PGP: sequencing messages

[Chris Adams]

On 04/30/00 02:53:25 PM jdrabik@xmission.com wrote:

>for speaking out on matters of public interest.  There are few down
>sides for SLAPP Plaintiffs - all they have to do is intimdiate and
>delay for a few years, and they've "won" by default, because in the

Yes. Servers aren't the only things vulnerable to Denial of Service attacks.

>>If you can't get digital copy, the only thing left is slightly altering the 
>>contents of each message for each recipient. This has the best 
survivability 
>>rate but is also by far the most work.
>
>Couldn't scripts do this though?  The recipients list is (rather)
>short, so it should be possible to build-in some kind of identifiable
>signature, and then encrypt the message, and insert a signed message

Something that simple could be done just by including the recipient in the 
signed block. What I was I was thinking about was something that wouldn't 
even be obvious to the recipient. Basically, work out some syntax that would 
allow you to write a paragraph like:

"I think that this is (a danger to|a threat to|an attack on) our community. 
We need to (speak out|get publicity|publicize our cause)."

The software would look for each recipient and build some sort of list 
indicating which versions were sent to which addresses:
chris@improbable.org: 1, 2
jdrabik@xmission.com: 1, 3

I'd get:
"I think that this is a danger to our community. We need to get publicity."

While jdrabik@xmission.com received:
"I think that this is a danger to our community. We need to publicize our 
cause."

If you pick the alternate texts carefully enough, it's not obvious to the 
recipient. It's also quite possible to tell what version they received even 
from things like excerpts published in newspapers or court filings. Even if 
you only got a few of the total alternate phrases, you could narrow down the 
number of suspected leaks.

You could probably do this in PMMail with an outgoing message filter that not 
only processes the message but takes responsibility for sending it as well so 
that you could assemble each one individually.

This would probably be a neat project for some aspiring coderpunk. Bonus 
points could be scored for setting up a website that would handle all of this 
sort of thing for you.

>>In theory you could produce some sort of script which could do this sort of 
>>thing for you but I'm doubtful it would be good enough to produce real 
>>sounding English consistently.
>
>Who say's it has to be English?   ;-)

pedants... <g>
-- 
# Chris Adams <chris@improbable.org>

Yesterday I was a dog.  Today I'm a dog.  Tomorrow I'll probably still
be a dog. Sigh!  There's so little hope for advancement.
		-- Snoopy