Karl.Kleinpaste@cbstr1.UUCP (04/09/87)
Hasn't it occurred to anyone that the supposed "NSA food" (just one of its many titles) that people have started tacking onto their .signatures is of absolutely no value? Consider the following trivial algorithm: [1] Grep articles for some appropriate set of NSA-interesting keywords, including (say) CIA KGB ammunition John Birch NSA FBI AK-47 communist nuclear and anything else you care to include that you think the NSA would like to know you're writing about. [2] For all lines in which such strings are found, check to see if > 2 of them can be found. Or perhaps 3, or 4. [3] Reject all such lines (and hence all such articles) as articles obviously intending to confuse/overload the NSA or other news-watching government body. [4] For all rejected articles, perform a secondary backhand test to see if there are lines containing an average of less than 2 such references, in order to catch those who actually *are* discussing security-related topics, but are hiding them in "NSA food" articles. Result: All articles containing "NSA food" are being ignored by the NSA - specifically *because* they contain NSA food. All articles, that is, except for those in which the NSA actually has an interest - specifically *because* they contain NSA food. "NSA food" .signatures are in the same class as opinion disclaimers and restricted distribution exclusion clauses, i.e., utterly worthless, and adding to the network load. Could people please stop using them? Karl
warren@pluto.UUCP (Warren Burstein) (04/16/87)
In article <210@cbstr1.att.com> Karl.Kleinpaste@cbstr1.att.com writes: >Hasn't it occurred to anyone that the supposed "NSA food" (just one >of its many titles) that people have started tacking onto their >.signatures is of absolutely no value? > >Consider the following trivial algorithm: What if the NSA food was really a list of aliases, e.g. NSA -> pizza store, KGB -> massage parlor, terrorist -> insurance salesman I guess those .signatures will have to get larger... -- warren /|/~\~~\ Why doesn't life come with subtitles? |__/__/_/ | seismo!philabs!tg!pluto!warren /