Cracking a 250-Year-Old Code to Reveal a Secret Society (2012)(wired.com)
wired.com
Cracking a 250-Year-Old Code to Reveal a Secret Society (2012)
http://www.wired.com/2012/11/ff-the-manuscript/
6 comments
Reading this ... "Dismissed today as fodder for conspiracy theorists and History Channel specials, they once served an important purpose: Their lodges were safe houses where freethinkers could explore everything from the laws of physics to the rights of man to the nature of God, all hidden from the oppressive, authoritarian eyes of church and state." makes me think they may come back in fashion.
Is there even the slightest bit of evidence that intellectuals in the Western world face state harassment or persecution for speaking or writing certain ideas?
For dumping classified information to which they have privileged access, yes. Not for expressing original opinions or commenting on published work.
For comparison, intellectuals in Iran are routinely detained without charge in Evin Prison for indefinite periods, tortured a bit, and told to stop writing. Straight out of East Germany. The U.S. is out of control in many ways, but this isn't one of them.
For dumping classified information to which they have privileged access, yes. Not for expressing original opinions or commenting on published work.
For comparison, intellectuals in Iran are routinely detained without charge in Evin Prison for indefinite periods, tortured a bit, and told to stop writing. Straight out of East Germany. The U.S. is out of control in many ways, but this isn't one of them.
Yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Providing_material_support_for... explains one law under which intellectuals in the US face state harassment and persecution for speaking and writing certain ideas; Tarek Mehanna, who is serving 17 years in prison for translating "propaganda" under this law, is probably the most cut-and-dried case.
But there are many other examples.
Of course, Aaron Swartz faced years of state harassment for his work on PACER, which was entirely legal, and was then hounded to suicide in a follow-on case for downloading academic articles.
Carl Malamud constantly answers baseless legal threats, and sometimes fights in court, in exchange for his continuing work of putting the law online.
TorrentFreak is regularly blocked by one or another Western government for their political advocacy against copyright.
US citizen Anwar al-Awlaki was assassinated by the CIA for his political advocacy of terrorism against the US; his son, 16-year-old US citizen Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, who had no connection to terrorism, was assassinated by the CIA two weeks later.
US citizen Jacob Appelbaum, who has never had privileged access to any classified information, was harassed by the US government for years and is now living in exile in Berlin, due to his journalistic work.
US citizen Laura Poitras, who has never had privileged access to any classified information, was harassed by the US government for years and is now living in exile in Berlin, due to her award-winning documentary films and other journalistic work.
You're probably too young to remember when Jon Lech Johansen was arrested in Norway in 2002 for explaining how to decrypt the DVD copy protection scheme, and gag orders were imposed on periodicals in the US in an ultimately thwarted effort to "unpublish" Johansen's code. And you're probably too young to remember when Dmitry Sklyarov was arrested while visiting the US in 2001 for violating US law by writing Russian software in Russia for his Russian employer. And maybe you don't know about Joe Nacchio, the CEO of Qwest, the only phone company that didn't cooperate with the NSA's illegal wiretapping program — which was then systematically destroyed, and Nacchio sent to prison for six years on trumped-up insider-trading charges.
And you probably don't care about people like US citizen Eric Garner, who was murdered on the street by a gang of policemen for speaking, to a policeman, the idea that he would really appreciate it if the state harassment of him would stop. I say you probably don't care because there's no reason to think he was an "intellectual". But non-intellectuals' lives matter, too, and so does their freedom of speech.
And maybe you hadn't heard that in Texas, ownership of laboratory glassware is now officially considered evidence of a crime — a truly medieval situation, criminalizing amateur chemistry because of the War On Some Drugs. You don't even have to speak or write about your chemistry research to get harassed and persecuted by the state for it. At least they don't burn the alchemists at the stake these days. Instead they send them to prison to be repeatedly raped.
But it's hard to believe you're so dumb you think this kind of thing really doesn't happen.
Speaking of those prisons — did you realize the US currently has 1% of its adult population in prison? And nearly 2% of its adult male population? And that this is a number almost unprecedented in human history, except for situations like the Holocaust and the Khmer Rouge? * Communist-era East Germany couldn't hold a candle to that level of repression in quantitative terms. Iran, which has a terrible human rights record, has about a third the number of prisoners the US does. Your chances of going to jail without ever having committed a crime are a lot better in the US than in Iran. Unless you're white.
And this thing about how Iran tortures prisoners — I don't know if you missed it, but torture is the official policy both of the Bush administration and the Obama administration.
Do you really think there's no persecution for speaking certain ideas? What do you think would happen if you uploaded a Daesh beheading video to YouTube with your approving commentary?
* Situations like the Holocaust, the Khmer Rouge, and, much to my surprise, the current Seychelles Islands' War On Piracy. The kind with boats, not the kind where some jackass erases your birthday party video from YouTube because you didn't pay the royalty for Happy Birthday.
But there are many other examples.
Of course, Aaron Swartz faced years of state harassment for his work on PACER, which was entirely legal, and was then hounded to suicide in a follow-on case for downloading academic articles.
Carl Malamud constantly answers baseless legal threats, and sometimes fights in court, in exchange for his continuing work of putting the law online.
TorrentFreak is regularly blocked by one or another Western government for their political advocacy against copyright.
US citizen Anwar al-Awlaki was assassinated by the CIA for his political advocacy of terrorism against the US; his son, 16-year-old US citizen Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, who had no connection to terrorism, was assassinated by the CIA two weeks later.
US citizen Jacob Appelbaum, who has never had privileged access to any classified information, was harassed by the US government for years and is now living in exile in Berlin, due to his journalistic work.
US citizen Laura Poitras, who has never had privileged access to any classified information, was harassed by the US government for years and is now living in exile in Berlin, due to her award-winning documentary films and other journalistic work.
You're probably too young to remember when Jon Lech Johansen was arrested in Norway in 2002 for explaining how to decrypt the DVD copy protection scheme, and gag orders were imposed on periodicals in the US in an ultimately thwarted effort to "unpublish" Johansen's code. And you're probably too young to remember when Dmitry Sklyarov was arrested while visiting the US in 2001 for violating US law by writing Russian software in Russia for his Russian employer. And maybe you don't know about Joe Nacchio, the CEO of Qwest, the only phone company that didn't cooperate with the NSA's illegal wiretapping program — which was then systematically destroyed, and Nacchio sent to prison for six years on trumped-up insider-trading charges.
And you probably don't care about people like US citizen Eric Garner, who was murdered on the street by a gang of policemen for speaking, to a policeman, the idea that he would really appreciate it if the state harassment of him would stop. I say you probably don't care because there's no reason to think he was an "intellectual". But non-intellectuals' lives matter, too, and so does their freedom of speech.
And maybe you hadn't heard that in Texas, ownership of laboratory glassware is now officially considered evidence of a crime — a truly medieval situation, criminalizing amateur chemistry because of the War On Some Drugs. You don't even have to speak or write about your chemistry research to get harassed and persecuted by the state for it. At least they don't burn the alchemists at the stake these days. Instead they send them to prison to be repeatedly raped.
But it's hard to believe you're so dumb you think this kind of thing really doesn't happen.
Speaking of those prisons — did you realize the US currently has 1% of its adult population in prison? And nearly 2% of its adult male population? And that this is a number almost unprecedented in human history, except for situations like the Holocaust and the Khmer Rouge? * Communist-era East Germany couldn't hold a candle to that level of repression in quantitative terms. Iran, which has a terrible human rights record, has about a third the number of prisoners the US does. Your chances of going to jail without ever having committed a crime are a lot better in the US than in Iran. Unless you're white.
And this thing about how Iran tortures prisoners — I don't know if you missed it, but torture is the official policy both of the Bush administration and the Obama administration.
Do you really think there's no persecution for speaking certain ideas? What do you think would happen if you uploaded a Daesh beheading video to YouTube with your approving commentary?
* Situations like the Holocaust, the Khmer Rouge, and, much to my surprise, the current Seychelles Islands' War On Piracy. The kind with boats, not the kind where some jackass erases your birthday party video from YouTube because you didn't pay the royalty for Happy Birthday.
Here in Argentina if you piss off somebody probably you will be found dead in a suspicious way.
One of the most recent cases is the federal prosecutor Alberto Nisman[0], who accused the president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, among other politicians of exchanging alleged Iran terrorists for deals. Nisman was found dead in his house a day before going to talk to the Congress about his findings.
Some other cases: Lourdes Di Natale, a key witness (it was the secretary of Emir Yoma, a presidential advisor) in a case of the government illegally selling weapons to Ecuador, "felt from her balcony" before going to testify. Also, to erase evidence in the illegal arms case[1], they make to explode a militar arms factory in Rio Cuarto, Córdoba, causing 7 deaths[2]. By the way, only two people were found guilty of the whole investigation, one is the former president Carlos Menem, but because he is currently a senator he can't go to jail until the senate makes an special session to make that happen, which is unlikely.
Julio Lopez, a witness that "disappeared" before testifying about how he was disappeared and tortured during the last military government[3]. Probably this time somebody finished the job.
And the assassins are almost never get a sentence because the justice is so slow, inefficient and corrupt that very few cases are resolved. 21 years after the AMIA attack (a car bombing of the Jewish center in Buenos Aires, which killed 85 people[4]), they didn't find any guilty yet, and many evidence just got destroyed because they leave it outside instead of keeping it safe.
Also, there are cases like José Luis Cabezas[5], a photographer that took one of the few pictures of a gangster, was killed a year later taking that picture, and because the people was extremely pissed off about that case, with an obvious mafia touch, the justice moved fast and found the band contracted to kill the photojournalist (one of them was a policeman and inspector), but because our laws, almost all of the assassins are free today because legal reason (one of them are was working as private security some years ago).
Let's also talk about the prison system in Argentina. In the mid-70s, because jails were so populated, they had the idea that instead of having several cells for prisoners, they could break the wall and have a hallway. That way it is not so obvious how many prisoners they can put there. I'm not sure if "all prisons in Argentina" are like this, but I read that the one in Villa Devoto is like that[6].
Prisoners are not provided with clothes or beds, they sleep in mattresses in the floor. Most of them are raped, and some get HIV.
So here we are at another level. Here there are no so many companies worried about someone getting in their way of making money or military power going to kill someone that their consider a threat.
Here the power is very concentrated in politicians and some few businessmen/gangsters that are going to kill you if you get in their way. It is not really about "free thinking", it's about "your idea/information is going to affect my situation". Probably always has been like that.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberto_Nisman [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandal_over_Argentine_arms_sa... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%ADo_Tercero_explosion [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMIA_bombing [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Jorge_Julio_L... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Luis_Cabezas [6] http://www.pensamientopenal.com.ar/system/files/2015/05/doct...
One of the most recent cases is the federal prosecutor Alberto Nisman[0], who accused the president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, among other politicians of exchanging alleged Iran terrorists for deals. Nisman was found dead in his house a day before going to talk to the Congress about his findings.
Some other cases: Lourdes Di Natale, a key witness (it was the secretary of Emir Yoma, a presidential advisor) in a case of the government illegally selling weapons to Ecuador, "felt from her balcony" before going to testify. Also, to erase evidence in the illegal arms case[1], they make to explode a militar arms factory in Rio Cuarto, Córdoba, causing 7 deaths[2]. By the way, only two people were found guilty of the whole investigation, one is the former president Carlos Menem, but because he is currently a senator he can't go to jail until the senate makes an special session to make that happen, which is unlikely.
Julio Lopez, a witness that "disappeared" before testifying about how he was disappeared and tortured during the last military government[3]. Probably this time somebody finished the job.
And the assassins are almost never get a sentence because the justice is so slow, inefficient and corrupt that very few cases are resolved. 21 years after the AMIA attack (a car bombing of the Jewish center in Buenos Aires, which killed 85 people[4]), they didn't find any guilty yet, and many evidence just got destroyed because they leave it outside instead of keeping it safe.
Also, there are cases like José Luis Cabezas[5], a photographer that took one of the few pictures of a gangster, was killed a year later taking that picture, and because the people was extremely pissed off about that case, with an obvious mafia touch, the justice moved fast and found the band contracted to kill the photojournalist (one of them was a policeman and inspector), but because our laws, almost all of the assassins are free today because legal reason (one of them are was working as private security some years ago).
Let's also talk about the prison system in Argentina. In the mid-70s, because jails were so populated, they had the idea that instead of having several cells for prisoners, they could break the wall and have a hallway. That way it is not so obvious how many prisoners they can put there. I'm not sure if "all prisons in Argentina" are like this, but I read that the one in Villa Devoto is like that[6].
Prisoners are not provided with clothes or beds, they sleep in mattresses in the floor. Most of them are raped, and some get HIV.
So here we are at another level. Here there are no so many companies worried about someone getting in their way of making money or military power going to kill someone that their consider a threat.
Here the power is very concentrated in politicians and some few businessmen/gangsters that are going to kill you if you get in their way. It is not really about "free thinking", it's about "your idea/information is going to affect my situation". Probably always has been like that.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberto_Nisman [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandal_over_Argentine_arms_sa... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%ADo_Tercero_explosion [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMIA_bombing [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Jorge_Julio_L... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Luis_Cabezas [6] http://www.pensamientopenal.com.ar/system/files/2015/05/doct...
How do you know they haven't already?
Very true, but one of the things that was clear in the article was that while the contents of the secret societies were secret, their existence was not.
Like a certain conference you and I have both attended whose name is carefully omitted from its website?
Heh, I was thinking more like the Rainbow Mansion folks need a secret handshake you have to know if you want to get into the "good" discussions.
The recent discussions of creating a new, encrypted, network out of a mesh network of base stations kind of thing. Because I think in the 21st century a secret society would exist primarily in network space rather than meat space. And of course Tor is sort of like that already I guess.
The recent discussions of creating a new, encrypted, network out of a mesh network of base stations kind of thing. Because I think in the 21st century a secret society would exist primarily in network space rather than meat space. And of course Tor is sort of like that already I guess.
The thread from the first time the article was posted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4798145
Glad it was reposted, I was looking all over for this article recently, and "secret society" on Google doesn't get you anything useful ;)
Glad it was reposted, I was looking all over for this article recently, and "secret society" on Google doesn't get you anything useful ;)
I realise this may sound very conspiracy theorist-y so please forgive that but does anyone else see a very strong relation to the Cicada 3301 organisation? The last two paragraphs especially made me think of the 3301 challenges released in the past few years.
"the mystical system in which meaning is derived from the numerical value of letters"...."symbols don’t represent just words and letters, they stand for numbers too"
I had a play about with the challenges when they were released and throughtout them were strange runes/ciphertext which could be both used as letters and numbers. I have done a fair few CTFs before but I have never seen anything like the Cicada challenges in terms of combining maths and language in such a way - how prominetly primes featured or how insanely well words and there numeric meaning seemed to align. The reason I immediately thought of them after reading the article is because I remember thinking while looking at the challenges that no one could come up with such an intricate and interconnected mathematical ciphertext system without some special (and as yet unknown/unpublished) "new way of calculating".
Not to mention all the secrecy around Cicada and the only rumors or supposed leaks from them suggest a secret organisation with a similar philosophy to the Oculists.
"the mystical system in which meaning is derived from the numerical value of letters"...."symbols don’t represent just words and letters, they stand for numbers too"
I had a play about with the challenges when they were released and throughtout them were strange runes/ciphertext which could be both used as letters and numbers. I have done a fair few CTFs before but I have never seen anything like the Cicada challenges in terms of combining maths and language in such a way - how prominetly primes featured or how insanely well words and there numeric meaning seemed to align. The reason I immediately thought of them after reading the article is because I remember thinking while looking at the challenges that no one could come up with such an intricate and interconnected mathematical ciphertext system without some special (and as yet unknown/unpublished) "new way of calculating".
Not to mention all the secrecy around Cicada and the only rumors or supposed leaks from them suggest a secret organisation with a similar philosophy to the Oculists.
One of the best pieces ever published in WIRED magazine.
Indeed.. the author breaks down in laymen terms how the cipher was broken and the journey to breaking made this piece a very good read.
Here is the English version of Copiale cipher in PDF:
http://stp.lingfil.uu.se/~bea/copiale/copiale-translation.pd...
http://stp.lingfil.uu.se/~bea/copiale/copiale-translation.pd...
I found a few phase to phrase similarities between this and what appears to be an OCR scan of a free-mason manual: "Knee to knee", "foot to foot", etc.
https://archive.org/stream/ritualillustrati00allyuoft/ritual...
https://archive.org/stream/ritualillustrati00allyuoft/ritual...
A good read but a terrible headline (not here on YC, I mean the Wired page itself).
This trend of using third-person pronouns in article headlines is mildly annoying and feels like its come around as a result of this style of writing being popular on Reddit, Buzzfeed, etc. It rankles my inner subeditor.
This trend of using third-person pronouns in article headlines is mildly annoying and feels like its come around as a result of this style of writing being popular on Reddit, Buzzfeed, etc. It rankles my inner subeditor.