Re:The Federalist Papers: Author Identification Through K-Me...
by shiado on Monday July 09, 2018 @12:23PM
(#17491376)
It would definitely be hard to do. And my personal suspicion is that Satoshi is a group of individuals, making such an analysis almost impossible. However there is the possibility that there is some sort of "linguistic fingerprint" capable of uniquely identifying Satoshi, despite what I believe to be their efforts to create a highly specific and unique style of writing for the purposes of evading identification. The way the Unabomber used a certain phrase in the manifesto and a letter to a family member was what got him caught.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_can%27t_have_your_cake_and...
Another interesting analysis would be to compare the structure of code between the early bitcoin code and code written by likely suspects. Perhaps variable naming convention will identify Satoshi.
Re:The Federalist Papers: Author Identification Through K-Me...
by clubm8 on Monday July 09, 2018 @01:37PM
(#17491960)
>my personal suspicion is that Satoshi is a group of individuals, making such an analysis almost impossible
I agree. My bet is at least two: one theory heavy "ideas guy" and one more software engineering oriented programmer who did the heavy lifting on implementation.
And I have also noticed that these types of analysis are for single authored documents.
I suspect it will stay a secret for a long time... maybe we'll get some deathbed confessions in a few decades.
I have a suite of nyms I created over Tor, and exclusively use via Tor, which I use to discuss certain topics.
It's hard to do a stylometric analysis when you don't have anything to compare to. Professional writing is very different from informal conversation.
If someone doesn't have a Facebook, gmail, twitter, etc it would be very difficult to find that person through stylometric analysis IMHO.