

Secret compartments - timf
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/CIA_illusion/

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wouterinho
Content aside, surely I'm not the only one annoyed by having to click 7 times
to see the whole "article"?

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peoplerock
You mean the 'business model' of "annoy the piss out of site visitors for sake
of more ad views"?

Well, it's _one_ approach to trying to rescue the Boston Globe from death.

...one destined to lead to online (as well as on-paper) death - in my humble
hope.

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asciilifeform
For those genuinely engaged in something covert, texts like this (or like
this:
[http://www.loompanics.com/Underground_Economy/underground_bo...](http://www.loompanics.com/Underground_Economy/underground_book4.htm))
are for learning what _not_ to do. Your enemy (whoever it may be) also knows
how to read.

~~~
tlb
So once all subterfuges have been published, no subterfuges will work any
more?

In a world with a finite number of spies, most spies are not being watched by
other spies at most times. And spies assigned to watch a particular target spy
are generally less highly trained than the target. Simple tricks to avoid
attracting attention from casual observers are still useful.

~~~
asciilifeform
> Simple tricks to avoid attracting attention from casual observers are still
> useful.

Correct.

And methods such as molding cocaine into faux PVC pipes are not, precisely
because they are interesting/memorable and end up documented in customs
agents' handbooks.

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brown9-2
I'd be curious to hear any real-life stories behind slide #3 ("Patterns in
shoelaces can carry messages").

Do they mean _can_ as in theoretically? Because I could also theoretically
carry a message based on myriad other things as well.

Seems like you'd have to get really, really close to a person to be able to
read their shoelaces for the patterns in the second and third images.

~~~
chrischen
They might just be patterns for predetermined messages. So they are probably
very distinct patterns.

~~~
chronomex
My shoelaces cross over each other four times in each shoe. Using the
different directions of crossing, that's eight undetectable bits. You can do a
lot with eight bits.

~~~
StrawberryFrog
But read subltle differences in shoe-lace patterns after a glance and cross-
reference with the list of meanings? Hard. They'd just look like a mess to me.
I suspect that the most you can get out of it reliably is about 2 bits, so
four signals, including one zero state meaning "no message".

~~~
chrischen
That's what training is for. To the untrained eye it may seem hard to
distinguish.

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yosho
Anyone have any other cool James Bond tricks?

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wallflower
Spy on BBC was addicting to watch. Among other things you learn is that if
someone is tailing you, there are two others tailing you (for redundancy).

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spy_(TV_series)>

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chrischen
Folding paper to make it smaller: is this really a magic trick? I mean I know
it gets harder with every fold, but it's not really that cool.

~~~
bodhi
I think the trick was folding it with one hand

~~~
chrischen
Yea I noticed that, but still kind of trivial.

~~~
bodhi
True, but it'd be a neat party trick, along similar lines to shuffling a deck
of cards in one hand.

~~~
chrischen
I suppose, but only if one does it really, really fast.

