Re: Automated Rant Generators and Letter Generators

[tcmay@sensemedia.net (Timothy C. May)]

At 7:29 PM 7/17/95, Harry Bartholomew wrote:
>>
>> Cypherpunks could probably have an effect on hastening this "denial of
>> service" attack on the efficacy of letter-writing by releasing an
>> easy-to-use package that does all this letter writing at the click of a
>> button....just type in some key words, for the topics, and it does the
>> rest.
>>
>> An interesting project, actually.
>>
>> --Tim May
>>
>    A final step might be to interface the output to old pen plotters
>    like my HP7470A with an ascii-to-handwriting program.  Akin to
>    the White House souvenir signature generator, but with a set of
>    parameters to mimic different "hands".  Knuth's Metafont tricks
>    come to mind.

By the way, I should first say that I have nothing against letter writing,
and my comments about "hastening" a "denial of service" attack on
letter-writing are mostly just out of general interest.

Bart's comments about using Knuth's typographic work are interesting, to
the extent that letters need to look handwritten. In the Mac market, it's
possible to send in some handwriting samples and get back a font that
emulates the handwriting!

I don't think the pen plotter is actually needed--and few people would use
it--as most faxes can be emulated with laser printers (due of course to the
limited dots per inch resulution). In fact, most fax modems can directly
fax from any screen that can produce printed output. So, the combination of
handwriting fonts, automated rant generators (of varying rabidities), and
fax capabilities gives a pretty good start. Using lots of handwriting
samples, various other fonts, and a mix of styles in the letters will help.

Anyway, where this all gets interesting is the following:

* Can a kind of Turing Test be tried here?

That is, in this limited domain of "letters to the editor/Congressmen," can
a letter generator be implemented which generates letters effectively
indistinguishable from letters and faxes generated by actual human beings?
("Effectively indistinguishable" in the sense that a human reader could not
sort a set of letters into human- and machine-generated subsets with
statistically significant certainty better than guessing).

Of course this is also similar to the "style detectors" we so often talk about.

The crypto relevance has to do with detecting patterns in letters and
rants, in emulating these patterns, and (perhaps) in speeding up lobbying.
(Though I agree that widespread adoption of automated letter-writing, such
as the direct mail folks are already doing, will eventually just kill off
letter writing as a means of lobbying.)

This may also hasten the adoption, someday, of digital signatures.
Congressmen and their aides may check incoming letters against databases of
their consituents who have "registered" with them (lots of issues here).

Merely counting the "yes" and "no" letters has long been problematic, as
the Republicans have been leading in direct mail campaigns since at least
the mid-70s (recall Richard Viguerie...). Increased automation will just
make it even more obvious.

--Tim May

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