Breaking the Codes In Oslo Terrorist's Manifesto 231
repvik writes "The 1500-page manifesto of the terrorist who killed 77 people in Oslo and on Utøya two weeks ago contains a series of seemingly encrypted URLs. There are 46 of them, and the initial part of the URLs appear to be GPS coordinates. An effort to analyze the codes have been launched."
Re:Why is this being made public? (Score:5, Informative)
The alleged perpetrator of the terrorist attack posted the manifesto online himself before going on his rampage, and everything in there is on the internet and people have been reading and analyzing it since.
Re:Why is this being made public? (Score:5, Informative)
Most likely its being made public just in case this is some sort of instruction system for various cells.
I imagine the reasoning behind it is to let anyone who might be thinking of following the instructions know that they're onto the fact that there is something here.
There is also benefit to crowd sourcing it this way in that someone may have been involved and may be able to use "figuring out the code" as an excuse without incriminating themselves to come forward and help prevent whatever these codes may set into motion.
Keeping it secret and trying to solve it with limited resources isn't going to do much good. So, rather than being idiots, they've taken the logical route.
The goal here is to prevent any further atrocities. They may not catch the cells this way, but they may dissuade them from acting at all, or they may catch a guilty conscience that helps solve the whole thing for them rapidly.
If the whole point is saving lives, then I feel, as they obviously do, that this is the best way to go about it.
Why give it the time? (Score:5, Informative)
Here's the problem:
If i had a grudge against humans, or a certain set of humans, or something really stupid like that and I wanted to do something that will get me remembered, for whatever reason, in the history of man, I'd do some crap just like this. Make up a "manifesto" of probably gibberish, encyrpted and whatnot, so peeps would spend many hours of discussion and get me remembered.
So do we think we'll get a better understanding of the dude who killed those people by figuring out his stupid manifesto? And that will help his victims how exactly? I mean, i'm sure their families are probably helping figure this manifesto out and twitting it to all their friends. (yes, i'm being fucking sarcastic here).
Crazy people are, well, crazy. It doesn't matter their reason for doing stuff like killing people. That shit ain't cool, and shouldn't be going on, no matter the reason. But very little we will do, will stop the crazies from doing the crazy shit.
Sometimes there are signs, and sometime we recognize crazy before crazy gets killing. But most the time, we don't. We don't realize that crazy is just under the skin of that person we talk shit to all the time. We don't realize that everyone has crazy in them, and sometimes, the littlest things set crazy off.
Of course, i could be wrong. This murder might have the answer to life, the universe and everything in his manifesto. And even if it did, it's not worth our time trying to find out. Dude went out and killed a bunch of people to get attention for his manifesto and here people are, giving it attention.
what dude did worked, and your showing that to every wanna be "terrorist" with a grudge against something and a chip on their shoulder, that if you want attention, kill some peeps and you'll get it.
Re:HTTP added by wordprocessor (Score:5, Informative)
Good theory, so I just checked in Word. It will automatically hyperlink a DNS-looking URL, but it will not automatically hyperlink a numeric address. Also, although you don't need to type the http:/// [http] Word just applies the correct hyperlink as a style; it does not add the http:/// [http] to the text you typed.
Re:Why is this being made public? (Score:5, Informative)
Your points remind me of a fortune I read recently:
"A commercial, and in some respects a social, doubt has been started within the
last year or two, whether or not it is right to discuss so openly the security
or insecurity of locks. Many well-meaning persons suppose that the discus-
sion respecting the means for baffling the supposed safety of locks offers a
premium for dishonesty, by showing others how to be dishonest. This is a fal-
lacy. Rogues are very keen in their profession, and already know much more
than we can teach them respecting their several kinds of roguery. Rogues knew
a good deal about lockpicking long before locksmiths discussed it among them-
selves, as they have lately done. If a lock -- let it have been made in what-
ever country, or by whatever maker -- is not so inviolable as it has hitherto
been deemed to be, surely it is in the interest of *honest* persons to know
this fact, because the *dishonest* are tolerably certain to be the first to
apply the knowledge practically; and the spread of knowledge is necessary to
give fair play to those who might suffer by ignorance. It cannot be too ear-
nestly urged, that an acquaintance with real facts will, in the end, be better
for all parties."
-- Charles Tomlinson's Rudimentary Treatise on the Construction of Locks,
published around 1850
Re:Why is this being made public? (Score:4, Informative)
As a "gentleman" was someone who did not have to work for a living
Not true. The term has had a lot of meanings over the centuries, but the common use in the late 1800s and for the last century was related to behaviour, not to income. This usage goes back to about 1400, although other uses (e.g. implying nobility by birth or the ownership of land) were common until about the time of the industrial revolution. Most gentlemen who did have to work would have been members of the professions (as opposed to the trades - a profession largely being defined as a job suitable for a gentleman) and would have included teachers, doctors, and lawyers, for example.