At 09:44 AM 12/13/03 -0600, Harmon Seaver wrote: ...
And what is my supposed "three-space paragraph lead-ins?" The concept of
textual analysis to prove ID has always amused me. A competent writer can easily
change writing styles from moment to moment. I well recall a university english
lit prof almost accusing me of plagarism when I wrote a piece mimicking Faulkner
and doing so well enough that the prof actually started looking thru his works
trying to find it.
Textual analysis correctly identified the author of _Primary Colors_, though that was from a pretty small field of people with the right level of inside knowledge. Does anyone know whether there have been real randomized trials of any of the textual analysis software or techniques? E.g., is this an identification technique like DNA, or is it an identification technique like retrieving repressed memories under hypnosis (or, equivalently, consulting a ouiji board)?
It's not obvious to me how you'd change your writing style to defeat these textual analysis schemes--would it really be as simple as changing the average length of sentences and getting rid of the big words, or would there still be ways to determine your identity from that text? I'm thinking especially of long discussions of technical topics--if I wrote a five page essay on what to look at when trying to cryptanalyze a new block cipher, I think it would be hard to keep readers who knew me from having a pretty good guess about the author, even if I tried changing terms, being more mathematical and less conversational, etc. (Though this is more of a problem with humans familiar with my writing style, rather than with automated analysis.)
Harmon Seaver CyberShamanix http://www.cybershamanix.com
--John Kelsey, [EMAIL PROTECTED] PGP: FA48 3237 9AD5 30AC EEDD BBC8 2A80 6948 4CAA F259
