The original magic lantern was the ancestor of the modern slide projector; there is also a software program of that name.1. The Magic lantern projectorThe magic lantern was first described in Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae, by [Athanasius Kircher]? in 1671; he may have been describing an already existing device rather than announcing a new invention. With an oil lamp and a lens, images painted on glass plates could be projected on to a suitable screen; the ancestor of the modern slide projector. By the 19th century, there was a thriving trade of itinerant projectionists, who would travel Britain with their magic lanterns, and a large number of slides, putting on shows in towns and villages. Some of the slides came with special effects, by means of extra sections that could slide or rotate across the main plate. One of the most famous of these, very popular with children, was the Rat-swallower, where a series of rats would be seen leaping into a sleeping man's mouth. During the napoleonic wars, a series was produced of a British ship's encounter with a French navy ship, ending patriotically with the French ship sinking in flames, accompanied by the cheers of the audience. The invention of photography, enabling cheap reproduction of a slide, enormously expanded the repertoire of available picture subjects, and shows would feature famous landmarks, foreign lands, and personages. Posed photographs were sold in series, telling uplifting stories and moral tales. Though there was a huge market for these lanterns and slides in the 19th century, they eventually fell out of favour after the invention of moving pictures, and the few surviving lanterns and slides are sought-after collector's items. 2. Magic Lantern softwareMagic Lantern is the name of a software system used by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to obtaining encryption keys from suspects' computer systems. The FBI's controversial monitoring software known as Carnivore is useless when the intercepted communications are encrypted. Magic Lantern is a trojan-horse method of installing keylogging software on a suspect's machine. It allows the keylogger to be sent to the suspect via an e-mail; the keylogger is automatically and invisibly installed when the message is read, much like many Microsoft viruses. It is unknown what platforms Magic Lantern has been developed for; it is quite possible that only users of [Microsoft Outlook]? are vulnerable to the trojan installation. At first, some antivirus software companies, including [Symantec] and [Network Associates] made statements that they would assist the FBI by revising their virus scanners to not alert anyone to Magic Lantern's presence. Others, including [Sophos], announced that they will work to detect it, saying that its customers outside the United States would expect protection against the application. Within a few weeks, however, both Symantec and Network Associates had realized that a hole left for the FBI could be exploited by malicious hackers and stated that they had no intention of voluntarily modifying their products to satisfy the FBI. The FBI has used keyloggers before; in United States v. Scarfo, a keylogger was used to capture the Pretty Good Privacy passphrase used by an alleged mobster. Those keyloggers, however, had to be manually installed after gaining physical access to the subject's computer. Magic Lantern is one of several enhancements to Carnivore discovered by the public in mid-November, 2001. In response to a [Freedom of Information Act]? request filed in 2000 by the [Electronic Privacy Information Center]?, the FBI released a series of unclassified documents relating to Carnivore, which included the "Enhanced Carnivore Project Plan." Redacted portions of that document mention "[Cyber Knight]?," a database that sorts and matches data gathered using various Carnivore-like methods from e-mail, chat rooms, instant messages, and Internet phone calls. It also matches files with captured encryption keys. Its existence was confimed by the FBI on December 12, 2001. /Talk |
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See magic lantern for the ancestor of the modern slide projector; see Magic Lantern software for the FBI's keylogger. |
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