Writing Style Fingerprint Tool Easily Fooled

Urchin writes "Some of the techniques used by literary detectives and courts of law to identify the authorship of text are easily fooled, say US researchers. They found that non-professional writers could hide their identity from 'stylometric' techniques by writing in the style of novelist Cormac McCarthy. Stylometric methods have been used in a number of high-profile legal cases in recent decades, including the 'Unabomber' trial. 'We would strongly suggest that courts examine their methods of stylometry against the possibility of adversarial attacks,' say the researchers."

Re:Could have told you writing analysis was bogus.

[Anonymous Coward]

Some analysis of handwriting can be useful. In forgery, for instance, a signature can show as false when compared to an authentic one by the presence of a "forger's tremor", because the forger must proceed more slowly to produce the signature than the person to whom it properly belongs.

Did you RTFA?

[argent]

If the methods a stylometry analysis uses are known (and they couldn't very well be a secret to hold up in court), of course you can game them.

Their volunteer "attackers" lacked formal training in linguistics and had no access to stylometry software.

Re:Concealing style

[Thanshin]

What a crappy joke. I wish I could find you and kill you.

I mean...

Oh! A bad pun! Should we cross our paths, I'd rather extinguish your life.

My dear sir.

Re:Cormac McCarthy Stlye?

[SappoMan]

This is the epilogue from "Blood Meridian", a novel of McCarthy:
"In the dawn there is a man progressing over the plain by means of holes, which he is making in the ground. He uses an implement with two handles and he chocks it into the hole and he enkindles the stone into the hole with he steel, hole by hole, striking the fire out of the rock, which God has put there. On the plain behind him are the wanderers in search of bones, and those who do not search. And they move haltingly in the light, likes mechanisms whose movements are monitored with escapement and palate, so that they appear restrained by a prudence or reflectiveness which has no inner reality. And they cross in their progress one by one that track of holes that runs to the rim of the visible ground and which seems less the pursuit of some continuance than the verification of a principle, a validation of sequence and causality. As if each round and perfect hole owed its existence to the one before it there on that prairie, upon which are the bones and the gatherers of bones, and those who do not gather. He strikes fire in the hole and draws out his steel. Then they all move on again."

Re:as if law enforcement cares

[TimSSG]

They only care about putting as many people in prison as they can.

Wrong|

The Basic Metric used on the police is case closed.
In other words, it is easy to say a dead person committed a crime; because it closes a case.

Metrics have very bad sides.

Tim S.

RTFA, seriously

[Moraelin]

From TFA: "Each volunteer was then asked to write a description of their neighbourhood in a way that masked their personal style, before writing a further passage in the style of novelist and playwright Cormac McCarthy." [...] "the techniques consistently identified Cormac McCarthy as the author of the imitations of his work."

So, yes, the whole bloody experiment was precisely about disguising your style as someone else, and no, it did not give the tests any reasonable doubt. People trying to imitate Cormac McCarthy were consistently identified as Cormac McCarthy by the stylistic analysis techniques. It doesn't get more clear cut than this, really.

So, yes, it is very possible for an average Joe Sixpack to incriminate someone else, if they so choose.