8 ms·

Who smeared Richard Feynman?

224 points by beefman 12y ago

th3iedkid 12y ago
Is there any type-set technology on proving possibilities for redacted texts?
- keithpeter 12y ago
  Typewriter text is fixed width, so I imagine they get an average width for one character then calculate the number of characters in each redacted bit. What had you in mind?
  - codeflo 12y ago
    Interestingly, although it seems harder, this sort of analysis is much more reliable with proportional fonts, because the specific width of the gap narrows the number of possibilities down considerably.
    - baddox 12y ago
      That would would depend heavily both on the proportional-width font that was used and the accuracy with which we could measure the width of the gap.
  - PhasmaFelis 12y ago
    You don't really even need to measure widths, since they fall in a grid. Just count the number of characters directly above or below the redacted passage. (For fixed-width, I mean.)
keithpeter 12y ago
Enjoyed the article liked the 'lofi' images with typewriter text, am using the smear image as wallpaper. Would it not be entirely in character if Feynman had picked up echos of the profiling process and smeared himself? Obviously can't be this letter.
Agathos 12y ago
Without looking, I would have guessed Edward Teller, but the gender thing shoots that down.
- stox 12y ago
  The letter was not anyway near Teller's style of writing.
- microtherion 12y ago
  Was Teller a bible-swearing kind of person?
firstOrder 12y ago
> Through the years that he has been at the California Institute of Technology (REDACTED) he has in my opinion made a definite point of knowing well and cultivating such persons as the president of California Institute of Technology, the dean of the school of physics, department heads (including REDACTED and Linus Pauling), regents of California Institute of Technology, as well as REDACTED. Well it shouldn't be too much detective work to figure out what Caltech department head Feynman was buddy buddy with other than Pauling. They seemed to feel need to redact the name for some reason. From all of the references to Caltech implying a personal knowledge of the school, to the continual references to Feynman being a religious skeptic and critical of Republicans, I'd guess this letter was written by a conservative working at Caltech. It would make sense in terms of the initial FBI contact, the acquaintanceship but not friendship with Feynman etc.
- wavefunction 12y ago
  Why would someone working at Caltech be interviewed in Idaho? The ex-wife theory seems a whole lot more credible.
  - c_c_c 12y ago
    I have no idea but as long as we're speculating there is this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idaho_National_Laboratory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idaho_National_Laboratory and this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_Breeder_Reactor_I https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_Breeder_Reactor_I
thegeomaster 12y ago
It seems like there needs to be another approach to redacting text like this. This one doesn't really cut it, apparently. And slips such as 'her' and 'she' was what primarily gave her away here. So the people who published the file should have been way more careful with this.
- revelation 12y ago
  Yes, which is to not redact text. As you have already found, it is an exceedingly complex problem to do it correctly. But more importantly, when it is done incorrectly, or redactions are made from political motivations (as we've seen excessive evidence of), they are practically impossible to challenge.
- gus_massa 12y ago
  The difference of length between "he" and "she" would be enough to reveal that information.
- pling 12y ago
  They just draw a black box over the text in the PDFs now... (No joke)
  - rbanffy 12y ago
    Yes, but now they remove the underlying text too. It was fun while it lasted.
    - eli 12y ago
      Current best practice is actually to draw the black boxes, print it, then scan it back in. The result is crummy quality pdfs with no metadata or hidden text.
      - pling 12y ago
        Well you'd think but I worked for an org back in 2005 that decided to completely optimise that step away. They were an aerospace/defense company building IFF units no less...
cperciva 12y ago
My first thought when I saw this letter was that it was Richard Feynman himself, perhaps appropriating the name of someone he knew had been interviewed. It would be entirely consistent with his character to smear himself in order to convince the government that they didn't want him -- just like the letter he wrote to the draft board proclaiming that he was not truly crazy, but was instead precisely crazy enough to not want them to think he was crazy.
- Renaud 12y ago
  Accusing someone of communism in those witch-hunting days was a dangerous thing to do. It seems a bit improbable that Feynman would have done that to himself, knowing that it could jeopardise his participation in other committees/projects/areas that were of interest to him. He wasn't 'forced' to be on the PSAC, it's not like he was trying to get away from jury-duty. He could just as well have said he wasn't interested/able do participate when asked to join. To me, it would also have seemed a bit out of character, Feynman has demonstrated that he had no big problem speaking his mind, so stealing someone's identity, with the legal risks that represents, especially if it was his estranged wife's, doesn't sound very probable. But hey, I don't know, I guess I see it as improbable but it's always possible.
  - cperciva 12y ago
    I did say that was my first thought -- the article makes a good case and I'm mostly convinced by it.
- yareally 12y ago
  Considering what happened with Robert Oppenheimer[1], I doubt Feynman would smear himself. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppenheimer_security_hearing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppenheimer_security_hearing
  - cperciva 12y ago
    Considering that Feynman neither needed nor wanted any role which would require him to hold a security clearance, I think the case of Robert Oppenheimer would, if anything, have encouraged Feynman to thumb his nose at the establishment. He was always one for doing what he thought was right and ignoring the potential fallout -- witness his willingness to testify to spending time in a strip club.
prestadige 12y ago
Feynman was in fact critical of the Soviet Union: >I think that Russia represents danger in saying that the solution to human problems is known, that all effort should be for the state, for that means there is no novelty. (from 'The Meaning Of It All', Ch. II)
sengstrom 12y ago
A little gem from the article: "It was an extremely ugly, long (2 years!) divorce hearing: it made the newspapers because of Bell’s allegations of “extreme cruelty” by Feynman, including the notion that he spent all of his waking hours either doing calculus and playing the bongos."
- alexjeffrey 12y ago
  if only we could all live in a world where the highest form of domestic abuse was calculus and playing drums.
  - ceejayoz 12y ago
    It said "including", not "exclusively", and continued loud music is a well-known psychological torture used in detainee interrogation...
    - matchu 12y ago
      There's a big difference between blasting music in someone's face for hours and playing an instrument regularly.
  - jimhefferon 12y ago
    At that time, in those jurisdictions, you could only get divorced under very precise circumstances. One of the few ways was for one spouse, typically the woman, to assert "extreme cruelty." I don't know any more about this divorce than anyone else here but I do know that at the time people did whatever it took to fit in the required "extreme" criteria.
    - CamperBob2 12y ago
      It was also a matter of mutual agreement; sometimes the husband and wife would agree to accuse each other of crap like that. You know you have terrible public policy when couples are incentivized to slander each other in order to separate amicably.
    - 12y ago
gus_massa 12y ago
Interesting comment in the blog (by Raphael) http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2014/07/11/smeared-richard-feynman/#comment-99765 http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2014/07/11/smeared-richard-fe... > With regard to the censored words, I would argue that they are probably “my former husband,” instead of “my ex-husband, the”. Author reply: > Yeah, it’s possible. I don’t put a lot of faith in character length analysis, [...]
robocat 12y ago
Maybe not a smear... If it were his wife, it seems just as likely she knew something of his character...
dimitar 12y ago
The FBI surely must have known about the nasty divorce (the TA mentioned it was very public at the time). So, did that fact get into consideration while evaluating Feynmann? I might be a bit naive, but I don't want to assume it was a simple witch-hunt.

224 points by beefman 12y ago

th3iedkid 12y ago

Is there any type-set technology on proving possibilities for redacted texts?

keithpeter 12y ago
Typewriter text is fixed width, so I imagine they get an average width for one character then calculate the number of characters in each redacted bit. What had you in mind?
- codeflo 12y ago
  Interestingly, although it seems harder, this sort of analysis is much more reliable with proportional fonts, because the specific width of the gap narrows the number of possibilities down considerably.
  - baddox 12y ago
    That would would depend heavily both on the proportional-width font that was used and the accuracy with which we could measure the width of the gap.
- PhasmaFelis 12y ago
  You don't really even need to measure widths, since they fall in a grid. Just count the number of characters directly above or below the redacted passage. (For fixed-width, I mean.)

keithpeter 12y ago

Enjoyed the article liked the 'lofi' images with typewriter text, am using the smear image as wallpaper. Would it not be entirely in character if Feynman had picked up echos of the profiling process and smeared himself? Obviously can't be this letter.

Agathos 12y ago

Without looking, I would have guessed Edward Teller, but the gender thing shoots that down.

stox 12y ago
The letter was not anyway near Teller's style of writing.
microtherion 12y ago
Was Teller a bible-swearing kind of person?

firstOrder 12y ago

> Through the years that he has been at the California Institute of Technology (REDACTED) he has in my opinion made a definite point of knowing well and cultivating such persons as the president of California Institute of Technology, the dean of the school of physics, department heads (including REDACTED and Linus Pauling), regents of California Institute of Technology, as well as REDACTED. Well it shouldn't be too much detective work to figure out what Caltech department head Feynman was buddy buddy with other than Pauling. They seemed to feel need to redact the name for some reason. From all of the references to Caltech implying a personal knowledge of the school, to the continual references to Feynman being a religious skeptic and critical of Republicans, I'd guess this letter was written by a conservative working at Caltech. It would make sense in terms of the initial FBI contact, the acquaintanceship but not friendship with Feynman etc.

wavefunction 12y ago
Why would someone working at Caltech be interviewed in Idaho? The ex-wife theory seems a whole lot more credible.
- c_c_c 12y ago
  I have no idea but as long as we're speculating there is this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idaho_National_Laboratory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idaho_National_Laboratory and this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_Breeder_Reactor_I https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_Breeder_Reactor_I

thegeomaster 12y ago

It seems like there needs to be another approach to redacting text like this. This one doesn't really cut it, apparently. And slips such as 'her' and 'she' was what primarily gave her away here. So the people who published the file should have been way more careful with this.

revelation 12y ago
Yes, which is to not redact text. As you have already found, it is an exceedingly complex problem to do it correctly. But more importantly, when it is done incorrectly, or redactions are made from political motivations (as we've seen excessive evidence of), they are practically impossible to challenge.
gus_massa 12y ago
The difference of length between "he" and "she" would be enough to reveal that information.
pling 12y ago
They just draw a black box over the text in the PDFs now... (No joke)
- rbanffy 12y ago
  Yes, but now they remove the underlying text too. It was fun while it lasted.
  - eli 12y ago
    Current best practice is actually to draw the black boxes, print it, then scan it back in. The result is crummy quality pdfs with no metadata or hidden text.
    - pling 12y ago
      Well you'd think but I worked for an org back in 2005 that decided to completely optimise that step away. They were an aerospace/defense company building IFF units no less...

cperciva 12y ago

My first thought when I saw this letter was that it was Richard Feynman himself, perhaps appropriating the name of someone he knew had been interviewed. It would be entirely consistent with his character to smear himself in order to convince the government that they didn't want him -- just like the letter he wrote to the draft board proclaiming that he was not truly crazy, but was instead precisely crazy enough to not want them to think he was crazy.

Renaud 12y ago
Accusing someone of communism in those witch-hunting days was a dangerous thing to do. It seems a bit improbable that Feynman would have done that to himself, knowing that it could jeopardise his participation in other committees/projects/areas that were of interest to him. He wasn't 'forced' to be on the PSAC, it's not like he was trying to get away from jury-duty. He could just as well have said he wasn't interested/able do participate when asked to join. To me, it would also have seemed a bit out of character, Feynman has demonstrated that he had no big problem speaking his mind, so stealing someone's identity, with the legal risks that represents, especially if it was his estranged wife's, doesn't sound very probable. But hey, I don't know, I guess I see it as improbable but it's always possible.
- cperciva 12y ago
  I did say that was my first thought -- the article makes a good case and I'm mostly convinced by it.
yareally 12y ago
Considering what happened with Robert Oppenheimer[1], I doubt Feynman would smear himself. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppenheimer_security_hearing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppenheimer_security_hearing
- cperciva 12y ago
  Considering that Feynman neither needed nor wanted any role which would require him to hold a security clearance, I think the case of Robert Oppenheimer would, if anything, have encouraged Feynman to thumb his nose at the establishment. He was always one for doing what he thought was right and ignoring the potential fallout -- witness his willingness to testify to spending time in a strip club.

prestadige 12y ago

Feynman was in fact critical of the Soviet Union: >I think that Russia represents danger in saying that the solution to human problems is known, that all effort should be for the state, for that means there is no novelty. (from 'The Meaning Of It All', Ch. II)

sengstrom 12y ago

A little gem from the article: "It was an extremely ugly, long (2 years!) divorce hearing: it made the newspapers because of Bell’s allegations of “extreme cruelty” by Feynman, including the notion that he spent all of his waking hours either doing calculus and playing the bongos."

alexjeffrey 12y ago
if only we could all live in a world where the highest form of domestic abuse was calculus and playing drums.
- ceejayoz 12y ago
  It said "including", not "exclusively", and continued loud music is a well-known psychological torture used in detainee interrogation...
  - matchu 12y ago
    There's a big difference between blasting music in someone's face for hours and playing an instrument regularly.
- jimhefferon 12y ago
  At that time, in those jurisdictions, you could only get divorced under very precise circumstances. One of the few ways was for one spouse, typically the woman, to assert "extreme cruelty." I don't know any more about this divorce than anyone else here but I do know that at the time people did whatever it took to fit in the required "extreme" criteria.
  - CamperBob2 12y ago
    It was also a matter of mutual agreement; sometimes the husband and wife would agree to accuse each other of crap like that. You know you have terrible public policy when couples are incentivized to slander each other in order to separate amicably.
  - 12y ago

gus_massa 12y ago

Interesting comment in the blog (by Raphael) http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2014/07/11/smeared-richard-feynman/#comment-99765 http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2014/07/11/smeared-richard-fe... > With regard to the censored words, I would argue that they are probably “my former husband,” instead of “my ex-husband, the”. Author reply: > Yeah, it’s possible. I don’t put a lot of faith in character length analysis, [...]

robocat 12y ago

Maybe not a smear... If it were his wife, it seems just as likely she knew something of his character...

dimitar 12y ago

The FBI surely must have known about the nasty divorce (the TA mentioned it was very public at the time). So, did that fact get into consideration while evaluating Feynmann? I might be a bit naive, but I don't want to assume it was a simple witch-hunt.