Tuesday, June 27, 2023

Trail of a Writer

Those of us working at sites like HotWired and Salon in the early days of the web realized that we were sitting atop a technology that would change virtually everything about society in profound ways.

With my background in investigative reporting, I was curious about how the process of solving mysteries might be affected by the arrival of searchable databases of networked information. One case that caught my attention was that of the Unabomber, who’d been carrying on his one-man reign of terror since 1978, eluding a massive FBI manhunt in the process.

What I discussed specifically with colleagues was whether the Unabomber’s manifesto published by the Washington Postmight somehow be analyzed for tell-tale word choices that could uncover his identify.

The engineers I consulted said that the answer was “probably yes” in the future, but “not quite yet.” As it turned out, before this technology evolved, the brother of the man who wrote the manifesto recognized certain tell-tale word choices himself and alerted the FBI.

And that is how Theodore Kaczynski was finally identified and caught.

When Kaczynski died recently, I was reminded of all this and was pleased to see a summary of the case recounted in The Conversation.

Over the decades since Kaczynski’s arrest, the field of forensic linguistics has become far more developed, and now includes a number of tools to uncover plagiarism, strip away anonymity and solve crimes based on notes, letters and manifestoes. 

The basic concept is that a person’s writing voice can be as unique as their fingerprints. From the perspective of one who teaches writing, this is critical because many students start from more of a place of standardization, largely due to the way they learned to write in grade school.

They were taught essentially to muffle their own voices.

My job, later on the down the road when they finally got to me, was to draw out their individuality, helping them diversify their choices and rediscover their own unique style. 

Most students probably will never go on to make a living as writers — that is an exceptionally difficult thing to do — but at least I can console myself that if they should ever become sociopaths, and use their improved writing skills to communicate their aims, they will now be much easier to track down and capture!

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