[Sigia-l] Times New Roman - part 2

[Listera]

I had posted about the Courier font getting the boot at the State a few
months back. Now the plot thickens:

European researchers at a security conference in Switzerland last week
demonstrated computer-based techniques that can identify blacked-out words
and phrases in confidential documents.
[...]
By realigning the document it was possible to use another program Ms. Whelan
had written to determine that it had been formatted in the Arial font. Next,
they found the number of pixels that had been blacked out in the sentence:
"An Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) operative told an xxxxxxxx service at the
same time that Bin Ladin was planning to exploit the operative's access to
the US to mount a terrorist strike." They then used a computer to determine
the pixel length of words in the dictionary when written in the Arial font.
[...]
In January, the State Department required that its documents use a more
modern font, Times New Roman, instead of Courier, Mr. Naccache said. Because
Courier is a monospace font, in which all letters are of the same width, it
is harder to decipher with the computer technique. There is no indication
that the State Department knew that.

Illuminating Blacked-Out Words
<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/10/technology/10crypto.html>

I'll let Livia decide if this is not another reason to avoid Comic Sans. :-)

Ziya
Nullius in Verba