they consisted of a sig-line you added to the bottom of your email or Usenet post made up of a series of words believed to be on the NSA's keyword list. Words like Kremlin, Infowar, attack, nuclear, spy, safe house, encryption, and so on.
The idea was that you could make the NSA's database useless because it would contain far too many false positives. As ideas go it wasn't too bad, although the same kinds of Bayesian algorithms now used to detect spam could probably filter out a big chunk of it. In any case the practice lost currency and dwindled away years ago. You would probably have to search Usenet posts prior to 1998 to find examples.
Well, Stephen Fishburn was a bit pissed off by President Bush's domestic spying program and decided that posting SpookWords to blogs and sig-lines for a few days might be a valid, and very visible, way to protest. Would it actually hurt the NSA's programs (if such exist)? Probably not. Are they a good way to raise awareness of this issue?
Damn skippy they are! And with this blog post let me register my own anger at Bush's actions: Whether legal or not, whether Consititutional or not, makes no difference. What matters is that spying on American citizens without judicial oversight is wrong, wrong, wrong and must stop now!
If you decide to pick this up, please link back to Stephen's original post. Also feel free to comment there with good additions to the list.
[SpookWords]I am an American citizen. I am not an advocate for terrorism. If called upon by my country, I would gladly defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Inclusion of the following list of terms in this personal web log (or email) represents my opposition to the President's domestic spy program as well as my belief in the Bill of Rights and my 1st Amendment rights of free speech.
Al Qaeda, Taliban, Iraq, assassinate, 9/11, bomb, plutonium, George W. Bush, POTUS, uranium, target, airplane, train, bridge, tunnel, ship, building, kidnap, Afghanistan, explosives, C4, nuclear, infidel, Allah, Satan, suicide bomber, echelon, New York, Washington DC, White House, Congress, Senate, satellite, Army, Navy, soldier, insurgent, Osama bin Laden, jihad, police, Secret Service, FBI, National Security Agency, wiretap, surveillance, and Carnivore …
[/SpookWords]
I don't know if this actually happened or if it was just another conspiracy theory, but I do know that many people decided to fight back by adding noise to the system. These were called SpookWords or NSA Fodder and they consisted of a sig-line you added to the bottom of your email or Usenet post made up of a series of words believed to be on the NSA's keyword list. Words like Kremlin, Infowar, attack, nuclear, spy, safe house, encryption, and so on.
The idea was that you could make the NSA's database useless because it would contain far too many false positives. As ideas go it wasn't too bad, although the same kinds of Bayesian algorithms now used to detect spam could probably filter out a big chunk of it. In any case the practice lost currency and dwindled away years ago. You would probably have to search Usenet posts prior to 1998 to find examples.
Well, Stephen Fishburn was a bit pissed off by President Bush's domestic spying program and decided that posting SpookWords to blogs and sig-lines for a few days might be a valid, and very visible, way to protest. Would it actually hurt the NSA's programs (if such exist)? Probably not. Are they a good way to raise awareness of this issue?
Damn skippy they are! And with this blog post let me register my own anger at Bush's actions: Whether legal or not, whether Consititutional or not, makes no difference. What matters is that spying on American citizens without judicial oversight is wrong, wrong, wrong and must stop now!
If you decide to pick this up, please link back to Stephen's original post. Also feel free to comment there with good additions to the list.
[SpookWords]I am an American citizen. I am not an advocate for terrorism. If called upon by my country, I would gladly defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Inclusion of the following list of terms in this personal web log (or email) represents my opposition to the President's domestic spy program as well as my belief in the Bill of Rights and my 1st Amendment rights of free speech.
Al Qaeda, Taliban, Iraq, assassinate, 9/11, bomb, plutonium, George W. Bush, POTUS, uranium, target, airplane, train, bridge, tunnel, ship, building, kidnap, Afghanistan, explosives, C4, nuclear, infidel, Allah, Satan, suicide bomber, echelon, New York, Washington DC, White House, Congress, Senate, satellite, Army, Navy, soldier, insurgent, Osama bin Laden, jihad, police, Secret Service, FBI, National Security Agency, wiretap, surveillance, and Carnivore …
[/SpookWords]