Re: Why should we trust the system?

At 3:19 PM 8/9/96, Anonymous wrote:

>Further, my original question, phoned in anonymously to the FBI,
>mailed in anonymously to this list, and asked to the media (I
>guess I like wasting my time) has never been either asked or
>answered. I will restate it in stronger terms:
>"Why the hell, when you have a tape of the perp. saying something,
>do you not air it in the middle of a city chock full of people
>who could very well know this guy's voice/mannerisms?" Why didn't
>the media ask for it, and then give the answer (the fibbieclerk
>had no answer at all for me) the FBI gave?? Am I missing something?
>We hear 911 tapes ALL THE TIME of various stuff happening. Has the
>FBI suddenly become a bunch of civil liberties activists WRT the
>privacy of terrorist bombers?
>Just asking.


This is the single best suggestion/question I have heard about this entire case!

Why, indeed, has the 911 threat not been aired publically, where someone
might recognize the voice as being that of their brother, or boss, or
whatever? And might hear immediately that whomever it is, it ain't Richard
Jewell.

If any of you cyber-journalists who hang out here in the wings on
Cypherpunks, collecting material for stories, are reading this, please ask
your journalists covering the Atlanta bombing about this.

--Tim May


Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software!
We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed.
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Licensed Ontologist         | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

> > "Why the hell, when you have a tape of the perp. saying something,
> > do you not air it in the middle of a city chock full of people
> > who could very well know this guy's voice/mannerisms?" Why didn't
>
> This is the single best suggestion/question I have heard about this
> entire case!

It may not be as good of a suggestion as you might think.  If the
number of false positives are so great that there is no reasonable
way for the FBI to go after everyone of them (that is, say, they
could not accurately weigh the likelihood of any particular siting
as having a reasonable chance of being worthy of investigation),
then such a act is worthless.

Also, the FBI, no doubt, has voice analysis systems much more
capable of detecting subtleties.  100,000 enthusiastic people
trying to recognize their friend/relative/co-worker's voice is just
not consistently accurate enough to give the FBI good leads while
avoiding bad ones.

Now, that said, I suppose the FBI could try something like this:

    Have some randomizing automated test which everyone can call
    into to test their hearing abilities before they can tell the
    FBI their possible lead.  Well, I take that back.  May you test
    them AFTER they leave info on their lead so that they don't get
    offended by the testing.

Well ... I guess I'll leave the exercise up to the FBI (to make the
phone-in more user-friendly).

Now what if the FBI had voice detection systems just like the ones
used in "Clear and Present Danger"?  Now THERE'S a good reason for
tapping 1% of every phone switch ...

I wonder if the public would mind having a MACHINE do drift net
matching on voices on all public phone switches in the U.S. just to
find the Olympic bomber ...  What if the specifications of that
machine were made public and the machine placed under Congressional
oversight?  (At least members of Congress would never get tapped.)

Ern