Atrocity stories are nothing else than lies; the two words "atrocity stories" simply pretend to be more diplomatic.
The purpose is to destroy an image of the enemy, to create a new one, mostly a bad one. The story creating the image is not necessarily made up completely. It can also be a changed into a certain variable direction.
The most important thing about atrocity stories is to follow the line of possibility. Even if the whole story is made up it must be probable or at least possible, following rumors. Most successful might it be if a rumor is spread on purpose, some time before the atrocity story is launched, because as soon as something seems to be familiar, it is easier to believe it.
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During the last 20 years the old
"Digital divide" describes the fact that the world can be divided into people who
do and people who do not have access to (or the education to handle with) modern information technologies, e.g. cellular telephone, television, Internet. This digital divide is concerning people all over the world, but as usually most of all people in the formerly so called third world countries and in rural areas suffer; the poor and less-educated suffer from that divide.
More than 80% of all computers with access to the Internet are situated in larger cities.
"The cost of the information today consists not so much of the creation of content, which should be the real value, but of the storage and efficient delivery of information, that is in essence the cost of paper, printing, transporting, warehousing and other physical distribution means, plus the cost of the personnel manpower needed to run these `extra' services ....Realizing an autonomous distributed networked society, which is the real essence of the Internet, will be the most critical issue for the success of the information and communication revolution of the coming century of millennium."
(Izumi Aizi)
for more information see:
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Among the foremost of the data bunkers government bureaucracies. Bureaucracies are the oldest forms of bunkers and are today deeply engrained in modern societies. Bureaucracies have always had the function of collecting and administering the data of subjects. What make this process more problematic in the age of ICT is that a lot more data can be collected, they can be collected in clandestine ways (e.g. in surveillance situations), and the can be combined and merged using advanced data mining technologies. In addition, there is a greater rationale for official data collecting, as a lot more data is required for the functioning of public administration as in previous periods, as societies rush to adopt increasingly complex technologies, above all ICTs. The increasing complexity of modern societies means that an increasing number of bureaucratic decision is taken, all of which require a calculation process. Complexity, viewed through government spectacles, generates insecurity - a great deal of the bureaucratic activity therefore revolves around the topic of security.
In spite of the anti-bureaucratic rhetoric of most governments, these factors provides the bureaucracies with an increased hold on society. Foremost bureaucratic data bunkers include the following:
- Law enforcement agencies
Fiscal agencies
Intelligence agencies
Social welfare agencies
Social insurance institutions
Public health agencies
Educational institutions
These are agencies that enjoy the privileged protection of the state. Those among them that operate in the field of security are further protected against public scrutiny, as they operate in an area to which democratic reason has no access.
What makes the data repositories of these institutions different from private data bunkers is their "official", i.e. their politically binding and definitive character.
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DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act)
The debates in the House and Senate preceding the signing into law of the DMCA by U.S. President Clinton in October 1998 indicated that the principal object of the Act is to promote the U.S. economy by establishing an efficient Internet marketplace in copyrighted works. The DMCA implements the two 1996
A full-text version of the DMCA is available from:
The Library of Congress: Thomas (Legislative Information on the Internet):
Moreover the U.S. Copyright Office provides a memorandum, which briefly summarizes each of the five titles of the DMCA (pdf format):
The DMCA has been criticized for not clarifying the range of legal principles on the liability of ISPs and creating exceptions to only some of the provisions; therefore giving copyright owners even more rights.
Among the variety of comments on the DMCA are:
Lutzker, Arnold P.: Primer on the Digital Millennium: What the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the Copyright Term Extension Act Mean for the Library Community.
Lutzker & Lutzker law firm and the Association of Research Libraries: The Digital Millennium Copyright Act: Highlights of New Copyright Provision Establishing Limitation of Liability for Online Service Providers.
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Copyright is not only about protecting the rights of creators, but has also become a major branch of industry with significant contributions to the global economy. According to the
In an age where knowledge and information become more and more important and with the advancement of new technologies, transmission systems and distribution channels a further increase in the production of
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Besides oral conversations and written language many other ways of information-transport are known: like the bush telegraph, drums, smoke signals etc. Those methods are not cryptography, still they need en- and decoding, which means that the history of language, the history of communication and the history of cryptography are closely connected to each other
The timeline gives an insight into the endless fight between enciphering and deciphering. The reasons for them can be found in public and private issues at the same time, though mostly connected to military maneuvers and/or political tasks.
One of the most important researchers on Cryptography through the centuries is
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All biometric technologies capture biometric data from individuals. Once these date have been captured by a system, they can, in principle, be forwarded to other locations and put to many different uses which are capable of compromising on an individuals privacy.
Technically it is easy to match biometric data with other personal data stored in government or corporate files, and to come a step closer to the counter-utopia of the transparent citizen and customer whose data body is under outside control.
While biometric technologies are often portrayed as protectors of personal data and safeguards against identity theft, they can thus contribute to an advance in "Big Brother" technology.
The combination of personalised data files with biometric data would amount to an enormous control potential. While nobody in government and industry would admit to such intentions, leading data systems companies such as EDS (Electronic Data Systems;
Biometric technologies have the function of identification. Historically, identification has been a prerequisite for the exercise of power and serves as a protection only to those who are in no conflict with this power. If the digitalisation of the body by biometric technologies becomes as widespread as its proponents hope, a new electronic feudal system could be emerging, in which people are reduced to subjects dispossessed of their to their bodies, even if these, unlike in the previous one, are data bodies. Unlike the gatekeepers of medieval towns, wear no uniforms by they might be identified; biometric technologies are pure masks.
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Following the dynamics of informatised economies, the consumption habits and lifestyles if customers are of great interest. New technologies make it possible to store and combine collected data of an enormous amount of people.
User profiling helps companies understand what potential customers might want. Often enough, such data collecting takes place without the customer's knowledge and amounts to spying.
"Much of the information collection that occurs on the Internet is invisible to the consumer, which raises serious questions of fairness and informed consent."
(David Sobel, Electronic Privacy Information Center)
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With the development of new transmission, distribution and publishing technologies and the increasing digitalization of information copyright has become the subject of vigorous debate. Among the variety of attitudes towards the future of traditional copyright protection two main tendencies can be identified:
Eliminate Copyright
Anti-copyrightists believe that any
Enlarge Copyright
Realizing the growing economic importance of intellectual property, especially the holders of copyright (in particular the big publishing, distribution and other
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On the Internet, when you want to retrieve a document from another computer, you request a service from this computer. Your computer is the client, the computer on which the information you want to access is stored, is called the
A common set of standards allows the exchange of data and commands independent from locations, time, and operating systems through the Internet. These standards are called communication protocols, or the Internet Protocol Suite, and are implemented in Internet software. Sometimes the Internet Protocol Suite is erroneously identified with
Any information to be transferred is broken down into pieces, so-called packets, and the Internet Protocol figures out how the data is supposed to get from A to B by passing through routers.
Each packet is "pushed" from router to router via
The technique of breaking down all messages and requests into packets has the advantage that a large data bundle (e.g. videos) sent by a single user cannot block a whole network, because the
One of the Internet's (and of the Matrix's) beginnings was the
Routing around depends on the location of the interruption and on the availability of intersecting points between networks. If, for example, an E-mail message is sent from Brussels to Athens and in Germany a channel is down, it will not affect access very much, the message will be routed around this damage, as long as a major Internet exchange is not affected. However, if access depends on a single backbone connection to the Internet and this connection is cut off, there is no way to route around.
In most parts of the world the Internet is therefore vulnerable to disruption. "The idea of the Internet as a highly distributed, redundant global communications system is a myth. Virtually all communications between countries take place through a very small number of bottlenecks, and the available bandwidth isn't that great," says Douglas Barnes. These bottlenecks are the network connections to neighboring countries. Many countries rely on a one single connection to the Net, and in some places, such as the Suez Canal, there is a concentration of fiber-optic cables of critical importance.
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ISO (International Organization for Standardization), founded in 1946, is a worldwide federation of national standards bodies from some 100 countries, one from each country. Among the standards it fosters is
Source: Whatis.com
IRC is a text-based chat system used for live discussions of groups.
For a history of IRC see Charles A. Gimon, IRC: The Net in Realtime,
Leni Riefenstahl (* 1902) began her career as a dancer and actress. Parallel she learnt how to work with a camera, turning out to be one of the most talented directors and cutters of her time - and one of the only female ones.
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.
The skytale (pronunciation: ski-ta-le) was a Spartan tool for encryption. It consisted of a piece of wood and a leather-strip. Any communicating party needed exactly the same size wooden stick. The secret message was written on the leather-strip that was wound around the wood, unwound again and sent to the recipient by a messenger. The recipient would rewound the leather and by doing this enciphering the message.
Black propaganda does not tell its source. The recipient cannot find out the correct source. Rather would it be possible to get a wrong idea about the sender. It is very helpful for separating two allies.
Calculators are machines for automatically performing arithmetical operations and certain mathematical functions. Modern calculators are descendants of a digital arithmetic machine devised by
Ross Perot, founder of
Official website:
Unofficial website:
Automation is concerned with the application of machines to tasks once performed by humans or, increasingly, to tasks that would otherwise be impossible. Although the term mechanization is often used to refer to the simple replacement of human labor by machines,
David Kahn can be considered one of the most important historians on cryptography. His book The Codebreakers. The comprehensive history of secret Communication from Ancient Times to the Internet, written in 1996 is supposed to be the most important work on the history of cryptography.
b. July 1, 1646, Leipzig
d. November 14, 1716, Hannover, Hanover
German philosopher, mathematician, and political adviser, important both as a metaphysician and as a logician and distinguished also for his independent invention of the differential and integral calculus. 1661, he entered the University of Leipzig as a law student; there he came into contact with the thought of men who had revolutionized science and philosophy--men such as