Student uncovers US military secrets

[Scooter24]

An Irish graduate student has uncovered words blacked-out of declassified US military documents using nothing more than a dictionary and text analysis software.

Claire Whelan, a computer science student at Dublin City University was given the problems by her PhD supervisor as a diversion. David Naccache, a cryptographer with Gemplus, challenged her to discover the words missing from two documents: one was a memo to George Bush, and another concerned military modifications to civilian helicopters.

The process is quite straightforward, and according to Naccache, Whelan's success proves that merely blotting words out of declassified documents will not keep the contents secret.

http://www.theregister.com/2004/05/13/student_unlocks_military_secrets

[flewellyn]

1. Hmmm...

I wonder if the "decoded" documents are available somewhere?

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. They are, but they don't say any more than the article

The Egyptian Islamic Jihad talked to an "Egpytian" service (wow, I bet that surprised you), and the helicopter technology came from "South Korea". I don't think this is earth-shattering.

[izzie]

2. I frankly think this----

we should have turned over FBI and CIA info to some college kids in an open college and they would have figured out 911 before it happened. I mean by open some college that is not run by a fundamental church group as these kids are not very opened minded so do not think out of the box usually.

[Scooter24]

3. le Kick n/t