New Technique Reveals Centuries of Secrets in Locked Letters (nytimes.com) 36
M.I.T. researchers have devised a virtual-reality technique that lets them read old letters that were mailed not in envelopes but in the writing paper itself after being folded into elaborate enclosures. From a report: In 1587, hours before her beheading, Mary, Queen of Scots, sent a letter to her brother-in-law Henry III, King of France. But she didn't just sign it and send it off. She folded the paper repeatedly, cut out a piece of the page and left it dangling. She used that strand of paper to sew the letter tight with locking stitches. In an era before sealed envelopes, this technique, now called letterlocking, was as important for deterring snoops as encryption is to your email inbox today. Although this art form faded in the 1830s with the advent of mass-produced envelopes, it has recently attracted renewed attention from scholars. But they have faced a problem: How do you look at the contents of such locked letters without permanently damaging priceless bits of history?
On Tuesday, a team of 11 scientists and scholars at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other institutions disclosed their development of a virtual-reality technique that lets them perform this delicate task without tearing up the contents of historical archives. In the journal Nature Communications, the team tells of virtually opening four undelivered letters written from 1680 and 1706. The dispatches had ended up in a wooden postal trunk in The Hague. Known as the Brienne Collection, the box contains 3,148 items, including 577 letters that were never unlocked. The new technique could open a window into the long history of communications security. And by unlocking private intimacies, it could aid researchers studying stories concealed in fragile pages found in archives all over the world.
On Tuesday, a team of 11 scientists and scholars at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other institutions disclosed their development of a virtual-reality technique that lets them perform this delicate task without tearing up the contents of historical archives. In the journal Nature Communications, the team tells of virtually opening four undelivered letters written from 1680 and 1706. The dispatches had ended up in a wooden postal trunk in The Hague. Known as the Brienne Collection, the box contains 3,148 items, including 577 letters that were never unlocked. The new technique could open a window into the long history of communications security. And by unlocking private intimacies, it could aid researchers studying stories concealed in fragile pages found in archives all over the world.
I dont understand (Score:1)
Re:I dont understand (Score:4, Insightful)
The concern is probably more that the letters will fall apart and be forever destroyed if unfolded.
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LOL. I was just about to post that too :)
Sci-Fi has become sci-fact.
"Inherit the Stars" by James P. Hogan [goodreads.com]
Read on line here [metallicman.com]
Re:I dont understand (Score:4, Informative)
The technique causes the paper to tear when unfolded so that if the snoop attempted to re-fold the letter it would be obviously damaged. It's tamper-detection, not tamper-protection.
Reports I've read say the method involves strategic daubs of sealing wax along with perforations.
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The letters themselves are ephemera--- of marginal interest even to historians of the 17th century Netherlands. However, the techniques used to secure communications are fascinating in their own right. If you break the seals, you won't be able to reconstruct the techniques used to lock the letters.
Now, similar techniques have been used to read ancient papyri found in Pompeii's ruins. Those papyri are indeed too fragile to read otherwise.
The historians are being idiots here. (Score:1)
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With this method they can have both, and it is interesting to see the letters folded up as they were hundreds of years ago.
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The history is not in the content of the letters at all.
The history is in:
> The support (paper composition, animal skin, etc.)
> The ink (iron gall ink, blood ink, pigmented ink, etc.)
> The calligraphy (uncial, humanist, etc.)
> The document structure (rolled, bind, codex, stitch, etc.)
> The headers, if codex (with core, without, linen, silk, etc.)
> Etc.
Sincerely, I wouldn't care much for a letter from one dead people to other telling about the weather, but I do care for how that person clos
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Sincerely, I wouldn't care much for a letter from one dead people to other telling about the weather, but I do care for how that person closed the document with the tools of their time.
Not to mention that since the letter is sealed you don't even know if it's worth reading what's inside more versus preserving the letter itself so that future generations will have some intact samples.
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Seriously? What do you think this method is for?
So you can open a letter without damaging its structure or integrity! so you can read it.
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I was illustrating the dilemma faced without the technology.
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Also, I forgot to mention that, apart from you being the idiot, some documents can't be opened because of the frailty of the paper (that might even disintegrate by trying to unfold it), for historial reasons (maybe it's closed with a wax seal unique), etc.
Re: The historians are being idiots here. (Score:2)
Something historians have constantly experienced is they will develop new methods to get more information out of artifacts, only to find previous investigations have fucked up said artifacts too much for the new methods to work.
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In the early 20th century the British opened many Egyptian tombs. Many of them were filled with mummified cats. The British sold them for fertilizer.
The fertilizer salesmen are being idiots here. (Score:2)
When the cat-aclysm happens Great Britain will be the first to feel it's wraith.
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Britain's reckoning will be the second catastrophe.
It will finally catch up with them.
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VR (Score:5, Funny)
"a virtual-reality technique that lets them perform this delicate task..."
Does it use a best-in-class AI blockchain?
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Same as "art" I guess, something for rich people to spend money on instead of making the world a better place.
I have a relative who is an artist who has "caught on" with some of the more financially well-endowed in the world. She herself lives a fairly frugal existence, but among other things volunteers at a crafting business staffed by people with learning disabilities who earn a living producing useful handmade textiles.
"Rich people" buy her art, which gives her a source of income. She uses her income to pay for the ordinary needs that we all have. She uses some of her time to volunteer at the crafting busine
Priceless bits of hoarding. (Score:2)
I don't think I'm trying to defend "rich people" here, but spending money is better than hoarding it.
I think dragons would disagree with you.
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re: spending money is better than hoarding it.
Not necessarily. It depends on why you're accumulating the money. If you're doing it to purchase something without going into debt, then that's probably the best move. (Of course, it's even better if you can get someone else to pay most of the cost of accomplishing what you want, but that takes a special skill set.)
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Ok - how about this: "In the context of being enormously wealthy, spending money is better than hoarding it."
At some point you have more than enough for you and your family to live quite well. If you are piling up cash (hopefully invested cash) in order to form the foundation of independent living, the piling it up is good. If you are merely saving to achieve some goal (vacation, college, home, vacation home, etc.) then saving is great. But when all those goals have been met, spending money on "art" may
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That's pretty good. But consider "F for Fake". How much should an elmyr painting be worth? less than one without a forged signature? How much should a Campbell's tomato soup can signed by Andy Warhol be worth?
There's a lot a crazy underlying art purchases. That they CAN distribute the money to a worthy artist is true...but very often the price rises tremendously after the artist dies, because then the quantity available is fixed. And most of that money goes to speculators. Of course, it's a very risky
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Totally agree that spending (within reason) is better than hoarding. I think we differ in that I believe "rich people" hoard significantly more than they spend.
The other difference I see is what money is spent on. If you buy something that someone has worked at (plumbers, food services etc), that is different to currency trading, trading artwork etc. One of those leads to money going into the community, the other leads to it doing circles in the rich persons pool.
Encrypted emails (Score:2)
as important for deterring snoops as encryption is to your email inbox today.
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SMTP encryption isn't mandatory; lots of email is sent in the clear, and the NSA is watching. Most providers do not encrypt your inbox at rest. Gmail is absolutely snooping your mail. I'd assume most other large providers do too.
Decades ago we pushed to encrypt things end to end with PGP, GPG, S/MIME, and such, but most people couldn't be bothered. Others outright laughed at our tinfoil hats.
I conclude t
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I have recently come to the conclusion that we need a complete replacement for email. Email is 50-year-old technology, and is simply no longer cut out for the task.
We need an entirely new system build around (for starters) security, (optional, but strong) authentication, and guaranteed delivery.
S/MIME and the like are an attempt to put lipstick on a pig.
It's time to replace the pig.
just to be fair... (Score:5, Insightful)
... I'll take a moment to note that msmash posted an article NOT related to strife and fomenting conflict and stirring up controversy... it's a welcome change
thank you, this is very interesting and nobody is hating on anybody else; please do more
Heraculeum (Score:1)
VR is irrelevant here (Score:2)
Viewing the thing in VR is fine, there's no reason not to.
But it has literally nothing to do with reading the content, because the software flattens out the page. You might as well just get a JPEG out.
Amazing! (Score:2)
I'd never even heard of these techniques for "anti-tampering" letters back in The Day, much less the actual historical use of such techniques!
Thanks again, Slashdot. Godz, I love this place :-)
King’s College London (Score:1)