From: Spike Jones (spike66@ibm.net)
Date: Sun Aug 20 2000 - 09:38:21 MDT
> >At best we could identify the account from which the post originated,
> >perhaps even the computer. But it still would not provide courtroom
> >*proof* of which carbon unit made the post. spike
>
> John Calvin wrote: Gee Spike, isn't handwriting admissable as evidence?
It is. We have none.
> Wasn't it you who mentioned the availability of pattern recognition software usable on text files?
It is, but such evidence is good enough to convince *us* and to find
truth for practical purposes. The level of proof required for a court
case is another level.
> With a fairly substantial test run would anyone be able to demonstrate the reliability of such pattern recognition software enough to clearly show that even though anyone could have used that particular machine and account they could not have so exactly duplicated style of some named individual? Is that doable?
Hmmm, probably not. At least not for court case evidence. The text
pattern recognition is really good for figuring out if an author used a
ghost writer, etc, but recall a game we were playing last April Fools
Day where I suggested we parody each other and post under each
other's names etc. A few did so, and wrote parodies of me. At least
one of these, Damien's, was not only a very good parody, it was
hilarious. My point here is that if someone wanted to claim non-authorship,
I dont see how we could prove otherwise in court, ever. The perp
could always claim someone studied the vocabulary, writing style,
and wrote an intentional look-alike.
Nowthen, my text analysis software really needs a *lot* of text, and
I suspect our bomb thrower yesterday was a one-time hit and run.
I have more thoughts on this but gotta go to work.
> I would like to continue this particular discussion under a different thread (such as "author identifiability").
Good idea John. spike
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