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Still, disinformation and propaganda are nothing magic. They can change things, but supposedly only if those things/meanings/opinions are not fixed completely.
It is never just a single idea that changes. Society is following the changes.
Thinking about disinformation brings us to the word truth, of course, and to the doubt that there is no definite truth. And truth can easily be manipulated to another truth. Just present some facts that seem to be logic and there you've got a new truth. And if the facts can supposedly be proved by empirical studies then the quality of the truth definitely rises.
That's what ideologies do all the time. And the media like to do the same thing - as a game with power or mere presentation of power?
But of course there also exist bits of disinformation which are more amusing than evil or dangerous:
- the theory of the celestro-centric world/"Hohlwelttheorie"
- the story of the German philosopher who invented an Italian philosopher, wrote books about him, even reprinted "his" texts, which had gone lost pretendedly 100 years ago - and finally lost his job and all his career when other scientists found out that everything had been made up.
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Following the communist revolutions of the 20th century all "means of production" became the property of the state as representative of "the masses". Private property ceased to exist. While moral rights of the creator were recognized and economic rights acknowledged with a one-time cash award, all subsequent rights reverted to the state.
With the transformation of many communist countries to a market system most of them have now introduced laws establishing markets in intellectual property rights. Still the high rate of piracy reflects a certain lack of legal tradition.
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1971 IBM's work on the Lucifer cipher and the work of the NSA lead to the U.S. Data Encryption Standard (=
1976
1977/78 the
1984 Congress passes Comprehensive Crime Control Act
- The Hacker Quarterly is founded
1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is passed in the USA
- Electronic Communications Privacy Act
1987 Chicago prosecutors found Computer Fraud and Abuse Task Force
1988 U.S. Secret Service covertly videotapes a hacker convention
1989 NuPrometheus League distributes Apple Computer software
1990 -
- Charles H. Bennett and Gilles Brassard publish their work on Quantum Cryptography
- Martin Luther King Day Crash strikes AT&T long-distance network nationwide
1991
- one of the first conferences for Computers, Freedom and Privacy takes place in San Francisco
- AT&T phone crash; New York City and various airports get affected
1993 the U.S. government announces to introduce the
1994
- the
1990s work on quantum computer and quantum cryptography
- work on biometrics for authentication (finger prints, the iris, smells, etc.)
1996 France liberates its cryptography law: one now can use cryptography if registered
- OECD issues Cryptography Policy Guidelines; a paper calling for encryption exports-standards and unrestricted access to encryption products
1997 April European Commission issues Electronic Commerce Initiative, in favor of strong encryption
1997 June PGP 5.0 Freeware widely available for non-commercial use
1997 June 56-bit DES code cracked by a network of 14,000 computers
1997 August U.S. judge assesses encryption export regulations as violation of the First Amendment
1998 February foundation of Americans for Computer Privacy, a broad coalition in opposition to the U.S. cryptography policy
1998 March
1998 April NSA issues a report about the risks of key recovery systems
1998 July
1998 October Finnish government agrees to unrestricted export of strong encryption
1999 January RSA Data Security, establishes worldwide distribution of encryption product outside the USA
- National Institute of Standards and Technologies announces that 56-bit
- 56-bit DES code is cracked in 22 hours and 15 minutes
1999 May 27 United Kingdom speaks out against key recovery
1999 Sept: the USA announce to stop the restriction of cryptography-exports
2000 as the German government wants to elaborate a cryptography-law, different organizations start a campaign against that law
- computer hackers do no longer only visit websites and change little details there but cause breakdowns of entire systems, producing big economic losses
for further information about the history of cryptography see:
for information about hacker's history see:
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With television still being very popular, commercial entertainment has transferred the concept of soap operas onto the Web. The first of this new species of "Cybersoaps" was
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This is the largest area of application of biometric technologies, and the most direct lineage to the feudal gate keeping system. Initially mainly used in military and other "high security" territories, physical access control by biometric technology is spreading into a much wider field of application. Biometric access control technologies are already being used in schools, supermarkets, hospitals and commercial centres, where the are used to manage the flow of personnel.
Biometric technologies are also used to control access to political territory, as in immigration (airports, Mexico-USA border crossing). In this case, they can be coupled with camera surveillance systems and artificial intelligence in order to identify potential suspects at unmanned border crossings. Examples of such uses in remote video inspection systems can be found at
A gate keeping system for airports relying on digital fingerprint and hand geometry is described at
An electronic reconstruction of feudal gate keeping capable of singling out high-risk travellers from the rest is already applied at various border crossing points in the USA. "All enrolees are compared against national lookout databases on a daily basis to ensure that individuals remain low risk". As a side benefit, the economy of time generated by the inspection system has meant that "drug seizures ... have increased since Inspectors are able to spend more time evaluating higher risk vehicles".
However, biometric access control can not only prevent people from gaining access on to a territory or building, they can also prevent them from getting out of buildings, as in the
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Presumably the major player in the field of international
Information on WIPO administered agreements in the field of industrial property (Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property (1883), Madrid Agreement Concerning the International Registration of Marks (1891) etc.) can be found on:
Information on treaties concerning copyright and neighboring rights (Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works (1886) etc.) is published on:
The most recent multilateral agreement on copyright is the 1996 WIPO Copyright Treaty. Among other things it provides that computer programs are protected as literary works and also introduces the protection of databases, which "... by reason of the selection or arrangement of their content constitute intellectual creations." Furthermore the
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In what follows there is a brief description of the principal biometric technologies, whose respective proponents - producers, research laboratories, think tanks - mostly tend to claim superiority over the others. A frequently used definition of "biometric" is that of a "unique, measurable characteristic or trait of a human being for automatically recognizing or verifying identity" (
All biometric technologies are made up of the same basic processes:
1. A sample of a biometric is first collected, then transformed into digital information and stored as the "biometric template" of the person in question.
2. At every new identification, a second sample is collected and its identity with the first one is examined.
3. If the two samples are identical, the persons identity is confirmed, i.e. the system knows who the person is.
This means that access to the facility or resource can be granted or denied. It also means that information about the persons behaviour and movements has been collected. The system now knows who passed a certain identification point at which time, at what distance from the previous time, and it can combine these data with others, thereby appropriating an individual's data body.
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17th century Cardinal Richelieu invents an encryption-tool called grille, a card with holes for writing messages on paper into the holes of those cards. Afterwards he removes the cards and fills in the blanks, so the message looks like an ordinary letter. The recipient needs to own the same card
- Bishop John Wilkins invents a cryptologic system looking like music notes. In a book he describes several forms of steganographic systems like secrets inks, but also the string cipher. He mentions the so-called Pig Latin, a spoken way of encryption that was already used by the ancient Indians
- the English scientist, magician and astrologer
1605/1623 Sir Francis Bacon (= Francis Tudor = William Shakespeare?) writes several works containing ideas about cryptography. One of his most important advises is to use ciphers in such a way that no-one gets suspicious that the text could be enciphered. For this the steganogram was the best method, very often used in poems. The attempt to decipher Shakespeare's sonnets (in the 20th century) lead to the idea that his works had been written by Francis Bacon originally.
1671 Leibniz invents a calculating machine that uses the binary scale which we still use today, more advanced of course, called the ASCII code
18th century this is the time of the Black Chambers of espionage in Europe, Vienna having one of the most effective ones, called the "Geheime Kabinettskanzlei", headed by Baron Ignaz von Koch. Its task is to read through international diplomatic mail, copy letters and return them to the post-office the same morning. Supposedly about 100 letters are dealt with each day.
1790's Thomas Jefferson and Robert Patterson invent a wheel cipher
1799 the Rosetta Stone is found and makes it possible to decipher the Egyptian Hieroglyphs
1832 or 1838 Sam Morse develops the Morse Code, which actually is no code but an enciphered alphabet of short and long sounds. The first Morse code-message is sent by telegraph in 1844.
1834 the
1844 the invention of the telegraph changes cryptography very much, as codes are absolutely necessary by then
1854 the Playfair cipher is invented by Sir Charles Wheatstone
1859 for the first time a tomographic cipher gets described
1861 Friedrich W. Kasiski does a cryptoanalysis of the Vigenère ciphers, which had been supposed to be uncrackable for ages
1891 Major Etienne Bazeries creates a new version of the wheel cipher, which is rejected by the French Army
1895 the invention of the radio changes cryptography-tasks again and makes them even more important
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Providers of digital information might be confronted with copyright related problems when using some of the special features of hypertext media like
Framing
Frames are often used to help define, and navigate within, a content provider's website. Still, when they are used to present (copyrighted) third party material from other sites issues of passing off and misleading or deceptive conduct, as well as copyright infringement, immediately arise.
Hyperlinking
It is generally held that the mere creation of a hyperlink does not, of itself, infringe copyright as usually the words indicating a link or the displayed URL are unlikely to be considered a "work". Nevertheless if a link is clicked on the users browser will download a full copy of the material at the linked address creating a copy in the RAM of his computer courtesy of the address supplied by the party that published the link. Although it is widely agreed that the permission to download material over the link must be part of an implied license granted by the person who has made the material available on the web in the first place, the scope of this implied license is still the subject of debate. Another option that has been discussed is to consider linking
Furthermore hyperlinks, and other "information location tools", like online directories or search engines could cause their operators trouble if they refer or link users to a site that contains infringing material. In this case it is yet unclear whether providers can be held liable for infringement.
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The Clipper Chip is a cryptographic device proposed by the U.S. government that purportedly intended to protect private communications while at the same time permitting government agents to obtain the "keys" upon presentation of what has been vaguely characterized as "legal authorization." The "keys" are held by two government "escrow agents" and would enable the government to access the encrypted private communication. While Clipper would be used to encrypt voice transmissions, a similar chip known as Capstone
would be used to encrypt data. The underlying cryptographic algorithm, known as Skipjack, was developed by the National Security Agency (NSA).
Internet exchanges are intersecting points between major networks.
List of the World's Public Internet exchanges (
A cookie is an information package assigned to a client program (mostly a Web browser) by a server. The cookie is saved on your hard disk and is sent back each time this server is accessed. The cookie can contain various information: preferences for site access, identifying authorized users, or tracking visits.
In online advertising, cookies serve the purpose of changing advertising banners between visits, or identifying a particular
Advertising banners can be permanently eliminated from the screen by filtering software as offered by
Cookies are usually stored in a separate file of the browser, and can be erased or permanently deactivated, although many web sites require cookies to be active.
On behalf of the
Device used by the German military command to encode strategic messages before and during World War II. The Enigma code was broken by a British intelligence system known as Ultra.
Incepted in 1971, The NASDAQ Stock Market was the world's first electronic stock market and has since attracted many technology companies from countries all over the world, some of them as legendary as
NASDAQ is the largest stock market in the world.
The Council for Mutual Economic Aid (COMECON) was set up in 1949 consisting of six East European countries: Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the USSR, followed later by the German Democratic Republic (1950), Mongolia (1962), Cuba (1972), and Vietnam (1978). Its aim was, to develop the member countries' economies on a complementary basis for the purpose of achieving self-sufficiency. In 1991, Comecon was replaced by the Organization for International Economic Cooperation.
Based at the University of California's San Diego Supercomputer Center, CAIDA supports cooperative efforts among the commercial, government and research communities aimed at promoting a scalable, robust Internet infrastructure. It is sponsored by the
Leonard M. Adleman was one of three persons in a team to invent the
EDI is an international standard relating to the exchange of trade goods and services. It enables trading partners to conduct routine business transactions, such as purchase orders, invoices and shipping notices independent of the computer platform used by the trading partners. Standardization by EDI translation software assures the correct interpretation of data.
EDI might become increasingly important to electronic commerce.