San Francisco Team Wins DARPA's De-Shredding Contest 94
New submitter karlnyberg writes with an update to the recently announced de-shredding challenge posted by DARPA: "The team 'All Your Shreds Are Belong To U.S.' has correctly solved all five puzzles, and the Challenge has now ended. You may view the winning team's submissions as well as the complete puzzle solutions by following the links on our homepage. We recognize that many of our participants have devoted countless hours to painstakingly piecing our puzzles back together, and we truly appreciate everyone's efforts. Hopefully you enjoyed the Challenge and learned something new along the way. We certainly did!"
opportunity (Score:3, Insightful)
There is a business opportunity for better shredders, the kind that would pulverize the paper or better just burn it.
A shredder with a vortex or a burner inside.
Don't get me wrong, it's an interesting technical challenge that this was done, but if you want to keep your paper out of government's hands you shouldn't be just shredding the paper.
WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not paranoid when they've established a consistent pattern of spying on citizens without cause in the wake of 9/11.
Re:opportunity (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, it's not the "US government reading our stuff" thing that caused this whole contest. If The NSA wants your credit card info, they'll just ask Visa for it, pay the usual fees, then just get it mailed to them.
The government shreds a lot of paper. Probably more in a day than I generate in a lifetime. The Classified shit they shred when they're done (IAW DOD-WTF-1234) because it's easier than burning. Trust me, you don't want to burn Classified stuff.
Someone probably said, "hey, do you guys think that with today's video cards and CPU power, someone could unshred our shit?"
"Oh... aw fuck, Dave, I dunno. Let's ask DARPA."
Thus the challenge.
Re:Jackasses (Score:5, Insightful)
The government just PAID to prove that five shredding methods suck.
If you're still using them you're just a narcissistic terror poodle.
Re:WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not paranoid when they've established a consistent pattern of spying on citizens without cause in the wake of 9/11.
Yes, because everyone knows they weren't spying on you before 9/11.
Sure, their legally granted powers have increased without bounds since then, but they've been spying on you right from the start.
Re:Jackasses (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh for fucks sake. THEY DON'T CARE ABOUT YOU. There are no feds swooping in in black helicopters to dig through your garbage and piece together your shredded electric bill.
Honestly, mods, giving positive reinforcement to this sort of paranoia is only hurting the people suffering from it.
Re:Jackasses (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:WTF? (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually, this is incorrect. Legally, the big five were not allowed to spy on each other: Australia, New Zealand, Canada, The United Kingdom and of course The United States [wikipedia.org], all collaborated on SIGINT, but were not allowed to intercept each other's communications. There were exceptions, however, such as Aid to Police, but this required warrants etc.
If a signal was being intercepted, and it was determined that one of it's end points was one of the five, it was no longer fair game to be intercepted.
If you read the above article (under controversy) it plainly accuses the US of misusing the material for its own ends.
As a former CF SIGINT Operator I can assure you that we at least did not bend or break the agreement.