[HN Gopher] Some Epstein file redactions are being undone
___________________________________________________________________
Some Epstein file redactions are being undone
Related: https://xcancel.com/vmfunc/status/2003292986650853825
https://old.reddit.com/r/law/comments/1ptlms6/some_epstein_f...
https://krassencast.com/p/breaking-we-just-unredacted-the-ep...
Author : vinni2
Score : 925 points
Date : 2025-12-23 20:10 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| montroser wrote:
| Let's nobody make any fuss about this yet, lest they wise up
| before releasing the rest of the docs this way too!
| lawn wrote:
| Lots of these redaction doesn't make sense unless they're made to
| protect the rich and powerful. Not surprising of course.
| Kaibeezy wrote:
| See also:
|
| We Just Unredacted the Epstein Files
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46364121
|
| I tried to ascertain, but am not certain, this is the original
| blog source. Maybe they made some prior X posts.
| Alifatisk wrote:
| Alright, now when everyone knows this. I hope people have backed
| up all the files to unredact everything before DOJ retracts the
| sensitive documents.
| The-Old-Hacker wrote:
| See also: https://x.com/FaytuksNetwork/status/2003237895897780632
| tomekf wrote:
| How it's done from technical point?
| general1465 wrote:
| Mistaking redaction tool (replaces data with black square) and
| black highlighter (adds black square as another layer). If
| people doing redactions are computer-illiterate, they won't see
| the difference.
| mmh0000 wrote:
| Layers.
|
| PDF is an absurdly complex file format. It's part of the reason
| there is no single "good" PDF reader, just a lot of mediocre
| PDF readers that are all terrible in their own way. Which is a
| topic for another day.
|
| There are several ways to remove data in a PDF:
|
| - Remove the data. This is much harder than it sounds. Many PDF
| tools won't let you change the content of a PDF, not because it
| isn't possible, but because you'll likely massively screw up
| the formatting, and the tools don't want to deal with that.
|
| - Replace the data. This what what all the "blackout" tools do,
| find "A" and replace with "". This is effective and doesn't
| break formatting since it's a 1-to-1 replacement. The problem
| with "replacing" is that not every PDF tool works the same way,
| and some, instead, just change the foreground and background
| color to black; it looks nearly the same, but the power of
| copy-and-paste still functions.
|
| - Then you have the computer illiterate, who think changing the
| foreground and background color to black is good enough anyway.
| hallole wrote:
| Thanks for this. Really quells the urge I get every so often
| to just code my own PDF editor, because they all suck and
| certainly it couldn't be THAT hard. Such hubris!
| gregsadetsky wrote:
| Don't stop yourself before getting started. I believe in
| you - maybe you could write the one editor that would
| actually work!
|
| Not kidding - it's a ~~~billion dollar market haha
|
| Make an MVP/Show HN :-)
| brailsafe wrote:
| Heh, have at it, here's the full spec:
| https://developer.adobe.com/document-
| services/docs/assets/5b...
|
| Should take... a weekend tops? ;) PDF is crazy and scary
| embedding-shape wrote:
| 7.5.6 "Incremental updates" from the specification is an
| interesting section too, speaking about accessing data
| people didn't think to remove from PDF files properly.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| We will be able to say that AGI has arrived when we can
| hand that spec off to a model and tell it to build an
| Acrobat clone.
| exasperaited wrote:
| We will be able to say that AGI has arrived when the AI
| hands it back and says "no".
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Or goes on strike.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > PDF includes eight basic types of objects: Boolean
| values, Integer and Real numbers, Strings, Names, Arrays,
| Dictionaries, Streams, and the null object
|
| Wait, this is more complete than SOAP. It may be a good
| idea to redo the IPC protocol with a different
| serialization format!
| jaggederest wrote:
| Well, it's a descendant of Postscript (much like JSON is
| a descendant of Javascript, loosely)
|
| Society would probably never recover if we started
| implementing RPC-in-Postscript though.
| NamTaf wrote:
| Bravo to you for recognising the load-bearing 'just' before
| you threw it around :)
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| I did a bunch of work creating pdfs using a low-level API,
| object goes here stuff.
|
| As far as I understand it, at its core, pdf is just a
| stream of instructions that is continually modifying the
| document. You can insert a thousand objects before you
| start the next word in a paragraph. And this is just the
| most basic stuff. Anything on a page can be anywhere in the
| stream. I don't know if you can go back and edit previous
| pages, you might have a shot at least trying to understand
| one page at a time.
|
| Did you know you can have embedded XML in PDFs? You can
| have a paper form with all the data filled in and include
| an XML version of that for any computer systems that would
| like an easier way to read it.
| TRiG_Ireland wrote:
| The blog post about adding colour gradients to Typst dives
| into some of the weirdness of the format.
| https://typst.app/blog/2023/color-gradients
| zauguin wrote:
| This seems highly misleading.
|
| > - Remove the data. This is much harder than it sounds. Many
| PDF tools won't let you change the content of a PDF, not
| because it isn't possible, but because you'll likely
| massively screw up the formatting, and the tools don't want
| to deal with that.
|
| Compared to other formats this is actually relatively easy in
| a PDF since the way the text drawing operators work they
| don't influence the state for arbitrary other content. A lot
| of positioning in a PDF is absolute (or relative to an
| explicitly defined matrix which has hardcoded values).
| Usually this makes editing a PDF harder (since when changing
| text the related text does not adapt automatically), but when
| removing data it makes it much easier since you can mostly
| just delete it without affecting anything else. (There are
| exceptions for text immediately after the removed data, but
| that's limited and relatively easy to control.)
|
| > - Replace the data. This what what all the "blackout" tools
| do, find "A" and replace with "". This is effective and
| doesn't break formatting since it's a 1-to-1 replacement.
|
| That's actually rather tricky in PDFs since they usually
| contain embedded subset fonts and these usually do not have
| "" as part of the subset. Also doing this would break the
| layout since "" has a different width than most letters in a
| typical font, so it would not lead to less formatting issues
| than the previous option. Unless the "" is stretched for each
| letter to have the same dimensions, but then the stretched
| characters allow to recover the text.
|
| > The problem with "replacing" is that not every PDF tool
| works the same way, and some, instead, just change the
| foreground and background color to black; it looks nearly the
| same, but the power of copy-and-paste still functions.
|
| PDF does not have a concept of a background color. If it
| looks like a background color in PDF, you have a rectangle
| drawn in one color and something in the foreground color in
| front of it. What you usually see in badly redacted PDF files
| is exactly this, but in opposite color: Someone just draws a
| black box on top of the characters. You could argue that this
| is smarter since it would still work even if someone would
| chnage colors, but of course, PDF is a vector format. If you
| just add a rectangle, someone else can remove it again. (And
| also copy & paste doesn't care about your rectangle)
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Then you have the computer illiterate, who think changing
| the foreground and background color to black is good enough
| anyway_
|
| To be fair, this works if you print out those copies and then
| re-scan them.
| gruez wrote:
| >- Remove the data. This is much harder than it sounds. Many
| PDF tools won't let you change the content of a PDF, not
| because it isn't possible, but because you'll likely
| massively screw up the formatting, and the tools don't want
| to deal with that.
|
| >- Replace the data. This what what all the "blackout" tools
| do, find "A" and replace with "". This is effective and
| doesn't break formatting since it's a 1-to-1 replacement. The
| problem with "replacing" is that not every PDF tool works the
| same way, and some, instead, just change the foreground and
| background color to black; it looks nearly the same, but the
| power of copy-and-paste still functions.
|
| You're making it sound way harder than it is, when both adobe
| acrobat and the built-in preview app on mac can both
| competently redact documents. I'm not aware of instances of
| either (or any other purpose-made redaction tools) failing. I
| wouldn't homebrew a python script to do my redaction either,
| but that doesn't mean doing redactions properly in some
| insurmountable task for some intern.
| array_key_first wrote:
| I would not trust either tool to adequately redact
| documents, though I'm sure it works under normal levels of
| scrutiny.
|
| The most reliable way is to just screenshot the document or
| print and scan it, effectively burning it down and
| recreating it in a new format that has no concept of the
| past. This works across basically all formats, too, and
| against all tools.
| sigwinch wrote:
| qpdf has a redaction option. It's routinely used to anonymize
| medical records for studies.
| oliwarner wrote:
| They drew black boxes _over_ the text. The text is still
| underneath. On OCR 'd scanned documents, the text you'd copy is
| actually stored in metadata and just linked by position to the
| image.
|
| Anyway, if you click on a "redaction", you're clicking on the
| box and can't select the text underneath, but if you just
| highlight the text around it, you can copy all the original
| text.
|
| It's a bizarre oversight.
| 3eb7988a1663 wrote:
| I remember reading the recommendation for journalists to redact
| documents is to black them out in the digital version, print it
| out, and re-scan it. Anything else has too many potential ways
| by which it might be possible to smuggle data.
| dmurray wrote:
| Even that might leak to length attacks: one reasonable
| plaintext would lead to black bars of 1135 px, another to
| 1138 px, and with enough redactions you can converge on what
| the plaintext might be.
|
| The only safe way for journalists is to paraphrase what the
| document said and to say "an unnamed source claims that ..."
| and to guarantee with your reputation, and the reputation of
| your publisher, that you are being faithful to what the
| original source said. For even better results, combine
| multiple sources.
|
| Unfortunately paraphrasing things and taking editorial
| responsibility have both been deprecated in favour of
| rereleasing press releases in the house style, so it's
| difficult to get the actual journalism these days.
| eviks wrote:
| You can use constant /variable length replacement to avoid
| length leaks?
| Gigachad wrote:
| PDF is less like an image, and more like a web page where
| elements can be stacked on top of each other. You can visually
| obscure things by sticking a black rectangle over the top, but
| anyone who inspects inside the pdf can remove it or see the
| text in the source.
|
| There would also be a mix of text documents, and image scans.
| The way to censor each is different.
|
| Perfectly censoring documents, particularly digital ones is
| actually surprisingly difficult.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > Perfectly censoring documents, particularly digital ones is
| actually surprisingly difficult.
|
| But the difficult part is easily repeatable once it's figured
| out, which is why it surprises me that it's not built into
| Acrobat as a tool already.
| etskinner wrote:
| In fact it is already built into Acrobat:
| https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/desktop/protect-
| documents/re...
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| So is the data extracted the names of the victims that were
| supposed to be hidden to protect them? Or is there something else
| that might be worthy of exposing?
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| There are pages that are nothing but redacted text. It isn't
| going to be a victims name copy pasted 80 times in a row...
| wafflemaker wrote:
| >It isn't going to be a victims name copy pasted 80 times in
| a row...
|
| You can't possibly know that!
|
| (Sorry, watching Grinch, Jim Carrey spoke through me).
| kgwxd wrote:
| i assume the downvoters don't see the importance of the
| question.
| watwut wrote:
| The downvoters assume that it is a bad faith question. The
| downvoters are 99% right with that. If the 1% hit then OP is
| just exceedingly naive and did not followed the scandal in
| which case they should maybe first do some reading.
|
| The names of involved powerful people were NOT supposed to be
| censored. All those names except Bill Clinton name were
| redacted. To protect Trump and everybody else involved in the
| scandal except said Bill Clinton. But especially to protect
| Trump.
| mapontosevenths wrote:
| They also obscured the male perpetrators faces and bodies
| in many images, illegaly.
| mindslight wrote:
| I assume that de facto federal "law" now makes it illegal
| to be raped, and those men are the victims. That would be
| a logical conclusion of edgelord vice signalling, right?
| mapontosevenths wrote:
| I know what all of these words mean, but not when they're
| in this order.
| deepsquirrelnet wrote:
| It seems the redactions are to protect the perpetrators.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I'm seeing, for example, "Hyperion Air, Inc" was redacted.
|
| Victim?
| buhfur wrote:
| Doesn't work on any PDF's of scanned documents , for example the
| contacts list.
| jdiff wrote:
| Copying and pasting doesn't work. Unless your PDF viewer does
| OCR. And if the redaction is just a black rectangle overlaid on
| top, that can still be removed.
| cmarschner wrote:
| Befuddling that this happened again. It's not the first time
|
| - Paul Manafort court filing (U.S., 2019) Manafort's lawyers
| filed a PDF where the "redacted" parts were basically black
| highlighting/boxes over live text. Reporters could recover the
| hidden text (e.g., via copy/paste).
|
| - TSA "Standard Operating Procedures" manual (U.S., 2009) A
| publicly posted TSA screening document used black rectangles that
| did not remove the underlying text; the concealed content could
| be extracted. This led to extensive discussion and an Inspector
| General review.
|
| - UK Ministry of Defence submarine security document (UK, 2011) A
| MoD report had "redacted" sections that could be revealed by
| copying/pasting the "blacked out" text--because the text was
| still present, just visually obscured.
|
| - Apple v. Samsung ruling (U.S., 2011) A federal judge's opinion
| attempted to redact passages, but the content was still
| recoverable due to the way the PDF was formatted; copying text
| out revealed the "redacted" parts.
|
| - Associated Press + Facebook valuation estimate in court
| transcript (U.S., 2009) The AP reported it could read "redacted"
| portions of a court transcript by cut-and-paste (classic overlay-
| style failure). Secondary coverage notes the mechanism
| explicitly.
|
| A broader "history of failures" compilation (multiple orgs /
| years) The PDF Association collected multiple incidents
| (including several above) and describes the common failure mode:
| black shapes drawn over text without deleting/sanitizing the
| underlying content. https://pdfa.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2020/06/High-Security-PD...
| throwup238 wrote:
| _> - Associated Press + Facebook valuation estimate in court
| transcript (U.S., 2009) The AP reported it could read
| "redacted" portions of a court transcript by cut-and-paste
| (classic overlay-style failure). Secondary coverage notes the
| mechanism explicitly._
|
| What happens in a court case when this occurs? Does the
| receiving party get to review and use the redacted information
| (assuming it's not gagged by other means) or do they have to
| immediately report the error and clean room it?
|
| Edit: after reading up on this it looks like attorneys have
| strict ethical standards to not use the information (for what
| little that may be worth), but the Associated Press was a third
| party who unredacted public court documents in a separate
| Facebook case.
| irishcoffee wrote:
| My guess would be that if the benefitting legal party didn't
| need to declare they also benefitted from this (because they
| legally can't be caught, etc.) they wouldn't.
|
| I know and am friends with a lot of lawyers. They're pretty
| ruthless when it comes to this kind of thing.
|
| Legally, I would think both parties get copies of everything.
| I don't know if that was the case here.
| jdadj wrote:
| > What happens in a court case when this occurs? Does the
| receiving party get to review and use the redacted
| information (assuming it's not gagged by other means) or do
| they have to immediately report the error and clean room it?
|
| Typically, two copies of a redacted document are submitted
| via ECF. One is an unredacted but sealed copy that is visible
| to the judge and all parties to the case. The other is a
| redacted copy that is visible to the general public.
|
| So, to answer what I believe to be your question: the
| opposing party in a case would typically have an unredacted
| copy regardless of whether information is leaked to the
| general public via improper redaction, so the issue you raise
| is moot.
| piker wrote:
| > Edit: after reading up on this it looks like attorneys have
| strict ethical standards to not use the information (for what
| little that may be worth), but the Associated Press was a
| third party who unredacted public court documents in a
| separate Facebook case.
|
| Curious. I am not a litigator but this is surprising if you
| found support for it. My gut was that the general obligation
| to be a zealous advocate for your client would _require_ a
| litigant to use inadvertently disclosed information unless it
| was somehow barred by the court. Confidentiality obligations
| would remain owed to the client, and there might be some
| tension there but it would be resolvable.
| zerocrates wrote:
| My recollection is that it varies quite a bit between
| jurisdictions. The ABA's model rules require you to notify
| the other party when they accidentally send you something
| but leave unspecified what else, if anything, you might
| have to do.
| pdpi wrote:
| A famous case where this came into play was one of the
| Infowars defamation suits. Alex Jones's lawyer
| accidentally sent the families' lawyer the full contents
| of a phone backup. They notified Jones's lawyer, and gave
| him some time to reply. After that time elapsed, the
| whole dump was considered fair game.
|
| This is the moment when that mistake was revealed in
| court: https://youtu.be/pgxZSBfGXUM and this is the
| hearing for the emergency motion to suppress that data:
| https://youtu.be/dKbAmNwbiMk
| piker wrote:
| I'm unclear why this is downvoted given the below. While it
| would theoretically be jurisdiction-specific, if the ABA
| model rules don't provide some specific guidance, it's
| clear that the lawyers would be ethically obligated to use
| whatever info they obtained if it helped their client and
| as otherwise consistent with their ethical obligations in
| the jurisdictions that follow those. I'm admitted in New
| York, and I don't recall any kind of bar on the usage of
| this type of info there. Seems like in a lot of
| jurisdictions they'd have a duty to notify, but that may
| not even be the case in all.
| throw101010 wrote:
| > strict ethical standards to not use the information (for
| what little that may be worth)
|
| If it's worth so little to your eyes/comprehension you will
| have no problem citing a huge count of cases where lawyers do
| not respect their obligations towards the courts and their
| clients...
|
| That snide remark is used to discredit a profession in
| passing, but the reason you won't find a lot of examples of
| this happening is because the trust clients have to put in
| lawyers and the legal system in general is what makes it
| work, and betraying that trust is a literal professional
| suicide (suspension, disbarment, reputational ruin, and often
| civil liability) for any lawyer... that's why "strict"
| doesn't mean anything "little" in this case.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| Well, also the lawyer would have to really badly fuck up
| for it to become public news that they had actually used
| the information.
| shkkmo wrote:
| > you will have no problem citing a huge count of cases
| where lawyers do not respect their obligations towards the
| courts and their clients...
|
| There are almost 2000 disbarments annually in the US.
|
| The california bar recieves 1 compliant for every 10 law
| licenses in the state every year.
|
| There's a wikipedia page on notable disbarments.
|
| Legal malpractice suites are on the rise.
|
| If you are going to assert that legal malpractice is not
| legitimate concern, I think the burden of evidence is on
| you.
| dhosek wrote:
| I'm not a lawyer, but I did watch every episode of Better
| Call Saul and I'd point out that a lawyer who generates
| one complaint likely generates multiple complaints so
| that 1 complaint/10 law licenses number is misleading
| about the scope of the issue. Similarly, 2000 disbarments
| sounds high until you realize that there are roughly 1.3
| million lawyers. What's more, when I was checking to see
| what reasons for disbarment might be, I found an article
| (https://law.usnews.com/law-firms/advice/articles/what-
| does-i...) which cited a number much lower (less than
| 500) and that pointed out that reasons other than
| professional misconduct can lead to disbarment including
| DUI and domestic violence. The following gives some
| reasons for disbarment:
|
| > ... disbarment is the presumptive form of discipline
| for an attorney who steals clients' money, Best says.
|
| > Disbarment is more likely when the attorney committed
| fraud or serious dishonesty, particularly in front of a
| tribunal or to a client. Similarly, priority may be given
| to cases where an attorney is convicted of a crime of
| moral turpitude, Levin says.
|
| > Priorities also change in response to society's
| changing values and when there's a belief that tightening
| down on types of cases will help the profession as a
| whole, Best says.
|
| > For example, in Massachusetts, there has been an
| increased focus on violations relating to the
| administration of justice, such as when prosecutors
| engage in racist behavior.
|
| > And while, in the past, an attorney's drunk driving or
| domestic violence would probably not have led to
| sanctions (because they were seen as unrelated to the
| attorney's legal work), they now might result in
| discipline, Best says.
| bamboozled wrote:
| What a joke...
| tremon wrote:
| Here in NL if confidential information about offenders leaks
| from court documents, it usually leads to a reduction in
| sentencing because the leak of classified information is
| weighed as part of the punishment. If the leak was proven to
| be intentional, it might lead to a mistrial or even
| acquittal. Leaking of victims' information usually only
| results in a groveling public apology from the
| Minister/Secretary of Justice du jour.
| ajross wrote:
| Given the context and the baldly political direction behind the
| redactions, it's not at all unlikely that this is the result of
| deliberate sabotage or malicious compliance. Bondi isn't
| blacking these things out herself, she's ordering people to do
| it who aren't true believers. Purges take time (and often
| blood). She's stuck with the staff trained under previous
| administrations.
| lamontcg wrote:
| Or it is just the result of firing people who were competent
| and giving insufficient training to people who had never done
| this before.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| "There are major differences between the Trump 1.0 and 2.0
| administrations. In the Trump 1.0 administration, many of the
| most important officials were very competent men. One example
| would be then-Attorney General William Barr. Barr is
| contemptible, yes, but smart AF. When Barr's DOJ released a
| redacted version of the Mueller Report, they printed the whole
| thing, made their redactions with actual ink, and then re-
| scanned every page to generate a new PDF with absolutely no
| digital trace of the original PDF file. There are ways to
| properly redact a PDF digitally, but going analog is foolproof.
|
| The Trump 2.0 administration, in contrast, is staffed top to
| bottom with fools."
|
| https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/12/23/trump-doj-pdf-r...
| netsharc wrote:
| It's like Russian spies being caught in the Netherlands with
| taxi receipts showing they took a taxi from their Moscow HQ
| to the airport: corrupt organizations attract/can only hire
| incompetent people...
|
| https://www.vice.com/en/article/russian-spies-chemical-
| weapo...
|
| Anyone remember how the Trump I regime had staff who couldn't
| figure out the lighting in the White House, or mistitled
| Australia's Prime Minister as President?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _with taxi receipts_
|
| Please tell me they were saving them for expensing.
| RuslanL wrote:
| Yes.
| varjag wrote:
| Europol is nothing next to Natasha in accounting
| SanjayMehta wrote:
| Or the passports discovered intact after a particularly
| heinous terrorist attack.
| tor825gl wrote:
| This wasn't a fuck-up though was it?
|
| Knowing they would die in the attack, the terrorists just
| didn't care if their identities were known.
| enaaem wrote:
| Reminds of the time Russian security services showed copies
| of the Sims as evidence of an Ukranian Nazi plot.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Yes I remember that incident. It was big over here.
|
| However I'm 100% sure that that was not a real spy
| incident. But rather just a 'message' to be sent from the
| Russian govt. The same way they have infiltrated our
| airspace with TU-95 bombers nearly every month for decades.
| Just a message "Hey we are still watching you".
|
| When you see how ridiculously incompetent they were, not
| just their phone history but also the gear they had with
| them. It amounts to nothing more than a scriptkiddy's
| pineapple. There's no way they would have been able to do
| any serious infiltration into any kind of even remotely
| competent organisation.
|
| Also the visible fumbling about in a carpark with overly
| complex antennas instead of something more hidden (e.g. an
| apartment across the street, a cabling tent or something).
| IMO the objective here was to get caught and stir a fuss.
| tdeck wrote:
| The bigger difference from my perspective is that they have
| competent people doing the strategy this time. The last Trump
| administration failed to use the obvious levers available to
| accomplish fascism, while this one has been wildly successful
| on that end. In a few years they will have realigned the
| whole power dynamic in the country, and unfortunately more
| and more competent people will choose to work for them in
| order to receive the benefits of doing so.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _they have competent people doing the strategy this time_
|
| They had a great playbook in Project 2025. I'm not
| convinced Trump ever had the smartest people executing it.
| tdeck wrote:
| You don't need to be the smartest person when you're
| pointing a big gun at someone.
| Tostino wrote:
| His last administration was filled with traditional
| Republicans.
|
| I may have disagreed with them on virtually every policy
| point, but they seemed to disagree with the most harmful
| Trump policies as well.
|
| We would have never agreed on the right policy, but we
| definitely agreed that his policy was not the right one.
| vanviegen wrote:
| > but they seemed to disagree with the most harmful Trump
| policies as well.
|
| I imagine Republicans such as this still populate a
| majority of the house and Senate. If they disagree, they
| are sure making an effort to do so silently.
| SirHumphrey wrote:
| The amount of things Trump did circumventing
| Congressional approval might suggest that he does not a
| clean pass even though Republicans have majority in both
| the house and the senate.
| vanviegen wrote:
| They have (had?) the power to impeach the president for a
| _lot_ less than he 's already done. Yet they don't.
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| >In a few years they will have realigned the whole power
| dynamic in the country
|
| I disagree. It felt that way for the first few months, but
| the wheels are coming off. Trump is too old and unpopular
| to steal a 3rd term. Therefore everyone around him has to
| worry about what will happen in 3 years, and plan for post-
| Trump rather than forever-Trump.
| stevage wrote:
| I would just do the digital version of that: add 100% black
| bars then screenshot page by page and probably increase the
| contrast too.
| eviks wrote:
| > but smart AF. When Barr's DOJ released a redacted version
| of the Mueller Report, they printed the whole thing, made
| their redactions with actual ink, and then re-scanned every
| page to generate a new PDF with absolutely no digital trace
| of the original PDF file.
|
| This is a dumb way of doing that, exactly what "stupid"
| people do when their are somewhat aware of the limits of
| their competence or only as smart as the tech they grew up
| with. Also, this type of redaction eliminates the possibility
| to change text length, which is a very common leak when
| especially for various names/official positions. And it
| doesn't eliminate the risk of non-redaction since you can't
| simply search&replace with machine precision, but have to do
| the manual conversion step to printed position
| plantain wrote:
| >exactly what "stupid" people do when their are somewhat
| aware of the limits of their competence
|
| Being aware of one's limitations is the strongest hallmark
| of intelligence I've come across...
| eviks wrote:
| So following that strange logic if a dumb person knows
| he's dumb, he's suddenly become intelligent? Or is that
| impossible by your peculiar definition of intelligence?
| awesome_dude wrote:
| Knowing your limits has to be a sign of intelligence.
|
| "Dumb" people (FTR the description actually refers to
| something rather than that which you think it does...)
| run around on the internet getting mad because they
| haven't thought things through...
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| It's an interesting question though. I know quite some
| "smart" people who lack self awareness to an almost fatal
| degree yet can outdo the vast majority of the population
| at solving logic puzzles. It tends to be a rather
| frustrating condition to deal with.
| HKH2 wrote:
| Yeah that sounds like wisdom, not intelligence.
| awesome_dude wrote:
| Wisdom would be knowing not to try and exceed those
| limits
|
| Intelligence would be knowing they exist (I know that I
| cannot fly by flapping my arms, it took intelligence to
| deduce that, wisdom tells me not to try and jump from a
| height and flap my arms to fly. Further intelligence can
| be applied, deducing that there are artificial means by
| which I can attain flight)
| mapontosevenths wrote:
| I'm not so sure it's about knowing his own limitations,
| rather it's about building a reliable process and
| trusting that process more than either technology or
| people.
|
| Any process that relies on 100% accuracy from either
| people or technology will eventually fail. It's just a
| basic matter of statistics. However, there are processes
| that CAN, at least in theory, be 100% effective.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _this type of redaction eliminates the possibility to
| change text length_
|
| This is the only weakness of Barr's method.
|
| > _it doesn 't eliminate the risk of non-redaction since
| you can't simply search&replace with machine precision_
|
| Anyong relying on automated tools to redact is doing so
| performatively. At the end of the day, you need people who
| understand the context to sit down and read through the
| documents and strike out anything that reveals-directly or
| indirectly, spelled correctly or incorrectly-too much.
| eviks wrote:
| > This is the only weakness of Barr's method.
|
| Of course it isn't, the other weakness you just dismiss
| is the higher risk of failed searches. People already
| fail with digital, it's even harder to do in print or
| translate digital to print (something a machine can do
| with 100% precision, now you've introduced a human error)
|
| > At the end of the day, you need people who understand
| the context
|
| Before the end of the day there is also the whole day,
| and if you have to waste the attention of such people on
| doing ink redactions instead of dedicating all of their
| time to focused reading, you're just adding mistakes for
| no benefit
| herewulf wrote:
| Reading through material in context and actively removing
| the telling bits seems very focused to me.
|
| Furthermore, reading through long winded, dry legalese
| (or the like) and then occasionally marking it up seems
| like an excellent way to give the brain short breaks to
| continue on rather than to let the mind wander in a sea
| of text.
|
| I am for automating all the things but I can see pros and
| cons for both digital and manual approaches.
| eviks wrote:
| The reading is focused, but that focus is wasted on
| menial work, which makes it easier to miss something more
| important
|
| > give the brain short breaks
|
| Set a timer if you feel that's of any use? Why does the
| break have to depend on the random frequency of terms to
| be redacted? What if there is nothing to redact for
| pages, why let the mind wander?
|
| > I am for automating
|
| But you're arguing against it. What's the pro of manually
| replacing all 1746 occurrences of "Trump" instead of
| spending 0.01% of that time with a digital search &
| replace and then spending the other 1% digitally
| searching for variants with typos and then spending the
| last 99% in focused reading trying to find that you've
| missed "the owner of Mar-a-Lago Club" reference or
| something more complicated (and then also replace that
| variant digitally rather than hoping you'd notice it
| every single time you wade through walls of legalese!)
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _What 's the pro of manually replacing all 1746
| occurrences of "Trump" instead of spending 0.01% of that
| time with a digital search & replace and then spending
| the other 1% digitally searching for variants with typos_
|
| Because none of this involves a focussed reading. It's
| the same reason why Level 3 can be less safe than Level
| 4. If you're skimming, you're less engaged than if you're
| reading in detail. (And if you're skipping around, you're
| missing context. You may catch Trump and Trup, but will
| you catch POTUD? Alternatively, if you just redact every
| mention of the President, you may wind up creating a
| President ***, thereby confirming what you were trying to
| redact.)
|
| If it doesn't matter, automate it. If you care, have a
| team do a proper redaction.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _something a machine can do with 100% precision_
|
| Forget about typoes. Until recent LLMs, machines couldn't
| detect oblique or identifying references. (And with LLMs,
| you still have the problem of hallucinations. To say
| nothing of where you're running the model.)
|
| > _if you have to waste the attention of such people on
| doing ink redactions instead of dedicating all of their
| time to focused reading_
|
| You've never read a text with a highlighter or pen?
|
| Out of curiosity, have you worked with sensitive
| information that needed to be shared across security
| barriers?
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| Not at all. It's a procedure that's very difficult to
| unintentionally screw up. Sometimes that's what you want.
|
| > you can't simply search&replace with machine precision
|
| Sure you can. Search and somehow mark the text (underline
| or similar) to make keywords hard to miss. Then proceed
| with the manual _print, expunge, scan_ process.
| eviks wrote:
| You process doesn't make sense, why wouldn't you just
| black box redact right away and print and scan? What does
| underline then ink give you? But it's also not the
| process described in the blog
|
| > that's very difficult to unintentionally screw up.
|
| You've already screwed up by leaking length and risking
| errors in manual search&replace
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _why wouldn 't you just black box redact right away and
| print and scan? What does underline then ink give you?_
|
| These are roughly equivalent. The point is having a hard
| copy in between the digital ones.
| eviks wrote:
| Why would I settle for a rough equivalence? The point was
| about the chance of making mistakes in redaction, so
| sure, if you ignore the difference in the chance of
| making mistakes (which the underline process increases),
| everything becomes equivalent!
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Why would I settle for a rough equivalence?_
|
| They're equivalent in security. The digital method is
| more convenient (albeit more error prone). What confers
| the security is the print-scan step. Whether one is
| redacting in between or before doesn't change much.
|
| You'd still want to do a _tabula rasa_ and manual post-
| pass with both methods.
|
| > _point was about the chance of making mistakes in
| redaction_
|
| Best practice is humans redacting in multiple passes for
| good reason. It's less error prone than relying on a
| "smart" redactor, which is mostly corporate CYA kit.
| eviks wrote:
| > They're equivalent in security
|
| They aren't, security is defined as the amount of
| information you leak. If you have an inferior process
| where you're substituting the correct digital match with
| an in incorrect manual match, you're reducing security
|
| > albeit more error prone
|
| The opposite, you can't find all 925 cases of the word
| Xyz as efficiently on paper without the ease of a digital
| text search, my guess is you just have made up a
| different comparison (e.g., a human spending 100hrs
| reading paper vs some "smart" app doing 1 min of
| redactions) vs. the actual process quoted and criticized
| in my original comment
|
| > Whether one is redacting in between or before doesn't
| change much
|
| It does, the chance to make a mistake differs in these
| cases! Printing & scanning can't help you here, it's a
| totally set of mistakes
|
| > Best practice
|
| But this conversation is about a specific blogged-about
| reality, not your best practice theory!
| Teever wrote:
| Absolutely. The other comments replying to your original
| comment that are nitpicking over implementation details
| miss the purpose and importance of this step.
|
| The fact that this release process is missing this key
| step is significant too imho. It makes it really clear
| that the people running this didn't understand all of the
| dimensions involved in releasing a redacted document like
| this and/or that they weren't able to get expert opinions
| on how to do this the right way, which just seems
| fantastical to me given who we're talking about.
|
| In other threads people are discussing the possibility of
| this being intentional, by disaffected subordinates,
| poorly vetted and rushed in to work on this against their
| will. And that's certainly plausible in subordinates but
| I have a hard time believing that it's the case for the
| people running this who, if they understood what they
| were tasked with would have prevented an entire category
| of errors by simply tasking subordinates to do what you
| described regardless of how they felt about the task.
|
| So to me that leaves the only possibility that the people
| running this particular operation are incompetent, and
| given the importance of redacting that is dismaying.
|
| Regardless of how you feel about the action of redacting
| these documents, the extent to which it's done and the
| motives behind doing it, the idea that the people in
| charge of this aren't competent to do it is not good at
| all.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| This is one of the biggest document collections ever
| released to the public (...or will be when it's finally
| done) and the redactions were done in a hurry by a
| government agency with limited resources which would
| usually be doing more useful things.
|
| So it's likely there simply isn't the time to do extended
| multi-step redactions.
|
| What's happening is a mix of malicious compliance,
| incompetence, and time pressure.
|
| It's very on-brand for it to be confused, chaotic, and
| self-harming.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| The blog has no relevance to your claim that the print
| and scan procedure somehow fundamentally precludes
| automated search and replace. I refuted that. You remain
| free to perform automated search and replace prior to
| printing the document. You also have the flexibility to
| perform manual redactions both digitally as well as
| physically with ink.
|
| It's clearly a superior process that provides ease of
| use, ease of understanding, and is exceedingly difficult
| to screw up. Barr's DoJ should be commended for having
| selected a procedure that minimizes the risk of systemic
| failure when carried out by a collection of people with
| such diverse technical backgrounds and competence levels.
|
| Notably, had the same procedure been followed for the
| Epstein files then the headline we are currently
| commenting under presumably wouldn't exist.
| eviks wrote:
| > The blog has no relevance to your claim that the print
| and scan procedure somehow fundamentally precludes
| automated search and replace.
|
| It has direct relevance since it describes the process as
| lacking the automated search and replace
|
| > I refuted that
|
| You didn't, you created a meaningless process of
| underlinig text digitally to waste time redacting it on
| paper for no reason but add more mistakes, and also
| replaced the quoted reality with your made up situation
| to "refute".
|
| > and is exceedingly difficult to screw up.
|
| It's trivial, and I've told you how in the previous
| comment
|
| > Notably, had the same procedure been followed for the
| Epstein files then the headline we are currently
| commenting under presumably wouldn't exist.
|
| Nope, this is generic "hack" headline, so guessing a
| redacted name by comparing the length of plaintext to
| unmask would fit the headline just as well as a
| copy&paste hack
| TylerE wrote:
| It gets you the non-existance of a PDF full of reversible
| black boxes.
|
| Can't leak a file that doesn't exist.
| eviks wrote:
| But you can leak the content of a file that you printed
| out and couldn't redact properly by using an inferior
| method
| TylerE wrote:
| But such a document is _obviously_ unredacted. A black
| boxed PDF appears to be redacted, but isn 't. Accidents
| happen.
| eviks wrote:
| Now that you've shifted the goalposts back closer to the
| original discussion, what's your point? Yes, you can leak
| the "nonexisting" file in multiple ways, including the
| printed one, and yes, "accidents" happen. So are they
| more likely to happen if you ban digital search and force
| paper and ink redaction instead? Are they more likely to
| happen if you black out digitally before printing or
| underline digitally and ink out physically?
|
| And the "obvious word needle in a haystack of many
| thousands of pages" isn't as self-healing as you appear
| to think it is.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >Sure you can. Search and somehow mark the text
| (underline or similar) to make keywords hard to miss.
| Then proceed with the manual print, expunge, scan
| process.
|
| I suppose a global search/replace to mark text for
| redaction as an _initial_ step might not be a bad idea,
| but if one needs to _make sure_ it 's correct, that's not
| enough.
|
| Don't bother with soft copy at all. Print a copy and have
| multiple individuals manually make redactions to the same
| copy with different color inks.
|
| Once that initial phase is complete, partner up persons
| who _didn 't_ do the initial redactions review the paper
| text with the extant redactions and go through the
| documents _together_ (each with their own copy of the
| same redactions), verbally and in ink noting redactions
| as well as text that _should_ be redacted but isn 't.
|
| That process could then be repeated with _different_
| people to ensure nothing was missed.
|
| We used to call this "proofreading" in the context of
| reports and other documents provided as work product to
| clients. It looks really bad when the product for which
| you're charging five to six figures isn't correct.
|
| The use case was different, but the efficacy of such a
| process is perfect for something like redactions as well.
|
| And yes, we had word processing and layout software which
| included search and replace. But if correctness is
| _required_ , that's not good enough -- a word could be
| misspelled and missed by the search/replace, and/or a
| half dozen other ways an automated process could go wrong
| and either miss a redaction or redact something that
| shouldn't be.
|
| As for the time and attention required, I suppose that
| depends upon how important it is to get right.
|
| Is such a process _necessary_ for all documents? No.
|
| That said, if correctness is a priority, four (or more)
| text processing engines (human brains, in this case) with
| a set of engines working in tandem and other sets of
| engines working serially and independently to
| verify/correct any errors or omissions is an excellent
| process for ensuring the correctness of text.
|
| I'd point out that the above process is one that's proven
| reliable over decades, even centuries -- and doesn't
| require exact strings or regular expressions.
|
| Edit: Fixed prose ("other documents be provided" -->
| "other documents provided").
| ithkuil wrote:
| If the word you need to redact is also an English verb
| there is a risk that you accidentally mark the name of
| person in a context where that redacted word has a clear
| meaning in that context and can be used as a proof that
| such a term has been accidentally redacted because a
| large scale search&mark has taken place.
|
| According to a random dictionary I found:
|
| To trump. Verb. Surpass (something) by saying or doing
| something better.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > this type of redaction eliminates the possibility to
| change text length, which is a very common leak when
| especially for various names/official positions
|
| Increasing the size of the redaction box to include enough
| of the surrounding text to make that very difficult.
| Cpoll wrote:
| You'd need to increase it a lot, lest the surrounding
| text be inferred from context.
| eviks wrote:
| But that's a destructive operation!
|
| I mean, sure, you can make the whole paragraph/page
| blank, but presumably the goal is to share the report
| removing only the necessary minimum?
| lelanthran wrote:
| > This is a dumb way of doing that, exactly what "stupid"
| people do when their are somewhat aware of the limits of
| their competence or only as smart as the tech they grew up
| with.
|
| No, this is an example of someone understanding the limits
| of the people they delegate to, and putting in a process so
| that delegation to even a very dumb person _still_ has
| successful outcomes.
|
| "Smart" people like to believe that knowing enough minutiae
| is enough to result in a successful outcome.
|
| _Actual_ smart people know that the process is more
| important than the minutiae, and proceed accordingly.
| eviks wrote:
| > someone understanding the limits of the people they
| delegate to, and putting in a process so that delegation
| to even a very dumb person still has successful
|
| Oh, man, is he the only smart person in the whole
| department of >100k employees and an >x contractors???
| What other fantasy do you need to believe in to excuse
| the flaws? Also, if he's so smart why didn't he, you
| know, hire someone smart for the job?
|
| > even a very dumb person still has successful
|
| Except it's _easier_ to make mistakes following his
| process for both smart and dumb people, not be
| successful!
|
| > Actual smart people know that the process is more
| important
|
| So he's not actually smart according to your own
| definition because the process he has set up was bad, so
| he apparently did not know it was important to set it up
| better?
|
| > important than the minutiae
|
| Demanding only paper redactions is that minutiae.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > William Barr. Barr is contemptible, yes, but smart AF
|
| You mean the guy who covered up for Epstein's 'suicide' and
| expected us morons to believe it?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _You mean the guy who covered up for Epstein 's 'suicide'
| and expected us morons to believe it?_
|
| Let's assume that's true. How does it clash with him being
| "contemptible...but smart AF"?
| h33t-l4x0r wrote:
| Yeah I mean, orchestrating an assassination in a federal
| prison of a guy the whole world is watching, and never
| even so much as a whiff of a leak? Because how do you
| contain that without whacking everyone involved (which we
| would know about)? You don't. Not without teleportation,
| time-travel, or at the very least post-hypnotic
| suggestion.
|
| Oh he's smart AF, all right.
| groestl wrote:
| > made their redactions with actual ink, and then re-scanned
| every page
|
| That's not very competent.
|
| > going analog is foolproof
|
| Absolutely not. There are many way's to f this up. Just the
| smallest variation in places that have been inked twice will
| reveal the clear text.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Just the smallest variation in places that have been
| inked twice will reveal the clear text_
|
| Sure. But anyone can visually examine this. That means
| everyone with situational context can directly examine the
| quality of the redaction.
|
| Contrast that with a digital redation. You have to trust
| the tool works. Or you have to separate the folks with
| context from the folks with techical competence. (There is
| the third option of training everyone in the DoJ how to
| examine the inner workings of a PDF. That seems wasteful.)
| groestl wrote:
| > anyone can visually examine this.
|
| They can't, if the variations are subtle enough. For
| example, many people are oblivious to the fact that one
| can extract audio from objects captured on mute video,
| due to tiny vibrations.
|
| Analog is the worse option here. Simple screenshot of
| 100% black bar would be what a smart lazy person would
| do.
| _flux wrote:
| > But anyone can visually examine this.
|
| Can they? In principle it could be the difference between
| RGB 0.0,0.0,0.0 and RGB 0.004,0.0,0.0, that could be very
| difficult to visually see, but an algorithm could unmask
| the data with some correlation.
|
| If you do it digitally and then map the material to
| black-and-white bitmap, then that you can actually
| virtually examine.
|
| > Contrast that with a digital redation. You have to
| trust the tool works.
|
| While true, I think the key problem is that the tools
| used were not made for digital redaction. If they were I
| would be quite a bit more confident that they would also
| work properly.
|
| Seems like there could be a product for this domain.. And
| after some googling, it appears there is.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| > While true, I think the key problem is that the tools
| used were not made for digital redaction. If they were I
| would be quite a bit more confident that they would also
| work properly.
|
| Adobe Acrobat's redaction tools regularly feature in this
| sort of fuck-up, and they are (at least marketed as
| being) designed for such use
| jvanderbot wrote:
| It's probably fine, but certainly better than what's
| being discussed ITT.
|
| The larger point is that the "usual" redaction involves a
| tape pen or paint-style ink (dries opaque), IIRC, then
| photocopy, because the blocked out area is opaque.
| Scanner is probably no different than photocopy for these
| purposes.
| _trampeltier wrote:
| Just scan it with black/ white setting.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| I suppose the best process would be this, and then after
| rescanning putting a black bar over each redacted text with
| image editing.
| 2b3a51 wrote:
| Perhaps an imagemagick pipeline dumping each page out as
| a png then blanking areas associated with a list of words
| (a pixel level concordance of the coordinates of all the
| words having been compiled from a text dump? Hand-waving
| here).
|
| I'm probably overthinking this one but the various
| _lengths_ of the redaction bars would provide some
| information perhaps? So three conspirators with names
| like Stonk, Hephalump and Pragma-Sasquatch would be sort
| of easy to distinguish between if the public had a
| limited list of people who might be involved?
| groestl wrote:
| > I'm probably overthinking this one but the various
| lengths of the redaction bars would provide some
| information perhaps?
|
| You're definitely not overthinking this. Fitting words by
| length is the attack vector if the blanking itself has
| been done correctly.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _the various lengths of the redaction bars would
| provide some information perhaps?_
|
| Absolutely. It's why officially-redacted documents
| typically take out entire sentences and paragraphs,
| wiping just names only sparingly.
| hxtk wrote:
| Or if the document is just text, simply scan it in black
| and white (as in, binary, not grayscale).
| g947o wrote:
| Case study:
| https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/28/23777298/sony-ftc-
| microso...
| g947o wrote:
| It's not fool proof:
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/28/23777298/sony-ftc-
| microso...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Nothing is. The point is it's highly precedented,
| surprisingly robust and far more competent than half the
| armchair suggestions being raised in this thread.
| ricksunny wrote:
| The covid origins Slack messages discovery material (Anderson &
| Holmes) were famously poorly redacted pdfs, allowing their
| unredacting by Gilles Demaneuf, benefiting all of us.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| I want to believe this is malicious compliance.
| cmarschner wrote:
| Since hundreds of people were involved the most likely
| explanation is incompetence
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| Having lots of people involved means that it's more likely
| to be malicious compliance or deniable sabotage. It only
| needs one person who disagrees with the redactions to start
| doing things that they know will allow info to leak.
| michaelt wrote:
| Doesn't having lots of people involved _also_ raise the
| chance of incompetence?
|
| You're more likely to get at least one inept agent in a
| random sample of 1000 than a sample of 10.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| Yep - I think they're both likely.
| thdrtol wrote:
| Once I worked for a company that got a quote in the form of
| a Word document. Turned out it had history turned on and
| quotes to competitors could be recovered.
|
| There is a lot of incompitence when it comes to file
| formats.
| vidarh wrote:
| For one of my first jobs I negotiated a better offer
| because "strings" on the document revealed the previous
| offer they'd sent out, and made me confident I could ask
| for more.
|
| Though, makes me wonder if someone has intentionally sent
| out offers like that with lower numbers to make people
| think they're outsmarting them.
| slumberlust wrote:
| Never match wits with a stringscillian!
| quickthrowman wrote:
| Similarly, I've been sent PDF proposal letters by my
| customers with redacted pricing from my competitors so I
| can compare the scope against mine. A simple unflatten
| reveals the price along with the scope.
| sallveburrpi wrote:
| To be fair handling Word documents is much more complex
| than redacting a PDF properly.
| SvenL wrote:
| You don't even need a digital format for this. When I was
| a consultant I waited in a room with a flip chart for a
| negotiation. I flipped through the "old slides" of the
| flip chart and found one where they did budget planning
| for the project. This was very good background info for
| the negotiations.
| locknitpicker wrote:
| > Since hundreds of people were involved the most likely
| explanation is incompetence
|
| Hundreds of people might be involved, but the only key
| factor required for a single point of failure to propagate
| to the deliverable is lack of verification.
|
| And God knows how the Trump administration is packed with
| inexperiente incompetents assigned to positions where they
| are way way over their head, and routinely commit the most
| basic mistakes.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| I'm sure not all those hundreds have been involved with
| every document.
|
| I'm kinda surprised (and disappointed) nobody has done a
| Snowden on it though.
| bena wrote:
| I think it's more that the analogy is broken.
|
| If I have a sheet of paper and I color a section black.
| That's it. It's black. No going back.
|
| So I can see people thinking the same for PDFs. I drew the
| black box. It's black. Done. They don't realize they aren't
| dealing with a 2D sheet of paper, but with effectively a 3D
| stack of papers. That they didn't draw a black box on the
| page, they drew a black box _above_ the page over the area
| they wanted to obscure.
|
| The fact that this happens _a lot_ is an indication that
| the _software_ is wrong in this case. It doesn 't conform
| to user expectations.
| baby wrote:
| Lots of loyalists have replaced people there. It's for sure
| incompetence.
| jimbo808 wrote:
| There are hundreds of thousands of documents being reviewed
| by probably a thousand or more FBI agents. There is zero
| chance they are all loyalists.
| baby wrote:
| The pool of competence was still diluted
| tremon wrote:
| Indeed, incompetence is basically guaranteed if the
| organization selects for allegiance rather than competence.
| But I prefer to think that at least part of this was
| malicious compliance, because that suggests that at least
| some people at the FBI still have their soul.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| I would imagine it would be possible to track down who
| was responsible for redacting X set of documents, so this
| seems rather risky?
| legulere wrote:
| Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained
| by stupidity
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor
| tremon wrote:
| The other side of that same coin is to never admit to
| malice if your actions can be adequately excused by
| stupidity.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| And here we are again rediscovering Hanlon's Razor.
| xzjis wrote:
| It wouldn't be malicious though. Well, it's malicious
| towards the Trump administration, but not towards the
| people. Quite the opposite.
| seg_lol wrote:
| The maliciousness is always towards the compliance.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| In 2025, never attribute to incompetence what you could to a
| conspiracy. [sarcasm]
|
| They fired/drove away/reassigned most of those who are
| competent in the executive branch generally, it is pretty
| easy to believe that none of those managing the document
| release and few of those working on it are actually
| experienced or skilled in how you do omissions in a document
| release correctly. Those people are gone.
| agilob wrote:
| Follow the letter of the law, but not the spirit.
| Scarblac wrote:
| It already seems that they blacked out more than the law
| allowed, so following neither.
|
| Not that it matters much what the law says if the goal is to
| protect the man who hands out pardons...
| __alexs wrote:
| This has happened so many times I feel like the DoJ must have
| some sort of standardised redaction pipeline to prevent it by
| now. Assuming they do, why wasn't it used?
| srean wrote:
| I am happy with their lack of expertise and hope it stays
| that way, because I cannot remember a single case where
| redactions put the citizenry at a better place for it.
|
| Of course if it's in the middle of an investigation it can
| spoil the investigation, allow criminals to cover their
| tracks, allow escape.
|
| In such case the document should be vetted by competent and
| honest officials to judge whether it is timely to release it,
| or whether suppressing it just ensures that investigation is
| never concluded, extending a forever renewed cover to the
| criminals.
| themafia wrote:
| Secure systems are not exactly the right environment for
| quick release and handling. So documents invariably get onto
| regular desktops with off the shelf software used by
| untrained personnel.
| drcongo wrote:
| DOGE
| 2026iknewit wrote:
| Of course there is a process.
|
| There was also a process on how to communicate top secret
| information, but these idiots prefered to use signal.
|
| I'm completly lost on how you can be surprised by this at
| all? Trump is in there, tells some FBI faboon to black
| everything out, they collect a group of people they can find
| and start going through these files as fast as they can.
|
| "When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn't become a king;
| the palace instead becomes a circus."
| scubbo wrote:
| > some FBI faboon
|
| I'm not familiar with the term, and Urban Dictionary only
| has "fake babboon" which I suspect is not the intent here -
| what does it mean?
| harywilke wrote:
| there are FOIA lawsuits seeking the redaction training
| videos, one by https://bsky.app/profile/muellershewrote.com
| so maybe one day we will know more.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| They probably fired that department.
| insertchatbot wrote:
| Not to mention when the White House published Obama's birth
| certificate as a PDF. I remember being able to open it and turn
| the different layers off and on.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Are you trying to suggest that indicated it was fraudulent?
| That has very much been debunked -- it's just an artifact of
| OCR and compression, something that many scanners do
| automatically [1].
|
| You can still open it with Illustrator if you want to see: ht
| tps://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/rss...
|
| [1] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/birth-certificate/
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Yeah, the idea that proves it's fraudulent has been
| debunked, but the alternative hasn't been proven, either.
| Nobody has named the specific OCR software that does this
| destructive replacement. It's a case of "well, there's an
| alterastive theory, and that's good enough" debunking.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Not sure what you mean by destructive replacement, since
| nothing is destroyed.
|
| So I just looked into this, and it's specifically Mixed
| Raster Content pipeline (ISO/IEC 16485) used in lots of
| different scanners. There's no need to find which
| specific software generated it because it's used by lots
| of them.
|
| It's a technique used to attempt to isolate font
| characters of the same size and style as separate layers
| _before_ OCR-ing to make OCR more accurate.
|
| ABBYY FineReader, for example, is mentioned as producing
| the exact same type of results. But there's no guarantee
| that was the actual software because lots of scanning
| software does it -- it's a general technique. Plus it
| won't even be deterministically reproducible if it was
| e.g. scanned and OCR'd at higher resolution and then
| saved at a lower resolution, as is generally considered
| best practice for maximizing accuracy while keeping file
| sizes lower.
|
| https://www.obamaconspiracy.org/2013/01/heres-the-birth-
| cert...
|
| So this is very much a nothingburger. It's not an
| "alternative theory", it's a complete and total
| explanation.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| So this program really doesn't keep the original image of
| the document as a raster layer? That's kind of
| surprising, especially if it's used in the legal world.
| Personally, I'd always want to be able to recover the
| original document from the OCR layers. Or, are you saying
| you can? Then you should tell snopes, because it'll make
| the snopes article a lot shorter if they can just lead
| with that.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I think you are misunderstanding. The pipeline is e.g.:
|
| Scan (600 dpi) > MRC (600 dpi) > OCR (600 dpi) >
| Downsample (150 dpi) > Save to PDF (150 dpi)
|
| The image is saved in raster format at 150 dpi. That's
| the document, but not at the original scanning
| _resolution_. If you performed MRC and OCR at the 150 dpi
| level, you 'd get different/worse results than were
| originally gotten at 600 dpi. Which is why you always OCR
| before downsampling, and you downsample for smaller
| files.
|
| This isn't changing anything about the Snopes article. It
| just explains why if you run MRC/OCR at the PDF
| resolution, you won't deterministically reproduce it
| because it's not the resolution it was originally run at.
|
| You do understand that this OCR is only for being able to
| search and highlight text? It's not changing what's
| displayed. That's still the pixels.
| stocksinsmocks wrote:
| Yes, signed by "U.K.L. Lee" himself. Did you actually look
| at it? These FBI goombas aren't even trying.
| crazygringo wrote:
| If you're going to promote conspiracy theories here, you
| should at least explain them. The rest of us can't really
| be bothered to look them up.
| g947o wrote:
| FTC vs Microsoft:
| https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/28/23777298/sony-ftc-microso...
| sailfast wrote:
| Typically these folks use standard redaction software. Has
| anyone explored the fact that the software is just a buggy,
| silly mess?
| SilasX wrote:
| Also the pedophile that tried to obscure his face in pictures
| with a swirl effect that they were able to reverse enough to
| identify him:
|
| https://www.minnpost.com/politics-policy/2007/11/you-can-swi...
|
| IIRC there was a Slashdot discussion about it that went "Oh
| yeah, obviously you need to black out the face entirely, or use
| a randomized Gaussian blur." "Yeah, or just not molest kids."
| rkagerer wrote:
| Never trust a lawyer with a redact tool any more complicated
| than a marker.
|
| I've seen lawyers at major, high-priced law firms make this
| same mistake. Once it was a huge list of individuals names and
| bank account balances. Fortunately I was able to intervene just
| before the uploaded documents were made public.
|
| Folks around here blame incompetence, but I say the frequency
| of this kind of cock-up is crystal clear telemetry telling you
| the software tools suck.
|
| If the software is going to leverage the familiarity of using a
| blackout marker to give you a simple mechanism to redact text,
| it should honour that analogy and work the way any regular user
| would expect, by killing off the underlying text you're
| obscuring, and any other correponding, hidden bits. Or it
| should surface those hidden bits so you can see what could come
| back to bite you later. E.g. It wouldn't be hard to make the
| redact tool simultaneously act as a highlighter that
| temporarily turns proximate text in the OCR layer a vibrant
| yellow as you use it.
| jdlshore wrote:
| Apple's Preview app (which has a very thorough PDF markup
| tool) does this right: it has an explicit "redact" tool which
| deletes the content it's used on.
| bena wrote:
| I think it's part laziness here.
|
| Placing a black rectangle on a PDF is easier than modifying
| an image or removing text from that same PDF.
| maxerickson wrote:
| The tool in Acrobat is exactly placing black rectangles on
| stuff. There's a second step you are supposed to do when
| you are finishing marking the redactions that edits out the
| content underneath them, and offers to sanitize other
| hidden data:
|
| https://www.adobe.com/acrobat/resources/how-to-redact-a-
| pdf....
|
| That failed redactions happen over and over and over is
| kind of amazing.
| metabagel wrote:
| I hope you're not blaming the users. It's understandable
| they would be confused. The software needs to clarify it
| for the user. Perhaps, when you try to save it, it should
| warn you that it looks like you tried to redact text, and
| that text is still embedded in the document and could be
| extracted. And then direct you to more information on how
| to complete the redaction.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Professional users doing more than 1 document? Yes, I'm
| absolutely blaming them.
|
| I agree that affordances are good, but tools are tools,
| they can have rough edges, it's okay that it occasionally
| takes more than zero knowledge and attention to use them.
| creata wrote:
| The software could do better, sure, but in this case the
| accountability clearly falls on the lawyers. It's their
| job - and it's a job that can profoundly impact people's
| lives, so they need to take it seriously - to redact
| information properly.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| We have 30 years direct evidence that the users would
| ignore that warning, complain about the computer warning
| them too much, insist that the warning is entirely
| unnecessary, and then release a document with important
| information unredacted.
|
| The problem is that the user generally doesn't have a
| functioning mental model of what's actually going on.
| They don't think of a PDF as a set of rendering
| instructions that can overlap. They think it's paper.
| Because that's what it pretends to be.
|
| The best fix for this in almost any organization is the
| one that untrained humans will understand: After you
| redact, you print out and scan back in. You have policy
| that for redacted documents, they _must_ be scanned in of
| a physical paper.
| tremon wrote:
| _The problem is that the user generally doesn 't have a
| functioning mental model of what's actually going on_
|
| Sorry, but a professional user not having an operational
| understanding of the tools they're working with is called
| culpable negligence in any other profession. A home user
| not knowing how MS Word works is fine, but we're talking
| desk clerks whose primary task is document management,
| and lawyers who were explicitly tasked with data
| redaction for digital publication. I don't think we
| should excuse or normalize this level of incompetence.
| zrobotics wrote:
| I don't expect radiologists to have a good understanding
| of the software involved in the control loops for the
| equipment they operate. Why should a lawyer have to have
| a mental model or even understand how the pdf rendering
| engine works?
|
| Have you ever had to actually react a document in acrobat
| pro? It's way more fiddly and easy to screw up than one
| would expect. Im not saying professionals shouldn't learn
| how to use their tools, but the UI in acrobat is so
| incredibly poor that I completely understand when
| reaction gers screwed up. Up thread there's an in
| complete but very extensive list of _this exact thing
| happening over and over_. Clearly there 's a tools
| problem here. Actual life-critical systems aren't
| developed this way, if a plane keeps crashing due to the
| same failure we don't blame the pilot. Boeing tried to do
| that with the max, but they weren't able to successfully
| convince the industry that that was OK.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| The link in the comment you are replying to has a
| screenshot of exactly this. it's a prompt with a checkbox
| asking you to delete the metadata and hidden info
| involved with the redaction. you'd have to blaze past
| that and not read it to make this mistake. It is user
| error.
|
| I guess if you really want to defend users here you could
| say people are desensitized so much by popup spam that a
| popup prompt is gonna just be click through'd so fast the
| user probably barely recognizes it, but that's not the
| software's problem. For whatever reason some users would
| prefer to just put black boxes over obfuscated text, so
| here we are
| queuebert wrote:
| Adobe's contempt for users strikes again.
| RajT88 wrote:
| The consequences of fucking it up are low, too.
|
| If they get caught, they just take the document down and
| deny it ever got posted. Claim whatever people can show is
| a fake.
|
| Since they control the levers of government, there's few
| with the resources and appetite for holding them
| accountable. So far, we haven't un-redacted anything too
| damning, so push hasn't come to shove yet.
|
| The only _might_ change if there 's a "blue wave" in the
| midterms, but even then I wouldn't count on it.
| dhosek wrote:
| I've not looked too deeply, but based on other discussion,
| I wonder if this was malicious noncompliance meant to
| reveal what the higher-ups were ordering hidden. If
| victims' names are properly redacted that would be strong
| evidence.
| metabagel wrote:
| > Folks around here blame incompetence, but I say the
| frequency of this kind of cock-up is crystal clear telemetry
| telling you the software tools suck.
|
| Absolutely. They know this is confusing, and they're bound
| and determined not to fix it. At the least, they need a pop-
| up to let you know that it's not doing what you might think
| it's doing.
| stocksinsmocks wrote:
| I'm optimistic that because LLMs have brought down the cost
| of the mere act of typing out code that we will see a shift
| in focus on certification and verification. Preferably with
| some legal protection for customers that are sorely lacking
| today.
| dhosek wrote:
| Apple's Preview app does exactly that. I discovered this
| while trying to make a blanked copy of kid #2's homework
| worksheet for kid #1 who left his at school after kid #2
| already wrote on her copy.
| jm4 wrote:
| It often comes down to not using the right software and
| training issues. They have to use Acrobat, which has a
| redaction tool. This is expensive so some places cheap out on
| other tools that don't have a real redaction feature. They
| highlight with black and think it does the same thing whereas
| the redaction tool completely removes the content and any
| associated metadata from the document.
|
| This was basically the only reason we were willing to cough
| up like $400 for each Acrobat license for a few hundred
| people. One redaction fuckup could cost you whatever you
| saved by buying something else.
|
| I would like to believe that the DOJ lacking the proper
| software might have something to do with DOGE. That would be
| sweet irony.
| ozim wrote:
| I think someone just got free marketing materials to
| promote the redaction tools.
|
| Now much more people will be aware of the issue.
| zzzeek wrote:
| not even, anyone still left at DOJ working to protect the
| president is immensely corrupt, and this is just that
| careless stupidity that typically goes along with deeply
| corrupt people.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| This is to be expected from an effort like DOGE simply
| because the E is for Efficiency. That is, how well a system
| is performing. The ratio of energy input to output.
|
| Unfortunately the E in DOGE should have been for
| Effectiveness. That is, is the system shooting at the right
| target, and how close is it to hitting that target.
|
| You can be very efficient but if you're doing the wrong
| thing(s) you're ultimately wasting resources.
|
| The irony is, DOGE got the E wrong. It's efficient but not
| effective
| limagnolia wrote:
| Are you saying that only Adobe PDF has proper redaction
| tools? I did a quick search and found several open source
| PDF tools claiming to do redaction- are they all faulty? I
| would honestly be surprised if there aren't any free tools
| that do it right.
| kccqzy wrote:
| No that's not what GP is saying. GP is saying that there
| is software that does not have a redaction feature
| (perhaps because the developer didn't implement it), but
| users of the software worked around it by adding a black
| rectangle to the PDF in such software, falsely believing
| it to be equivalent to redaction.
|
| Properly implementing redaction is a complicated task.
| The redaction can be applied to text, so the software
| needs to find out which text is covered by the rectangle
| and remove it. The redaction can be applied to images, so
| the software needs to edit a dizzying array of image
| formats supported by PDF (including some formats
| frequently used by PDFs but used basically nowhere else,
| like JBIG2). The redaction can be applied to invisible
| text (such as OCR text of a scanned document). The
| redaction can be applied to vector shapes, so some
| moderately complicated geometry calculations are needed
| to break the vector shapes and partially delete them.
|
| It's very easy to imagine having a basic PDF editor that
| does not have a redaction feature because implementing
| the feature is hard.
|
| For the same reason, a basic PDF editor does not have a
| real crop feature. Such an editor adds a cropbox and
| keeps all the content outside the cropbox.
| wildzzz wrote:
| If my law firm can't afford the $20/month for a copy of
| Acrobat Pro, I'd be very concerned what else they are
| cutting corners on.
| tobyjsullivan wrote:
| Always worth remembering that PDFs are basically a graphic
| design format/editor from the 70s. It was never intended for
| securely redacting documents and while it _can_ be done,
| that's not the default behaviour.
|
| No surprise non-experts muck it up and I don't see that
| changing until they move to special-purpose tools.
| orionspelt wrote:
| Befuddling you are befuddled by non-tech obsessed people
| failing to grasp tech.
| rafram wrote:
| Based on the prose style, I'm assuming you copy-pasted a
| ChatGPT "deep research" answer?
| wycy wrote:
| The prose style and the fact that it was super repetitive.
| Every bullet re-described the copy-pasting. Definitely LLM
| slop.
| tpoacher wrote:
| reminds me of that leaky redaction program that won the
| obfuscated c contest some years back
| Delk wrote:
| Probably the Underhanded C Contest
| (https://www.underhanded-c.org/_page_id_17.html) but yeah.
| Obfuscated C Contest entries usually aren't underhanded, just
| intentionally obscure about what they do or how they do it.
| tpoacher wrote:
| sorry, yes, that one.
|
| Great contest. And a great entry, I had a big chuckle running
| it and unredacting my documents, even photos!
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| [dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46364121
| dang wrote:
| We'll merge those comments hither.
| vdupras wrote:
| Trump's razor: Why attribute something to incompetence when you
| can attribute it to patriotic sabotage?
| andrewflnr wrote:
| There's no patriotism here. That's just part of the cover for
| seeking power.
| vdupras wrote:
| Who's seeking power, the poor schmuck who misused their PDF
| tools?
|
| It seems that my novel "razor" is misunderstood. The article
| attributes bad redacting to gross incompetence. But what if
| the person having done this bad redacting is instead doing
| sabotage with plausible deniability "lol, those damn PDF
| tools, you never know how they work"?
|
| It makes this story more interesting, and it allows one to
| see an outline of the future film scripts that will be
| written about this period. The courageous saboteurs at the
| dawn of american fascism.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| I do think I misunderstood your post, sorry. I was thinking
| of those ordering the redaction.
|
| I do still think incompetence is more likely to be the
| explanation. Incompetent redactions are a perennial problem
| even in much less controversial situations.
| jimt1234 wrote:
| There's no patriotism in protecting chomos.
| TRiG_Ireland wrote:
| It's certainly possible that some of the underlings are
| deliberately sabotaging orders from above. It's also possible
| that they're incompetent, as so many of the Trump team are. How
| would we know which it is?
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| define "patriotism"
| tim333 wrote:
| It's quite funny really. Apparently you just cut and paste the
| text into Word. They just had the pdf put black rectangles on
| top.
| pilaf wrote:
| Why into Word specifically?
| iAMkenough wrote:
| The average office worker has it on their computer,
| illustrating how commonplace unredacting could be. Any text
| tool will work, even some designed to detect bad redactions
| in PDFs via drag and drop (now specifically trained on these
| known bad redactions).
| https://github.com/freelawproject/x-ray
| arendtio wrote:
| You have a better editor?
| adtac wrote:
| ed is the standard Unix text editor.
| lagniappe wrote:
| ed is a line editor
| Melonai wrote:
| vi is also an editor, but sadly not the standard one, and
| since standard is king: ed it is.
| echelon wrote:
| Why reveal the trick before all the papers have been released?
| pohl wrote:
| IKR?!
| Sceptre6 wrote:
| I don't think there is a grand conspiracy here. Any schmoe
| can download these files, select with their mouse, and copy
| paste into a document.
| alex77456 wrote:
| Someone wanted to make sure to be the first?
| njharman wrote:
| Clout. Monetization.
| nlitsme wrote:
| Can you post the document numbers, I can't find where these texts
| are in the original pdfs.
| nlitsme wrote:
| ah, found it - this is from the 'Court Records' part.
|
| https://www.justice.gov/multimedia/Court Records/Matter of the
| Estate of Jeffrey E. Epstein, Deceased, No. ST-21-RV-00005
| (V.I. Super. Ct. 2021)/2022.03.17-1 Exhibit 1.pdf
| embedding-shape wrote:
| AKA https://www.justice.gov/multimedia/Court%20Records/Matter
| %20...
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Link broken. (See reply with link that works.)
| nickpinkston wrote:
| I wonder if any of this is a conscious act of resistance vs. just
| incompetence.
|
| And yes, I've heard of Hanlon's Razor haha
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor
| wolpoli wrote:
| Black square vs redaction tool difference is well known if
| someone's job involves redacting PDF or just working with PDF.
| It's most likely that additional staffs were pulled in and
| weren't given enough training.
| cynicalsecurity wrote:
| Let people believe it's deliberate sabotage. Unfortunately,
| in real life, minions of a dictator serve the dictator; they
| don't risk their live or safety for a noble cause. Any screw-
| ups are a result of gross incompetence that is typical for
| every dictatorship.
| andsoitis wrote:
| Do you truly believe the US is currently a dictatorship?
| idle_zealot wrote:
| It's not so simple a binary. We're definitely much less
| democratic than a year ago, and the bar was low then.
| sneak wrote:
| I'm still always surprised that there are adults who
| think it is not.
|
| The CIA, for example, is entirely above the law.
| neutronicus wrote:
| That's different from a dictatorship, though, especially
| if the CIA is not answerable to a supposed dictator.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > That's different from a dictatorship,
|
| Its exactly equivalent to a dictatorship by the head of
| the CIA, unless the CIA is effectively answerable to some
| other authority despite not being answerable to the law,
| and then it is equivalent to a dictatorship by that
| higher authority.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Its exactly equivalent to a dictatorship by the head
| of the CIA_
|
| No it's not. I can commit all manner of illegal acts in
| my home unnoticed, that doesn't make me a dictator.
| sneak wrote:
| The CIA ran torture prisons, got caught, then there was a
| congressional inquiry, and they hacked into the computers
| of the congresspeople to delete the evidence of torture.
|
| Then they got caught hacking congressional computers to
| delete evidence.
|
| Nothing happened to them.
|
| They are above the law. You are not.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _CIA ran torture prisons, got caught, then there was a
| congressional inquiry, and they hacked into the computers
| of the congresspeople to delete the evidence of torture_
|
| One, source?
|
| Two, this above reproach. Not above the law. They deleted
| the evidence, they didn't just blow the scandal off.
| (Historically, our IC was popular. Right now, it's the
| deep state. You're seeing political appointees at the FBI
| and CIA exert control.)
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Yes, and if the hypothetical were that the CIA was
| effectively outside of control of the law for actions
| committed in private by CIA personnel in their homes,
| then the conclusion would be different (even though an
| agency the scale of the CIA would still have different
| implications than an individual even then), but that
| wasn't the hypothetical under discussion, which had much
| fewer--as in zero--qualifications on the CIA's lack of
| accountability.
|
| Analogies don't work when they aren't analogous.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _if the hypothetical were that the CIA was effectively
| outside of control of the law for actions committed in
| private by CIA personnel in their homes_
|
| My point is their actions _are_ committed outside the
| law. They 've just been able to avoid punishment by
| covering it up. What they are not is _above_ the law, at
| least not in the long run. (There are absolutely short
| bouts where the CIA acts above the law overseas, and rare
| cases where it has done so domestically. But the fact
| that they 're covering it up betrays that they're crafty
| bastards, not invincible ones.)
| neutronicus wrote:
| The CIA can't rule by edict.
|
| Being above the law is necessary but not sufficient to be
| a dictator.
|
| We also don't know enough about the internal politics of
| the CIA to assert much about the head of the CIA.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| From what I gather, it's so tight that when a clandestine
| company has served its purpose and winds down, anybody
| who managed to become a shareholder gets to cash out.
|
| Anything else could blow the cover for next time.
| bdangubic wrote:
| what is the US exactly currently if not dictatorship? is
| there a single thing "President" cannot do right now and
| if so who would be stopping him? so perhaps on paper US
| is not dictatorship much like Russia and China are not...
| We spend decades trying to fight these regimes and lost
| so much that now we are worse than them :)
| chocoboaus3 wrote:
| The supreme court did just stop him for the moment
| putting the national guard into chicago
| bdangubic wrote:
| bookmark this for a few days and then come back to it...
| the story is "... for now" :-)
| jibal wrote:
| "rare setback"
| bdangubic wrote:
| it is not a setback, they have to play a little game now
| and again to entertain the masses. scotus as it was
| before doesn't exist anymore and won't for decades, it
| now just rubberstamps
| jibal wrote:
| I quoted the media. The main point in this context is the
| "rare" part. I'm well aware of the nature of the GOP
| operatives on the SCOTUS. Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch all
| voted in Trump's favor. That Beerhead, Ms.
| IDreamOfGilead, and "Citizens United/I hate the VRA/worst
| chief justice since Taney" voted to temporarily uphold
| the stay actually surprised me (Bart O' said he would
| have given Trump more leeway) but yes, it's theater.
| hattmall wrote:
| It's pretty clear he can barely do anything policy wise.
| Limited tariffs and immigration / border stuff is pretty
| much all that he is getting done.
| bdangubic wrote:
| you don't need policy, policy is what his predecessors
| were doing and are now going "wait, we could have done
| whatever the F we wanted??! damn!!" :)
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| And killing so many sailors in South American waters.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > so many
|
| To be exact, CNN reports that for the period Sep - Dec
| there have been ~30 boats destroyed in ~26 attacks, with
| at least ~105 deaths in these operations.
|
| The US govt is of course claiming narcotics smugglers
| ("narcoterrorism") while others say they are not. The
| truth is probably somewhere inbetween, though who knows
| one which end of the spectrum.
|
| What I think is maybe more interesting is the general
| pressure being applied to Venezuela by the US and the EU.
| nothrabannosir wrote:
| _> is there a single thing "President" cannot do right
| now_
|
| Stand in the middle of fifth Avenue and shoot someone :)
|
| Have political enemies executed
|
| Get his face on Mount Rushmore
|
| Disband congress
|
| Disband the Supreme Court
|
| Keep Jimmy Kimmel off air
|
| Get Jon Stuart to shut up
|
| Get James comey indicted
|
| Get a national holiday named after him
|
| Etc.
|
| Even when we focus on things he tried to do, there is a
| lot he couldn't. Let alone when you look at things he
| didn't try to do.
| bdangubic wrote:
| we are 11 months in, please be patient while the process
| is taking place, be right with you with your list :)
|
| lots of these are of course also just a distraction to
| discuss at Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner vs you know,
| other things
| nothrabannosir wrote:
| You said "right now". If you want to change to "will be
| able to do in the near future, before the end of his
| second term", that's a (slightly?) different list. But
| it's also a different comment.
|
| You said "anything", in the context of dictatorship. I
| only used items in this list which IMO you can reasonably
| say Putin, an actual dictator, can do. Right now. Except
| the first one! Because that was a joke, a reference to
| something he himself said he could do.
|
| If you want to change to "anything which has backroom
| deal importance, not just bread and games for the masses,
| but the real things, if you know you know", that's a
| (slightly) different list.
|
| But, it's also a different comment.
| h33t-l4x0r wrote:
| Well he did get Ellen Degeneris to self-deport
| exasperaited wrote:
| He has functionally neutered Congress. It is almost
| completely meaningless and it is operating without an
| independent Speaker.
|
| I think he could succeed in principle re: Mount Rushmore,
| to be honest. I think eventually people will cave in and
| agree to do it, and then they will just pray to
| cholesterol that they can wait it out.
| Loughla wrote:
| I truly believe we're headed that direction. I've lived
| long enough to have seen a wide variety of presidents,
| both good and bad. This one is easily the worst one, in
| terms of bare naked power grabs.
|
| I believe Trump will manufacture a crisis before he's out
| of office in a bid to maintain control. I believe he will
| have learned from Bush Jr. that a simple war isn't good
| enough, and it needs to be a genuine emergency.
|
| I believe he'll do whatever he can to make that happen.
| Native born terrorist, or war with a close country, or
| absolutely over the top financial crash. Something awful
| that lets him invoke some obscure rule that lets him stay
| in power with congressional approval - he'll just skip
| the congressional approval part like he already does.
| irishcoffee wrote:
| This is one of those instances where I with hn had some
| kind of remindMe feature.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Hopefully it is not an instance where you _won 't_ need
| it.
| Loughla wrote:
| I hope I'm wrong, but I legit believe that will happen.
|
| See you in about 2 years.
| quesera wrote:
| > _Something awful that lets him invoke some obscure rule
| that lets him stay in power with congressional approval_
|
| There is literally no such obscure rule, and a new
| Congress will be seated two weeks before the 2029
| Presidential Inauguration.
|
| Elections, and the compulsory ends of terms, inauguration
| of new Congresses, etc, happen on schedule without regard
| to any exceptional cases, including Civil War.
|
| If he can get a majority of the Electoral College for a
| third term, and a majority in both houses of Congress in
| 2028, then things get much more complicated.
|
| But there is no other path. Elections matter, and don't
| let _anyone_ discourage you from believing that they don
| 't matter enough to vote.
| vkou wrote:
| How would the roadmap for turning a democracy into a one
| party dictatorship differ from the trajectory we are on?
| rurban wrote:
| Which democracy? The USA isn't one for decades already
| vkou wrote:
| I've no doubt that if we plopped you down in the middle
| of, say, modern-day Russia, you'd be able to observe a
| few important differences in the political organization
| of the two countries.
|
| Fewer than you would a year or nine ago, certainly, and a
| lot of people are working very hard on closing the gap.
|
| Democracy is a spectrum. There have always been
| significant flaws with American democracy, but you'd be
| mad to not observe significant, active regression and
| effort by the government to replace it with something
| else.
| rurban wrote:
| Unfortunately this is unrealistic as we cannot travel to
| both countries easily.
| vunderba wrote:
| I wouldn't go so far as to call it a dictatorship, but
| it's definitely trending toward authoritarianism.
|
| Wasn't too hard to put together a quick graph of the past
| decade for the U.S. using the World Press Freedom Index
| (relative ranking and score) - an annual ranking of 180
| countries published by Reporters Without Borders that
| measures the level of press freedom.
|
| https://imgur.com/a/4liEqqi
| ourmandave wrote:
| The pendulum swings. It always does. And all the powers
| SCOTUS gave the executive branch will eventually be in
| the hands of the Loyal Opposition.
|
| If it swings as far back you might even see universal
| health care, sane gun laws, fair wages, campaign finance
| reform, reproductive freedom, science based policy
| making, reigning in billionaires, etc.
| DANmode wrote:
| Tell us more about the sane ("common sense"?) gun laws!
|
| I love these.
| cyberax wrote:
| I'd love to limit the semi-auto rifles like the infamous
| AR-15. Useless for hunting, useless for self-defense. In
| exchange for country-wide reciprocity for concealed carry
| and firearm transportation.
| pppppiiiiiuuuuu wrote:
| > Useless for hunting, useless for self-defense.
|
| I'm not a 1A guy, I think that for instance people with a
| history of domestic violence shouldn't be armed (that is
| what I would cite as "common sense"), but this statement
| really damages your credibility. Of course semiautomatic
| rifles are useful for both hunting and for self defense.
| They are effective weapons. That's the problem.
| cyberax wrote:
| > I'm not a 1A guy, I think that for inference people
| with a history of domestic violence shouldn't be armed
|
| Whut? How the fuck did you make that jump?
|
| AR-15 rifles are useless for hunting. They are too small
| to reliably kill large game (deer) and too large for
| small game (rabbits). Sure, they're fine for coyotes, but
| if you're buying an AR-15 to hunt coyotes, then you
| should just stop.
|
| AR-15s are also useless for self-defense. They are too
| bulky for indoor use, and the bullets can penetrate
| multiple walls. A regular semi-auto handgun is far
| superior if you're looking to protect yourself against
| domestic violence.
| pppppiiiiiuuuuu wrote:
| The domestic violence thing was about a potential gun
| regulation, not a scenario. People with domestic violence
| convictions are overrepresented among murderers and mass
| shooters. So it would make sense to prevent them from
| obtaining guns.
|
| It's useless for hunting, but you identify circumstances
| it's useful in. You say it's useless for self defense
| because it's bulky, I've heard a hundred people say it's
| ideal because it's easier to be proficient with a rifle
| than with a pistol.
|
| Say whatever you want, but when you make absolute
| statements like that, it damages your credibility. That's
| my feedback for you.
| consz wrote:
| I think you may have very differing views of what "self-
| defense" situations you and the other poster are talking
| about.
|
| Could you describe a specific scenario one of those
| hundred people might be imagining?
| pppppiiiiiuuuuu wrote:
| I don't really care to have an in depth discussion of
| self defense scenarios because I don't think that helps
| us understand common sense gun regulation any better. I'm
| sure you can find people making that argument if you are
| curious. My point is not that the AR-15 is an appropriate
| self defense weapon but that there are better arguments
| you could have made, and that the one you did make lost
| someone who is already sympathetic to your position.
| cyberax wrote:
| You're a bot, likely.
| pppppiiiiiuuuuu wrote:
| I guess what I'm saying doesn't compute.
| consz wrote:
| I did find someone making that argument, you. I don't
| think asking for one example out of a hundred is asking
| for an in depth discussion, but if you claim this is too
| much for you then I won't push the issue.
| pppppiiiiiuuuuu wrote:
| It's just not what I'm talking about it the point I'm
| trying to make. I wasn't making that argument.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| "it's ideal because it's easier to be proficient with a
| rifle than with a pistol"
|
| So a shotgun then?
| ourmandave wrote:
| I could cut-n-paste a bunch of them and you could copy
| back all the arguments against them, if you want to do
| that.
|
| Or post a link to a tiresome comment sections where it's
| been done countless times.
|
| But until 2A is amended there's nothing we can do.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27No_Way_to_Prevent_This,%
| 27_...
| DANmode wrote:
| For record:
|
| That's _why_ I love the conversations.
| DANmode wrote:
| > science based policy making
|
| One of my favorite trivia questions is: how long has it
| been since Congress has had staff scientists?
| salawat wrote:
| Well, I'd do a guess and say at least since the
| Congressional Office of Technology Assessment got deep-
| sixed back in the 95. Either that or they never had them.
| jliptzin wrote:
| Oh the horror!
| refurb wrote:
| You act like Trump's policies don't have broad support
| with a majority of voters.
| ourmandave wrote:
| Polls can be capricious, but Trump's recent numbers with
| some groups have seen big drops.
| sdenton4 wrote:
| I have very little faith that scotus will have any
| consistency in their decisions going forward - they seem
| to be nakedly political, and backing trump. If the
| elections swing the other direction (despite their aid in
| gerrymandering), expect them to cry about the power of
| the presidency and start rolling it back as fast as they
| can push decisions through the shadow docket.
| kergonath wrote:
| > The pendulum swings. It always does. And all the powers
| SCOTUS gave the executive branch will eventually be in
| the hands of the Loyal Opposition.
|
| That sounds reinsuring, but it is completely false. The
| idea that the pendulum swings is just regression to the
| mean: sure, after a terrible president, the next one is
| likely to be less terrible. But there is nothing that
| implies that after a far-right regime will come a far-
| left one. In fact, if you look at History in various
| countries around the world, this seems very unlikely.
|
| > If it swings as far back you might even see universal
| health care, sane gun laws, fair wages, campaign finance
| reform, reproductive freedom, science based policy
| making, reigning in billionaires, etc.
|
| Don't count on it. In all likelihood it will regress to
| the centre. The American culture hasn't changed that much
| and American leftists did not suddenly become competent
| at getting popular support.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| > But there is nothing that implies that after a far-
| right regime will come a far-left one. In fact, if you
| look at History in various countries around the world,
| this seems very unlikely.
|
| Looking at the history of left wing movements in
| countries post-WWII, can you think of a reason why they
| wouldn't be successful and far-right ones would? The Cold
| War may have been a factor.
|
| > Don't count on it. In all likelihood it will regress to
| the centre.
|
| The center doesn't exist anymore. The right-wing has
| labeled the US Democratic Party as extreme left. There
| should be a term for 'forcing your opposition to
| materialize because you are unable to distinguish between
| propaganda and reality'.
| kergonath wrote:
| > Looking at the history of left wing movements in
| countries post-WWII, can you think of a reason why they
| wouldn't be successful and far-right ones would?
|
| In western democracies, I can think of a couple. For
| example, the wave of left-wing intellectualism that was
| prevalent up until the 1980s got somewhat lost and lost
| contact with the lower classes, which left an opening for
| far-right populists.
|
| > The center doesn't exist anymore. The right-wing has
| labeled the US Democratic Party as extreme left.
|
| You're right. In that frame of reference, it might indeed
| regress to the far left, but that would still be slightly
| to the left of Bill Clinton. The US don't strike me as
| having a particularly strong left-wing culture and I
| don't see it appearing any time soon.
|
| > There should be a term for 'forcing your opposition to
| materialize because you are unable to distinguish between
| propaganda and reality'.
|
| I don't think the word exist, but the concept proved very
| useful to a lot of dictators.
| watwut wrote:
| > And all the powers SCOTUS gave the executive branch
| will eventually be in the hands of the Loyal Opposition.
|
| They will find excuses to reverse. There will be some
| technicality, made up historical precense or some
| actually untrue fact about the world that wil totally
| make the situation different.
|
| Conservative heretage foundation group has outcome in
| mind ... and "opposition" is not their preffered outcome.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| The country as a whole, no. But within the regime? Yeah.
| culi wrote:
| A man who tried to overturn an election is in power and
| is disappearing people on the streets without due
| process.
|
| The other day there was news about some ICE members who
| blew up the door to a family's home in order to detain a
| man. The man was a citizen. They knew that. They came to
| intimidate him because a few days earlier he tried
| filming their cars on a public street. That's just one
| example but these cases are only becoming _more_ common.
|
| One thing that's clear is that if he tries to overturn an
| election again, he is way better positioned to succeed
| this time. ICE is now the 5th most heavily funded
| military in the world and the whole point of DOGE[0] was
| to centralize the government and fill only with
| loyalists.
|
| [0] NYT investigation recently proved there were little
| savings https://archive.ph/y5guv
| andsoitis wrote:
| > disappearing people on the streets without due process.
|
| Undocumented immigrants can be detained and deported by
| the U.S. government but they are still legally entitled
| to due process.
|
| What is happening is aggressive enforcement and detention
| that can feel like "disappearing," but it is not the same
| thing as extrajudicial abduction in the legal sense.
|
| When people use the word "disappeared" they usually mean
| families temporarily can't find someone after detention,
| detainees are transferred far aways, no lawyer
| automatically assigned, communication is difficult,
| deportation happens very quickly. While this is real
| harm, it is not the same phenomenon as disappearance
| under international law.
|
| The U.S. is aggressively detaining and deporting
| undocumented immigrants under civil law, sometimes with
| minimal process and poor transparency -- but not through
| secret, extrajudicial disappearances. Due process is
| thinner than for citizens, enforcement can be opaque and
| traumatic, but this is not the same as "vanished" outside
| the legal system.
| brunoqc wrote:
| Maybe because facism favor loyalty over competence.
| zerocrates wrote:
| Arendt:
|
| Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-
| rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those
| crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and
| creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-
| rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those
| crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and
| creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.
|
| Same reason unions always work hardest when fighting on
| behalf of the worst workers. If you go to bat for a man
| who can't do better elsewhere he'll go to bat for you in
| return.
|
| But wait, the situation is more complicated than that you
| say? Why yes, that's exactly the point. Two of us can
| play at the stupid smug oversimplification game.
|
| While the effect being described is real to an extent,
| distilling it to the point you did is useless because
| there is so much more nuance. Why assume the place was
| staffed with first rate talent to begin with? And even if
| there is a lot of first rate talent many will stick
| around because they don't care who they serve (people not
| like this don't tend to make careers in government TBH).
| Dusseldorf wrote:
| Colleagues whose full time job is doing this sort of thing
| for various bits of the government have told me this is
| exactly the case here. People from all over the government
| have been deputized to redact these documents with little or
| no prior training.
| mindslight wrote:
| I wonder if this activity is being used as a kind of
| loyalty test. Keep track of who is assigned to redact what,
| and then if certain files leak or are insufficiently
| redacted, they indicate who isn't all in on Dear Leader.
|
| It's not like a few more stories of Trump raping $whomever
| are going to move the needle at all, especially with how
| the media is on board with burying negative coverage of the
| regime.
|
| Also if you're wondering how this activity isn't some kind
| of abuse of government resources, keep in mind that thanks
| to the Supreme Council's embrace of the Unitary Executive
| Theory (ie Sparkling Autocracy), covering up evidence about
| Donald Trump raping under-aged sex trafficking victims is
| now an _official priority of the United States Government_.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| I guess they might try, but given all the other nonsense
| I certainly don't think the admin is organized enough to
| execute that plan.
| dboreham wrote:
| CUaaS. Cover Up as a Service.
| femto wrote:
| With a sister website BAEaas (Backup and Extort as a
| service).
| culi wrote:
| If there's _that_ many people who have access to these
| files, I 'm shocked there hasn't been leaks until this
| point.
| lukan wrote:
| If loyalty is the metric and not competence they were
| selected for ..
| maeln wrote:
| Why risk leaking it and potentially getting caught, when
| you can do a bad job redacting instead :)
| themafia wrote:
| I'd want them to leak their instructions given to them
| for this assignment.
| Jcampuzano2 wrote:
| When other people close to the case end up dead you have
| a pretty decent reason to not leak.
| exasperaited wrote:
| Yeah -- don't attribute to resistance what can adequately be
| explained by idiocy.
| baby wrote:
| My understanding is that many people were fired and replaced
| by loyalists at the FBI. I think there are a lot of
| incompetent people working there right now.
| asmor wrote:
| It seems insane that nobody at the other end runs something
| as simple as MAT or imagick (twice) over it to take the text
| layers out before uploading though. I hope this is at least
| partially intentional.
| neilv wrote:
| A third possibility is diversion, while the most damaging
| evidence would be suppressed a different way.
| apical_dendrite wrote:
| Reporting is that they had a basically impossible deadline and
| they took lawyers off of counterintelligence work to do this.
| So a conscious act of resistance is possible, but it's a
| situation where mistakes are likely - people working very
| quickly trying to meet a deadline and doing work they aren't
| that familiar with and don't really want to be doing.
| jmward01 wrote:
| It seems like a common tactic by this administration is to
| just not do what they are required to do until they have been
| told 50 times and criminal charges are being filed. I suspect
| the actual truth here is 'don't do this' turned into 'you
| have 1 day to do this and keep my name out of the release'
| which led to lots of issues. They probably spent more time
| deciding the order of pages to release, and how to avoid
| releasing the things damaging to the administration, than
| actually doing the work needed to release it. Now they will
| say 'look, see! You didn't give us enough time and our
| incompetence is the proof'
| cosmicgadget wrote:
| Considering the Comey, James, and Adams debacles, seems quite
| likely they're purged most people with a shred of competence.
| jmyeet wrote:
| It's a good question.
|
| For context, lawyers deal with this all the time. In discovery,
| there is an extensive document ("doc") review process to
| determine if documents are responsive or non-responsive. For
| example, let's say I subpoenaed all communication between Bob
| and Alice between 1 Jan 2019 and 1 Jan 2020 in relation to the
| purchase of ABC Inc as part of litigation. Every email would be
| reviewed and if it's relevant to the subpoena, it's marked as
| responsive, given an identifier and handed over to the other
| side. Non-responsive communication might not be eg attorney-
| client communications.
|
| It can go further and parts of documents can be viewed as non-
| responsive and otherwise be blacked out eg the minutes of a
| meeting that discussed 4 topics and only 1 of them was about
| the company purchase. That may be commercially sensitive and
| beyond the scope of the subpoena.
|
| Every such redaction and exclusion has to be logged and a
| reason given for it being non-responsive where a judge can
| review that and decide if the reason is good or not, should it
| ever be an issue. Can lawyers find something damaging and not
| want to hand it over and just mark it non-responsive?
| Technically, yes. Kind of. It's a good way to get disbarred or
| even jailed.
|
| My point with this is that lawyers, which the Department of
| Justice is full of, are no strangers to this process so should
| be able to do it adequately. If they reveal something damaging
| to their client this way, they themselves can get sued for
| whatever the damages are. So it's something they're careful
| about, for good reason.
|
| So in my opinion, it's unlikely that this is an act of
| resistance. Lawyers won't generally commit overt illegal acts,
| particularly when the only incentive is keeping their job and
| the downside is losing their career. It could happen.
|
| What I suspect is happening is all the good lawyers simply
| aren't engaging in this redaction process because they know
| better so the DoJ had the wheel out some bad and/or unethical
| ones who would.
|
| What they're doing is in blatant violation to the law passed
| last month and good lawyers know it.
|
| There's a lot of this going on at the DoJ currently. Take the
| recent political prosecutions of James Comey, Letitia James,
| etc. No good prosecutor is putting their name to those
| indictments so the administration was forced to bring in
| incompetent stooges who would. This included former Trump
| personal attorneys who got improerly appointed as US Attorneys.
| This got the Comey indictment thrown out.
|
| The law that Ro Khanna and Thomas Massey co-sponsored was
| sweeping and clear about what needs to be released. The DoJ is
| trying to protect both members of the administration and
| powerful people, some of whom are likely big donors and/or
| foreign government officials or even heads of state.
|
| That's also why this process is so slow I imagine. There are
| only so many ethically compromised lackeys they can find.
| sigwinch wrote:
| Fine, but the teeth of this act belong to some future justice
| department. I predict Trump will issue blanket pardons for
| everyone involved, up to Bondi; and that none of them will
| respect a congressional subpoena.
| jmyeet wrote:
| There's no putting this genie back in the bottle.
|
| MAGA is a cult and every cult has a mission. MAGA's mission
| is to uncover the elite pedophile ring. A cult can only be
| sustained so long as the mission is incomplete. Epstein is
| core foundational mythology. It's going to be really
| difficult if not impossible to redirect this.
|
| You'll notice that Mike Johnson once again has put Congress
| in recess to avoid it taking action, this time a day before
| the 30 day deadline. The last time was for 7 weeks to try
| and get Republicans to remove their names from the
| discharge petition to avoid all this. Republicans know what
| a core problem this is.
|
| So it's politically damaging with his base for Trump to
| pardon attorneys involved in obstructing this. But even if
| he weathers that, it doesn't solve his problem.
|
| For one, any attorneys despite any pardon are subject to
| disciplinary proceedings (including disbarment) as well as
| possible state charges.
|
| For another, this stuff is simply going to get out. Where
| previously a DoJ attorney would be committing career
| suicide if they got caught leaking things like grand jury
| testimony and confidential non-prosecution agreements, now
| they're obligated to. So they're not leakers anymore,
| they're whistleblowers who are following the law.
|
| Congress will eventually have to come back into session and
| Pam Bondi may actually face a real risk of impeachment. If
| that happens, who is going to want this job when the key
| requirement is being such a loyalist that you have to break
| the law?
|
| Congress will also seek compliaance from DoJ and hold
| investigations as well as drip feed their own documents
| from,say, the House Oversight Committee.
|
| And in the wings we still have Ghislaine Maxwell who is
| clearly operating under an implicit understanding that she
| will get a pardon or, more likely, a commutation. Her move
| to a lower security prison that isn't eligible for her type
| of offenses was (IMHO) clearly a move to buy her continued
| silence until it became politically possible to free her. I
| don't think that's ever going to be possible other than
| maybe a lame duck pardon when leaving office.
|
| This story is only getting bigger.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| There's already bipartisan talk of inherent contempt being
| applied in the House, so the teeth might not wait for a
| future justice department.
| larkost wrote:
| The discharge petition to all the bill that forced this
| release was going nowhere until President Trump declared
| that he was onboard, and then it happened. Until then it
| was going nowhere.
|
| My guess is that someone suggested to Trump that they
| could redact most of the bad bits and plausibly deny that
| they were doing that, and he decided that this was the
| path of least resistance.
|
| So I don't think there is any chance that he will easily
| allow any more votes to go the way of putting more
| pressure. Unless the pressure gets so bad that he has no
| choice (read: Newsmax and FoxNews both start pressure
| campaigns).
| jmyeet wrote:
| This is not correct at all.
|
| The GOP are masters of using parliamentary procedure to
| avoid votes that would pass that they don't want to pass,
| nominations and bills that they can't defend voting
| against.
|
| This was a big issue in the Obama era where Mitch
| McConnell was determined to make Obama a one term
| president and decided to "obstruct, obstruct, obstruct"
| on things that historically never been obstructed, or at
| least not to the degree they were under Obama. For
| example, judicial appointments would get stuck in
| committee and never come up for a vote because the vote
| would pass. The most famous example of this was the
| Merrick Garland Supreme Court nomination that was never
| given a vote for 11 months, which was completely
| unprecedented.
|
| The GOP has a narrow working majority in the House. The
| House, unlike the Senate, has the discharge petition
| process where if a majority of House representatives sign
| it, it forces a vote. All the Democratic reps signed on
| so it only took about 4 GOP reps for it to pass.
|
| The lengths Mike Johnson went to to avoid this were
| unprecedented. 3 Democratic reps have died in office this
| Congressional session. Texas has consistently delayed a
| special election to avoid a replacement. Arizona had a
| special election. A Democrat won and Johnson avoided
| swearing her in for 7 weeks because she would be the
| 218th and final signature on the discharge petition.
|
| 4 GOP reps signed on and the White House and the Speaker
| both put incredible pressure on them to change their
| mind. It was a big part of why Trump fell out with
| Marjorie Taylor-Greene (she was one of the 4).
|
| Why go to all this effort? Because Epstein was core
| foundational mythology for MAGA, reps couldn't defend
| voting against it and everybody knew it.
|
| Johnson then tried to use a procedure to pass a vote
| called unaminous consent. Basically, rather than go
| through a roll call of up to 435 members, the House is
| given the option to object. If anyone does, it forces a
| vote. Why would he do this? Because there's no voting
| record for unanimous consent. It gives members cover to
| say they did or didn't vote for something. A roll call is
| an official record. Democrats objected and thus we got an
| official vote with only 1 "no" vote (Rep Clay Higgins).
|
| The SEnate passed it with unanimous consent.
|
| This was a veto proof majority. So if it was so popular,
| why just not schedule a vote to begin with?
|
| And the obstruction continues. Johnson again put the
| House in recess 1 day before the 30 day deadline.
| Coincidence? I think not.
|
| And now we're getting illegal redactions, not meeting the
| 30 day deadline and a drip feed of document releases
| because (IMHO) they can't find enough ethically-
| challenged lackeys to do doc review and redact the names
| and images of Trump and powerful people, many of whom are
| likely donors.
|
| Johnson may well lose his position over this. The
| Attorney General has a non-zero chance of being impeached
| and removed over it.
|
| There is no putting this genie back in the bottle. It's
| not going away and at no point was the Trump circle
| comfortable they could redact their way out of it. They
| are in full on panic mode right now.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > My point with this is that lawyers, which the Department of
| Justice is full of, are no strangers to this process so
| should be able to do it adequately. If they reveal something
| damaging to their client this way, they themselves can get
| sued for whatever the damages are. So it's something they're
| careful about, for good reason.
|
| > So in my opinion, it's unlikely that this is an act of
| resistance. Lawyers won't generally commit overt illegal
| acts,
|
| Political redaction in this release under the Epstein
| Transparency Act _is_ an overt, illegal act.
|
| Does that reconfigure your estimation of whether DoJ
| attorneys that aren't the Trump inner-circle loyalists
| installed in leadership roles might engage in resistance
| against (or at least fail to point out methodological flaws
| in the inplmentation of) it?
| JohnTHaller wrote:
| Given the sheer number of people they had to pull in and work
| overtime to redact Trump's name as well as those of prominent
| Republicans and donors as per numerous sources within the FBI
| and the administration itself, incompetence is likely for a
| chunk of it.
| sigwinch wrote:
| It's funny that this effort, the largest exertion of FBI
| agents second only to 9/11, seems to be unprepared to redact.
| Cynically, I'm prepared for it to be part of a generative set
| of PDFs derived from the prompt "create court documents
| consistent with these 16 PDFs which obscure the role of
| Donald Trump between 1993 and 1998."
| _annum wrote:
| Generative subterfuge aside, the information being
| "uncovered" through copy-and-paste could have been modified
| and we would never know.
|
| I'm leaning towards negligence though.
| russellbeattie wrote:
| There's a third option: Ambivalence.
|
| Any major documents/files have been removed all together. Then
| the rest was farmed out to anyone they could find with basic
| instructions to redact anything embarrassing.
|
| Since there's absolutely zero chance anyone in the
| administration will ever be held accountable for what's left,
| they're not overly concerned.
|
| The thing that I've been waiting to see for years is the actual
| video recordings. There were supposedly cameras everywhere, for
| years. I'm not even talking about the disgusting stuff, I'm
| talking security for entrances, hallways, etc.
|
| The FBI definitely has them, where are they?
|
| What about Maxwell's media files? There was nothing found
| there? Did they subpoena security companies and cloud
| providers?
|
| The documents are all deniable. Yes video evidence can now be
| easily faked, but real video will have details that are hard to
| invent. Regardless, videos are worth millions of words.
| billy99k wrote:
| The 'resistance' was not releasing them during the last
| administration.
| userbinator wrote:
| Another option: also change some of the text underneath.
| lisbbb wrote:
| Did we learn anything useful or is it exactly as I said in the
| other thread, which got downvoted to hell, that all the really
| juicy blackmail material is with the CIA and will never see the
| light of day?
| apical_dendrite wrote:
| Do you have any evidence of that?
| XorNot wrote:
| Of course they don't but it sounds truthy so give it a few
| rounds of the Internet whisper machine and it can become
| accepted fact everybody "knows".
| gosub100 wrote:
| Won't know until all the documents are released. The blackmail
| is undeniable. But what's more interesting is who else was
| involved. Who purchased his services? That's what they are
| trying to hide.
| c420 wrote:
| "Like you guys have had this stuff for a year. Doesn't it seem
| like you could just throw all that into AI at this stage of the
| game? And just redact the names of the victims, and let's go."
| Joe Rogan
| juujian wrote:
| Apart from the technological and procedural question, I would
| love to learn why the DOJ found it important to protect Indyke.
| He was Epstein's lawyer, and now we learn that he was personally
| involved. He is not a Washington person. We expected there to be
| politically motivated protection of certain people, but is the
| DOJ just going to blanket protect anybody in the docs?
| avidiax wrote:
| Indyke works for other powerful people, runs in MAGA circles.
|
| Two things come to mind:
|
| * Some things Indyke did fall outside the scope of lawyer-
| client privilege. It would be bad for certain people to get him
| on a stand and force him to spill the beans. He was never
| interviewed re: Epstein [1]
|
| * He's a very talented lawyer, insofar as a competent lawyer
| with, at least, extreme discretion, is talented.
|
| [1]
| https://www.finance.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/letter_to_doj-f...
| notahacker wrote:
| > It would be bad for certain people to get him on a stand
| and force him to spill the beans.
|
| Yep. I think this sort of thing is actually their biggest
| concern with releasing the docs. They can redact or lose
| documents that say anything directly incriminating about
| Trump and his associates and dismiss everything Epstein and
| testimonies from the 2020s say about him as confabulation,
| but there are other people who might want to take the
| administration down with them if they get caught or even just
| get fed up of being doorstepped by the media, and some of
| them might have receipts.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Redactions are just hard in general. It's easy for stuff to
| slip through the cracks (as we've been seeing).
|
| It's why deleting documents outright is something we aren't
| really seeing. Those docs can still be floating around and,
| worse, there can be references to missing docs within the
| released docs.
|
| And with just the sheer volume of documents that are being
| released, it's clear to me why the Trump admin didn't
| release anything sooner. There's simply too much and the
| effort to prune it down to a specific narrative is too much
| of a monumental undertaking. It'd involve too many people
| which ultimately means it's more likely to leak out.
| Forgeties79 wrote:
| The goal (at least it appears this way to me) is less
| about having any sort of airtight defense or actually
| successfully protecting people in the docs so much as
| giving plausible deniability for the talking heads that
| support the administration to push as truth. If it's
| murky, sloppy, or otherwise unclear, then "no one wins"
| and "no one is right," so the event can be easily
| dismissed.
|
| You can open up any popular conservative forum/watch any
| mainstream conservative pundit and they are all saying
| the same thing: "there's nothing here it doesn't matter,
| Trump is just being photographed with women sometimes who
| cares?" Then some deflection about Bill Clinton, making
| sure to bring up the hot tub photo.
|
| The reason it hasn't gone away though, despite this often
| being a very effective approach, is because too many of
| them hung their hats on Epstein conspiracy theories from
| 2020 to 2024. It made a lot of people a lot of money and
| catapulted more than a handful of political careers. Now
| they have the means to be transparent and they can't make
| an acceptable excuse not to be since they were all so
| loudly chest pounding about it, including the vice
| president himself.
|
| I think almost all the discussions about Epstein are
| incredibly crass and gross. It's not about the victims or
| justice, it's about politics. I think there are obviously
| legitimate reasons to redact portions because we don't
| want to ruin more lives (not that this was a real good
| faith attempt at that). But there is still a small part
| of me that can't help but enjoy watching the Trump
| administration simmer in the pot they so clearly made for
| themselves over the last five years.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Gotta be honest, I think this has just been incompetence
| from top to bottom. But I also think this is a fracture
| in the trump coalition. It may be that conservative media
| is trying to move on from Trump which is why the "this is
| a nothing burger" defense hasn't been deployed as much.
|
| It's clear from early on when they just re-released the
| same already public docs that the Trump admin thought
| "Ok, this is over, we can just move on now". But that
| basically backfired, especially because the expectation
| from conspiracy theorists was that every single democrat
| would be implicated. When nothing new came out it drove
| for more questions and kept this alive as an issue.
|
| Now, I think they are continuing a bungled approach.
| These partial releases with aggressive redactions are
| only serving to keep the story alive. Ironically, if
| they'd complied with the law I could totally see the
| "this is a nothing burger" defense being something they'd
| pull off. But now with the seemingly daily revelations of
| "oh wow, Epstein was friends with famed abuser Nadler!
| And he said that Trump shared a taste in women!"
|
| These sorts of revelations really mostly only work
| because they are tied to being "new information just
| released".
|
| This also puts all conservative media on a backfoot. It's
| very hard for them to craft any sort of good narrative
| when every other day we are seeing wild and unexpected
| things like "Trump may have participated in murdering a
| baby".
| Forgeties79 wrote:
| Yeah to be clear I don't think they deliberately screwed
| up, I think they just don't care because they don't need
| it to be perfect. I think you're right that at its core
| this is incompetence
| JohnTHaller wrote:
| All you have to do is work for a MAGA person or MAGA
| billionaire donor for them to protect you.
| greatgib wrote:
| He was probably considered as a "victim" of having his crimes
| exposed...
| sigwinch wrote:
| He's one of the executors of Epstein's will. Better not piss
| him off.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| He was Epstein's lawyer, he almost certainly has the dirt on
| anyone the DoJ wants to protect, and may be the kind of person
| that would be inclined to burn whoever DoJ was protecting if he
| wasn't getting treatment at least as favorable.
| ttctciyf wrote:
| From TFA:
|
| > [Indyke] was hired by the Parlatore Law Group in 2022, before
| the justice department settled the Epstein case. That firm
| represents the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and previously
| represented Donald Trump in his defense against charges
| stemming from the discovery of classified government documents
| stored at Trump's Florida estate.
|
| So I don't know about "not a Washington person", but clearly
| connections exist to the current administration.
| mctt wrote:
| ..."Indyke, an attorney who represented Epstein for decades,
| has not been criminally indicted by federal authorities. He was
| hired by the Parlatore Law Group in 2022, before the justice
| department settled the Epstein case. That firm represents the
| defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and previously represented
| Donald Trump in his defense against charges stemming from the
| discovery of classified government documents stored at Trump's
| Florida estate."...
|
| From the Guardian UK https://archive.md/lO08a
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Not complicated, he represented Trump.
| Sparkyte wrote:
| I think this is a good thing. I think the people talking dictator
| this and that do not understand we have the ability to critique
| the administration. What we lack is control of the underhanded
| lobbyism. It is a warped democracy but still a democracy.
| hiddencost wrote:
| Bruh they're kidnapping people in the streets. They took over
| CBS and censored a documentary about CECOT.
| Sparkyte wrote:
| Warped democracy.
| gosub100 wrote:
| > They took over CBS
|
| Careful, this will get you labeled an antisemite
| Refreeze5224 wrote:
| You sure about that?
| https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2025/12/18/larry-bushart...
|
| Every slide towards authoritarianism is gradual, there is no
| announcement.
| sublinear wrote:
| If you think mere human incompetence with documents is bad,
| imagine all the vibe coded apps.
| digitaltrees wrote:
| Its not a hack to copy and paste text that is part of the
| document data. The incompetence of the people responsible to
| comply with the law doesnt mean its reasonable to label something
| a hack.
|
| Please change the title.
| weird-eye-issue wrote:
| If I open your laptop and guess your password then that counts
| as hacking you in both legal and security terms
|
| You don't need to do some sophisticated thing for it to be
| considered hacking
| dullcrisp wrote:
| I guess but if you write something down real small and I
| squint at it is that still hacking?
| TOMDM wrote:
| If someone sends me a document with text in it that they
| meant to remove but didn't and then I read that text, I
| haven't hacked anything they're just incompetent.
|
| Hacking is unauthorised use of a system. Reading a document
| that was not adequately redacted can hardly be considered
| hacking.
| jeffparsons wrote:
| Or in case some folks find the addition of a computer
| confusing here, if someone sends you a physical letter and
| they've used correction tape or a black marker to obscure
| some parts of the letter, and you scratch away the
| correction tape or hold the letter up to a light source to
| read what's underneath, have you committed a crime?
|
| I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know what the law has to say
| about this. But I do have at least a small handful of brain
| cells to rub together, so I know what the law _should_ say
| about this.
| TOMDM wrote:
| Precisely. If someone wants me to sign a contract on
| acceptable use of resources (like an agreement not to
| reverse engineer their software) they send me then that's
| another thing.
|
| Absent that excluding other default protections like
| copyright, what I do with it should fall under the
| assumption of "basically anything".
| prophesi wrote:
| If this were prior to 2021, I would say the CFAA could be
| violated so long as the property owner's _intentions_
| were for that information to only be accessible to
| certain users. But I think the CFAA has been sufficiently
| reduced in scope after Van Buren v United States [0]
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Buren_v._United_States
| left-struck wrote:
| Hacking is not just authorised use of a system. Hacking and
| hacking techniques can apply to systems you fully own or
| systems which you are authorised to hack. Hacking is using
| something in a way that the designer didn't anticipate or
| intend on.
| digitaltrees wrote:
| Adobe designed pdf to behave this way. Placing layers
| over text doesn't remove the text from the file. They
| have a specific redaction feature for that purpose.
| flufluflufluffy wrote:
| you telling me when I stick my pen up my nose I'm hacking
| it?
| koolala wrote:
| If you were blind would a screen reader read the documents?
| Thats not a hack.
| an0malous wrote:
| If your intent was to circumvent the redactions it would be
| digitaltrees wrote:
| Placing a black box on the text isn't a redaction any
| more than placing a sticky note would be. No reasonable
| person can expect a sticky note to permanently prevent
| readers from seeing text and no reasonable person can
| expect a black overlay box in pdf to prevent reading text
| because this is literally a fundamental feature of pdfs
| as a layer format file
| DrJokepu wrote:
| I'm not an attorney or anything, but the relevant federal
| statute is explicitly about unauthorized access of computer
| systems (18 USC 1030).
|
| Opening someone else's laptop and guessing the password would
| absolutely fall under that definition, but I think it's very
| much questionable if poking around a document that you have
| legitimately obtained would do so.
| reed1234 wrote:
| But copying and pasting text of publicly released documents
| is not illegal. Accessing someone's computer is illegal.
| While maybe it could fall under the umbrella of hacking in
| some general way, articles, and especially titles, should be
| more precise.
| immibis wrote:
| That actually is illegal in some circumstances, for example
| if the document is protected by copyright.
| digitaltrees wrote:
| You guessing my password is not the same as a know and
| expected behavior of a program. Adobe has a specific feature
| to redact. PDF is a format known to have layers. Lawyers are
| trained on day one not to make this mistake. (I am a
| recovering lawyer). This is either incompetence or deliberate
| disclosure.
| divbzero wrote:
| Yes, this is the digital equivalent of sticking a blank Post-it
| over text and calling it "redacted". Mind-boggling that the
| same mistake has been made over and over again.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Not the only thing hack means now, or the most common usage
| anymore. See "life hack" - it means unexpected technique.
| valleyer wrote:
| It's also the meaning used in the title of this very Web
| site.
| digitaltrees wrote:
| But this isn't an unexpected technique it's literally the
| core design of the pdf format. It's a layered format that
| preserves the layers on any machine. Adobe has a redaction
| feature to overcome the default behavior that each layer can
| be accessed even if there is a top layer in front.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Ok
| eviks wrote:
| Also had this first thought, but then a hack could just be a
| way around a limit/lack of authorization, doesn't have to be
| unknown/sophisticated, so copy of black boxes fits
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| > limit/lack of authorization
|
| By serving up the PDF file I am being authorized to receive,
| view, process, etc etc the entire contents. Not just some
| limited subset. If I wasn't authorized to receive some
| portion of the file then that needed to be withheld to begin
| with.
|
| That's entirely different from gaining unauthorized entry to
| a system and copying out files that were never publicly
| available to begin with.
|
| To put it simply, I am not responsible for the other party's
| incompetence.
| eviks wrote:
| That's not true, you can mistakenly receive data you're not
| authorized to have (might even be criminal to have!)
|
| > That's entirely different from gaining unauthorized entry
| to a system and copying out files that were never publicly
| available to begin with.
|
| That's not the sum total of hacks, if you have publicly
| accessible password-protected PDF and guess the password as
| 1234, that's a hack. Copy& paste of black boxes is
| similarly a hack around content protection
|
| > To put it simply, I am not responsible for the other
| party's incompetence.
|
| To put it even simpler, this conversation is not about you
| and your responsibility, but about the different meanings
| of the word "hack "
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| > you can mistakenly receive data you're not authorized
| to have (might even be criminal to have!)
|
| Not the layman, at least to the best of my knowledge.
|
| Yes, certain licensed professionals can be subject to
| legal obligations in very specific situations. But in
| general, if you screw up and mail something to me
| (electronic or otherwise) then that is on you. I am not
| responsible for your actions.
|
| > if you have publicly accessible password-protected PDF
| and guess the password as 1234, that's a hack
|
| Sure, I'll agree that the software to break the DRM
| qualifies as a hack (in the technical work sense). It
| also might (or might not) rise to the level of "lack of
| legal authorization". I don't think it should, but the
| state of laws surrounding DRM make it clear that one
| probably wouldn't go in my favor.
|
| However that isn't what (I understood) us to be talking
| about - ie legal authorization as it relates to black box
| redaction and similar fatally flawed approaches that
| leave the plain text data directly accessible (and thus
| my access plainly facilitated by the sender, if
| inadvertently).
|
| > this conversation is not about ...
|
| You are the only one using the term "hack" here. Please
| note that I had responded to your "limit/lack of
| authorization" phrasing. Nothing more.
|
| That said, while we're on the topic I'll note the
| ambiguity of the term "hack" in this context. Illegal
| access versus clever but otherwise mundane bit of code
| (no laws violated). You seem to be failing to clearly
| differentiate.
| eviks wrote:
| > Not the layman, at least to the best of my knowledge.
|
| Are you not aware of content that is criminal to possess?
| Like CP is the most common example.
|
| > I am not responsible for your actions.
|
| I've already addressed this confusion of yours - this is
| NOT about your responsibility for someone else's actions,
| but about your own actions and whether they constitute a
| "hack".
|
| > You are the only one using the term "hack" here. Please
| note that I had responded to your "limit/lack of
| authorization" phrasing. Nothing more.
|
| Please open a dictionary for the word hack to understand
| this conversation! And note the word "authorization" in
| the definition.
|
| > However that isn't what (I understood) us to be talking
| about - ie legal authorization
|
| Understandably you're confused, the legal limit is your
| own making, authorization is way broader than that.
|
| > I'll note the ambiguity of the term "hack" in this
| context
|
| Exactly!!! Keep looking into the definition to resolve
| the ambiguity!
|
| > You seem to be failing to clearly differentiate
|
| No, your differentiation is wrong
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| You realize we just went from (the legal equivalent of)
| "I accidentally mailed you my tax return" to "I
| accidentally mailed you a bomb". Like yeah, it remains
| illegal to retain possession of said bomb irrespective of
| the fact that someone intentionally sent it. That is ...
| not at all surprising?
|
| Beyond that you're clearly just trolling at this point,
| going to great lengths to manufacture an argument about a
| term that I never used to begin with. "Lack of
| authorization" has a clear legal meaning whereas "hack"
| does not.
| eviks wrote:
| > That is ... not at all surprising?
|
| For the 3rd time, this conversation is not about YOU and
| not about what surprises you!
|
| > "Lack of authorization" has a clear legal meaning
| whereas "hack" does not.
|
| No, you've made up this limit to some "legal meaning"
| (also wrong here, large variety there as well but
| wouldn't want to endulge you further). Again, open up a
| dictionary on "hack", then follow the definition of
| "authorization" from there, if you only find "legal" in
| there, get a better dictionary, journalists / commenters
| are usually not lawyers, so they wouldn't accept your
| artificial legal limits on meaning!
| user_7832 wrote:
| > Beyond that you're clearly just trolling at this point
|
| I think this is the greatest proof of the simultaneous
| validity of two different arguments. Disclaimer, I'm
| assuming (I think fairly) that you're in good faith.
|
| The funny thing is, to me, the other commenter's
| arguments are quite clear/obvious to me and make sense.
| Not that your points are wrong - but... I'm 99% sure the
| other person isn't trolling in the slightest. Y'all are
| just talking across each other.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| > Y'all are just talking across each other.
|
| Initially, perhaps. However note that my attempts to
| clarify exactly that are repeatedly followed by
| misconstruing my position. It's not so much that we
| disagree as that the supposed disagreement is about
| things I never said. The repeated failure to respond to
| what was actually said coupled with the combative tone is
| pretty much the definition of trolling. Of course that
| term does assume intent to an extent - if he's just
| having a bad day I'm not sure that _technically_
| qualifies. The end result is the same though.
|
| BTW if you feel I've missed some insightful point of his
| do please elaborate.
| pipo234 wrote:
| For starts, wouldn't it be kind of ironic to set up
| _limits_ and _authorization_ in a context that is about
| making some content available to the public?
|
| I'd say any technical or legal restrictions or possible
| means to enforce DRM ought to be disabled or absent from
| the media format used when disseminating content that must
| be disclosed.
|
| Censorship (of necessary) should purge the data
| entirely,ie: replace by ###
| reed1234 wrote:
| And the title should briefly describe the "hack" as well
| left-struck wrote:
| Hacking is any use of a technology in a way that it wasn't
| intended. The redaction is so stupid as to almost appear
| intentional, so maybe you're right, this isn't hacking because
| maybe the information was intended to be discovered.
| themafia wrote:
| It's being "undone with the lamest hack known to mankind."
|
| Still technically a hack.
| digitaltrees wrote:
| It's not a hack. It's known, expected behavior of the
| program. Adobe has a specific feature to redact. Color filled
| boxes is not it.
| themafia wrote:
| A dictionary definition: "use a computer to gain
| unauthorized access to data in a system."
|
| This isn't about knowledge or expectations. They didn't use
| colored boxes to jazz up the presentation, they _intended_
| to prevent you from reading it, and now you can, with this,
| again incredibly _lame_ almost meaningless even-my-five-
| year-old-could-do this "hack."
| caminante wrote:
| _> Please change the title._
|
| HN discourages editorializing headlines.
|
| While I wouldn't call it a "hack," common usage even here on HN
| isn't limited to "to gain illegal access to (a computer
| network, system, etc.)" [0]
|
| [0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hack
| pengaru wrote:
| "hacks"
|
| copy and paste people, the idiots have taken over
| NuclearPM wrote:
| There are people here that would still vote for these evil
| people.
| vincengomes wrote:
| "Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake" -
| Napoleon Bonaparte
|
| Let all the files get released first.
|
| Then show your hacks.
| esseph wrote:
| Too late. The data has been touched far too many times. The
| chain of custody and any accountability will never happen.
| rtkwe wrote:
| They're not 'hacks' it's the people doing the redaction making
| beginner mistakes of not properly removing the selectable text
| under the redactions. They're either drawing black rectangles
| over the text or highlighting it black neither of which
| prevents the underlying text from being selected.
|
| Keeping that secret would require sponaneous silence from
| everyone looking at these docs which is just not possible.
| irjustin wrote:
| Yes but don't tell them they're doing it wrong.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Misdirection 101
| rtkwe wrote:
| Impossible which is the point of the last sentence.
| Spontaneous secrecy when some people are discovering the
| bad redactions while publicly streaming is impossible.
| refurb wrote:
| Also don't assume the mistake wasn't intentional.
| chistev wrote:
| "Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained
| by incompetence."
| 9dev wrote:
| Exactly my thoughts as well.
| culi wrote:
| This was my initial reaction to this news. I mean think about
| it
|
| The Trump team _knows_ that nobody is gonna buy whatever they
| put out as being the full story. Isn 't this just the
| _perfect_ way to make people feel like they got something
| they weren 't supposed to see? They can increase trust in the
| output without having to increase trust in the source of it
|
| And as far as I've heard there hasn't been anything
| "unredacted" that's been of any consequence. It all just
| feels a little too perfect.
| gmueckl wrote:
| This is probably one of those events where everyone on the
| inside has their own story that won't fit into a neat
| overarching narrative of how the files are handled because
| they only gets to feel part of the elefant each.
| refurb wrote:
| That was my thought. Just happen to leak some info for
| people you are interested in hurting but claim it was an
| accident.
|
| And in terms of no big news in "unredacted", it's likely
| names that don't mean anything to the average voter but
| damaging material for K Street.
| kristofferR wrote:
| No, it's the opposite, it's fairly damaging. Previously
| they could claim, dubiously but plausible, that all
| redactions were about protecting victims (the only
| redactions allowed under the act). A lot of the "undone
| redactions" are solely about protecting the abusers,
| illegal under the law.
|
| Whether breaking a law actually matters anymore is another
| question though, as crime is legal now.
| themafia wrote:
| Crime may go unpunished by this is why statues of
| limitations exist. The window on some crimes stays open
| for a very long time.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| "Some" is 99% crimes against the state with the
| occasional bone they throw the peasants to look like they
| care. Heck, murder probably wouldn't even be unlimited if
| not for the fact that it thumbs it's nose at the state's
| monopoly on violence.
| themafia wrote:
| That's seems like some rather bleak hyperbole. If the
| goal of a conversation is to seek some improvement above
| the status quo then this is a solid impasse.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| The problems we face can't be accurately assessed let
| alone solved if we are limited to thinking and reasoning
| about the government (and large institutions generally)
| the way we are taught to by our grade school civics
| class.
| pstuart wrote:
| > as crime is legal now
|
| If _they_ do it, it 's not a crime.
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| It's the same government that invited a journalist to a
| signal discussion about ongoing military strike in Yemen.
| h33t-l4x0r wrote:
| Maybe that was just a ploy to get us to underestimate
| them.
| Natfan wrote:
| consider Hanlon's Razor
| pstuart wrote:
| As others have mentioned, the administration is staffed and
| run by loyalists, whose primary skills are flattery and
| obedience.
|
| Back in the day they had true masters of the Dark Arts. The
| forged letters about Bush's service were incredibly
| convenient in helping Bush beat Kerry. I am not alone in
| thinking it to be masterminded by Karl Rove.
| javcasas wrote:
| Please share your redacting tricks as loudly as you can, but
| only the ones that allow retrieving the original text. I'd love
| Google and the AIs to spout bad censoring tricks as much as
| possible.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| There's enough people who would do it for the clout and don't
| really care what is in the documents one way or the other.
| raincole wrote:
| The whole thing is just too suspicious. Too good to be true.
| What's the chance of this being some 4D chess where the
| government has already edited the files, and then presented
| them as redacted so the "unredacted (but edited)" version looks
| more genuine?
| RajT88 wrote:
| > What's the chance of this being some 4D chess where the
| government has already edited the files, and then presented
| them as redacted so the "unredacted (but edited)" version
| looks more genuine?
|
| With how they have pushed out any career public servants who
| were good at their jobs in favor of sycophants and loyalists,
| I'm not sure government organizations are still capable of
| playing 4D chess, if they ever were.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Ctrl-c and ctrl-v are not hacks.
|
| They are unredacted because either those in charge are not
| familiar with basic office tasks, or someone wanted this stuff to
| leak and nobody checked thier work. Either brand of incompetance
| should cause heads to roll. But, just like the signal fiasco,
| nothing will happen. When your brand is perfection, you cannot
| ever admit a mistake.
| sva_ wrote:
| Am I crazy or didn't the same thing happen with Epstein's phone
| book some years ago? Coincidence?
| userbinator wrote:
| Part of me wonders whether they had some of the text under the
| "redactions" changed too.
| spacecadet wrote:
| It has become more plausible that nothing of value was released
| and the level of obviously poor redaction was done as a tarpit to
| own the libs.
| cryptoegorophy wrote:
| There is a book by Richard Dawkins- I am me I am free or
| something like that, and it has a main picture of Richard
| standing naked and having a private part being covered by black
| rectangle but somehow my laptop back then was slow and when you
| scrolled it would temporary remove the square for a split second
| gjm11 wrote:
| Are you sure? I can't find any trace of any book by Richard
| Dawkins with a title much like that, and that doesn't seem like
| a very on-brand sort of cover pic for a book by him, and an
| image search for "Richard Dawkins book cover" doesn't turn up
| anything like it.
| poglet wrote:
| Most likely "I Am Me, I Am Free: The Robot's Guide to
| Freedom. - David Icke"
| xnorswap wrote:
| Confusing David "The monarchy are secretly lizards" Icke
| with Dawkins is astonishing.
|
| More "info": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reptilian_conspi
| racy_theory#Da...
| cryptoegorophy wrote:
| Omg. I am such an idiot!
| binary132 wrote:
| ah yes, "hacks"
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| Stupid question: why is the government even allowed to redact
| stuff? Isn't the government keeping secrets from the people
| totally antithetical to democracy?
| red75prime wrote:
| It's not the government, it's the department of justice. To
| name two: protection of witnesses, protection of state secrets
| ("the people" is not a person who can keep secrets).
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| Is the Department of Justice not a part of the government?
| sigwinch wrote:
| It's not the body which decides whether something is
| secret. It reactively redacts secrets and its own OIG is
| empowered to realign that logic.
|
| As of February, it's sensible to ask if there's an OIG.
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| Right, I'm aware of the excuses the government uses to keep
| secrets.
|
| But on principle, what right does the government have to keep
| secrets from its own people? I don't believe we had that
| button at the founding, it was added somewhere along the way.
| I'm asking what is the justification for this, and whether in
| the grand scheme of things that outweighs the principle of
| the government not being a separate entity from the people.
|
| There are multiple ways to approach witness protection. For
| example if we have a problem with witnesses being harmed we
| could make being involved with witness harm at any layer of
| indirection a capital offense. We can probably think of other
| options besides the government being allowed to keep secrets
| from its own people.
| rgblambda wrote:
| >I don't believe we had that button at the founding
|
| Every government everywhere has and has always had state
| secrets e.g. names of spies.
|
| >make being involved with witness harm at any layer of
| indirection a capital offense.
|
| People still commit capital offenses. This just makes it
| much easier to get to that witness and get away. We also
| know from empirical evidence that the death penalty is not
| useful for deterring crime.
|
| Witness protection is also getting to start over without
| everyone in your neighborhood knowing you were a criminal.
| It's part of the deal.
| reed1234 wrote:
| Should the military publish plans before the battle? Should
| witness protection programs be public record?
| cogman10 wrote:
| The power/right came from national security legislation
| written and enacted by elected officials. Because we have a
| government that works by proxy, it means that the leaders
| we elect are effectively supposed to represent the people
| they serve (that's the ideal. Obviously we've fallen WAY
| short of that).
|
| Pragmatically, I think it's easy to recognize that the
| government should be allowed to have some secrets from the
| public. I think the clearest and most extreme example is
| the details of our nuclear armaments.
|
| But the question of where the line is is a tricky one. IMO,
| we definitely allow the government far more secrets than it
| should have.
| tequila_shot wrote:
| Because the redaction was only supposed to protect the victims.
| drdaeman wrote:
| Competence and possibility of malicious compliance are
| interesting questions, but I think the more appropriate
| question is if DoJ will be sued for violating the law by
| redacting unrelated content?
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| It's up to us to keep the government accountable. Democracy
| does if we don't put pressure on the government and participate
| actively in politics.
| moi2388 wrote:
| Because some are allegations without proof, and some are names
| of people who are victims. They have a right to privacy
| tor825gl wrote:
| It's not correct that there is a legal duty to redact names
| of people who might be accused of wrongdoing, but where the
| allegations haven't been proved.
|
| The only two reasons that redactions are allowed are a) to
| protect the privacy of victims and b) to protect the
| integrity on ongoing investigations.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| The TL;DR:
|
| - To protect victims
|
| - Redact people that are currently under investigation
|
| But here they are clearly blacking out potential co-
| conspirators, without them being under investigation or having
| been charged with anything.
|
| Seems like they are just backing out powerful people not to
| embarrass or implicate them.
| sinuhe69 wrote:
| To protect innocent people for examples, or to not reveal some
| secrets.
| viccis wrote:
| Some of these don't feel like they fall into those. For
| example in [1], on page 41, I can't imagine how that
| redaction fits either.
|
| 1: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/1HFqpFLOJgYLiAg
| jT...
| BigParm wrote:
| I wonder if it's purposeful misdirection
| cogman10 wrote:
| I don't think so.
|
| They had 30 days to process 10s of thousands of documents. The
| rumors floating around is they had to pull in people from other
| departments to work on the task.
|
| It's pretty plausible that someone thought a black highlighter
| was good enough for redaction.
| thinkcomp wrote:
| I love how the entire internet thinks that this is a big deal
| when all that happened is that USDOJ re-posted some poorly-
| redacted court documents that were poorly redacted by non-USDOJ
| attorneys more than three years ago.
|
| Yes, USDOJ is incompetent and dysfunctional, but this is not why.
| But sure, whatever, carry on...
| OneMorePerson wrote:
| It's funny seeing this play out because in my personal life
| anytime I'm sharing a sensitive document where someone needs to
| see part of it but I don't want them to see the rest that's not
| relevant, I'll first block out/redact the text I don't want them
| to see (covering it, using a redacting highlighter thing, etc.),
| and then I'll screenshot the page and make that image a PDF.
|
| I always felt paranoid (without any real evidence, just a guess)
| that there would always be a chance that anything done in
| software could be reversed somehow.
| crossroadsguy wrote:
| This is what I do while sharing such images. I crop out those
| parts first and then take another screenshot. I do not even
| risk painting over and then take another screenshot. I have
| been doing this forever.
| agentifysh wrote:
| it's absolutely bewildering how ridiculous everything has been
| so far in terms of competence and this really takes the cherry
| on the top near Christmas too.
|
| how much lower can they go ?!
| lostlogin wrote:
| The really interesting bit is whether they can go another
| term.
| vanviegen wrote:
| They seem to be ahead of schedule abolishing a working
| democracy before the midterms.
| coldstartops wrote:
| Maybe it was always part of the plan. Plausible Deniability.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Good Soldier Svejk working at the FBI decided to follow an
| illegal order as badly as possible.
| yetihehe wrote:
| USA is still very high, so they can go much much lower, but I
| think they might go to some still lower places, finding them
| where we didn't even know such places could exist. Some
| ideas:
|
| - Leave NATO
|
| - Start openly supporting Russia and North Korea
|
| - Arrest whole International Criminal Court
|
| - Preventively invade China
| baby wrote:
| I'm convinced slavery will be reintroduced before 2028
| immibis wrote:
| Slavery has never been illegal in the US. The 13th
| amendment leaves slavery legal as punishment for a crime.
| The US has the highest rate of crime punishment in the
| world (higher than places like North Korea), an industry
| that profits by selling slave labour of those punished
| criminals, and known ties between those who profit from
| selling slave labour and those who decide how many things
| should be crimes.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Oh also this isn't some quiet conspiracy or anything
| because the Union of correctional facility officers will
| openly say that things like legalizing recreational
| marijuana will hurt them, so they oppose it.
|
| Same with cops.
|
| They also oppose removing things like three strikes laws
| that haven't done a damn thing to make our country
| "safer" or better.
| 3D30497420 wrote:
| It never fully went away:
|
| * https://www.hcn.org/articles/agriculture-farmers-turn-
| to-pri...
|
| * https://www.law.georgetown.edu/environmental-law-
| review/blog...
| PeterStuer wrote:
| It's not a slave if you just rent them from the cartels.
| /s
| Ekaros wrote:
| Fully enshrined in the constitution with massive support
| for the document. Just need to imprison them for
| something first.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| I know you're joking, but grievance over the loss of
| slavery after the civil war is privately one of the major
| drivers behind Trumps extremely loyal core supporters.
| rurban wrote:
| Reintroduce witch burning.
|
| Reintroduce death penalties on public squares.
|
| Taking Greenland and Venezuela is given, as they took most
| of Latin America already. Just the new Mexican president
| looks like the next thorn in their eyes. Too competent, too
| social, too anti-corruption.
| darubedarob wrote:
| They had one in bangladesh the other day.
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| >Start openly supporting Russia
|
| Already done.
| ycombigrator wrote:
| Trump is a born banana Republic dictator...
| user____name wrote:
| I like to refer to MAGA as Banana Republicans.
| RonanSoleste wrote:
| They effectively already left NATO and openly support
| Russia already. ICC members are already under fire and some
| had their microsoft account banned by Trump. Trump will
| invade Greenland and Canada first. China is less of an
| priority.
| rcbdev wrote:
| > They effectively already left NATO
|
| What the fuck are you talking about? Someone should tell
| Russia.
| vanviegen wrote:
| NATO works by projecting a united force. Nations
| unconditionally backing each other up. The USA is now
| clearly no longer a part of that. That's not to say that
| the USA will do nothing if a NATO member is attacked. It
| might. Or not.
| SirHumphrey wrote:
| One can only imagine what America not fighting an attack
| on NATO member would have on nuclear proliferation.
| thuridas wrote:
| Europe is already considering to have a nuclear shield.
|
| This is because if Trump
| ArnoVW wrote:
| No need to consider. The UK and France have nukes. France
| even has a two-tier response. Not enough to vitrify
| Russia or China five times over, but enough to make them
| reconsider.
| everyone wrote:
| Any country without nukes, that is not currently
| developing them, is stupid imo.. Nukes are the only thing
| that can guarantee sovereignty now. Ukraine gave up their
| nukes.
| vanviegen wrote:
| Do you believe the existing nuclear powers will just
| allow any country to join their ranks without a fight?
| RobotToaster wrote:
| We're currently in the position of the USA threatening to
| attack a NATO member (Denmark)
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Limiting Nuclear proliferation was already fucked.
|
| Trump tore up Iran's "we won't do nukes" deal, doesn't
| matter whether you think they were genuine or not, it
| demonstrates we will go back on a deal so our word isn't
| worth anything.
|
| Ukraine shows that the west will not actually protect you
| like they claim, so your only option is getting nukes to
| really deter people.
|
| North Korea and Pakistan demonstrate that you can pretty
| much do whatever you want with just a couple nukes, the
| west will cower in fear over idle threats.
|
| No country would look at any of this and conclude that
| they have any choice _but_ to build nukes to protect
| themselves.
| jonnybgood wrote:
| For much of NATO history, the US is NATO. The US doesn't
| want it to be like that anymore because it needs to
| strategically shift to the other side of the world. So,
| the US says "What if Europe can be NATO? If we can force
| them to meet the GDP commitment then maybe we don't need
| to worry about them too much and commit less of our own
| resources to this theater." But of course people
| interpret this as if the US is abandoning the alliance.
| No, the US just has other problems to deal with in the
| world.
| benterix wrote:
| Well, the very fact that we are even discussing it means
| Trump already weakened NATO as an alliance.
| ChocolateGod wrote:
| The US has been the biggest opponent to a European (or
| EU) army, fearing loss of influence and control. It was
| very much in US interest at the time.
| exceptione wrote:
| That is the rationalization, but don't be surprised if
| the US would not confront China at all.
|
| The main flow of capital in the US had been going to the
| mil.industry, but that is not the case anymore. It is
| mainly surveillance tech that is receiving capital. In a
| very unhealthy economy, this all looks eerily pre-'30s.
|
| The US, right now, is only threatening weak countries,
| they don't have the industrial power to confront China,
| nor do they want it. This shouldn't be a surprise, some
| ideologues behind this maga-project belief in an America
| from one pole to the other. They believe in "spheres of
| influence", and as such China has their own sphere of
| influence. A sphere of influence means a kind of colony,
| where natural resources, people and industry are all
| resources to be extracted by them. It is the Russian
| model, it is the model of criminal mobs, it is might
| makes right, it is a multi-polar world.
|
| Meanwhile, re-industrialization projects have been
| scrapped, partners have been scared of, and tariffs have
| hit the industry that was still left in America.
|
| Monopolists are parasites on the economy, and the US is
| already very weakened from that. As the Japanese said,
| the US is still a great power, but the throne is empty. I
| suspect there will be skirmishes with other "great
| powers" over exploitable resources like Africa, Middle
| East, Europe, but I don't expect the current crop to go
| all-in on China.
| vanviegen wrote:
| Yes, the US has always been the driving force behind
| NATO. It provides close to 40% of the combined military
| personnel, and an even higher portion of military
| spending.
|
| No longer committing to defend other NATO countries, even
| if their military spending exceeds the target, _is_
| abandoning the alliance though. NATO is little else than
| that commitment.
| wisty wrote:
| There's a left wing cooker conspiracy theory that the guy
| who gave Ukraine the Javalin anti tank missiles and
| forced NATO to increase military spending to 5% of GDP is
| actually a secret Russian agent.
| alimw wrote:
| You literally just used NATO for a grouping that does not
| include the US.
| wisty wrote:
| Can you rephrase what I said without "literally using
| NATO for a grouping that does not include the US"?
|
| I didn't even mention the US lol, I think you're paranoid
| but please, correct me ...
|
| I mean, I didn't phrase it as Trump being a part of NATO,
| but he's not actually a country.
| alimw wrote:
| Oops I guess if this is as much sense as you can make
| then there wasn't much point in my trying to parse your
| comment in the first place.
| wisty wrote:
| I didn't group NATO and the US separately. You thought I
| did, but I didn't and you just hadn't read properly.
|
| I waffled a bit in my reply to not rub it in too hard.
|
| And do you want to contribute with something other than
| nitpick or insult?
|
| Do YOU think that an informed and intelligent person can
| conclude that Trump is secretly a Russian agent, given he
| was the driving force behind a massive hike in NATO
| spending (which Putin really hates)?
|
| I'm not calling Trump competent, or consistent, or
| benevolent. You can say he has a weird crushed on Putin
| and is easily manipulated and corrupt.
|
| You can even suggest a lot of the MAGA people who
| surround Trump are actually working for Russia, since
| Russia tries to influence a lot of groups and Trump's
| cronies (and the influencers Trump listens to) are often
| compromised.
|
| But do you think Trump is actually consistently taking
| orders from Putin because of some kind of leverage Putin
| has? Because people say this constantly and it's (in my
| opinion) almost as embarrassing as Republicans and the
| Pizza conspiracy. Trump has done some things that are
| increadibly damaging to Russia, and blackmail doesn't
| work on a pathological liar with no sense of shame.
|
| I'm sure you're smart enough to agree with pretty much
| all of this. But you disingenuously attack me because I'm
| attacking people who are on your side, even if you would
| privately admit they are dumb.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Support for NATO within the US is Isreal-lite for different
| demographics. Pouring resources into it isn't without
| downsides.
| imiric wrote:
| I'm not too concerned about the US. They've made their bed.
|
| I'm more concerned with them dragging everyone else down, and
| someone much worse taking their place.
| tsunamifury wrote:
| Pray tell what western country right now isn't in the same
| position?
| darubedarob wrote:
| This low
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_abuse_in_Pakistan aka a
| society where child abuse is simply accepted and mainstream,
| with the child abuse of child labour and dhijhadism being
| just additional nightmare fuel on top.
| bamboozled wrote:
| If we survive long enough I do believe historians will look
| back on this period and state as a matter of fact, rape and
| child abuse were completely acceptable, because it seems
| it's totally fine with our elected leaders. If these
| leaders were democratically elected there is only one
| conclusion to draw from it...
| reed1234 wrote:
| And even being this careful, if the opacity is slightly off it
| could be undone
| userbinator wrote:
| I'll just send an image and not bother with a PDF.
|
| (Note there's also other metadata in a PDF, which you may not
| want your recipient to know either.)
| PeterStuer wrote:
| There's also metadata in the image files. What specifically
| would be sensitive in the pdf with screenshots metadata that
| is also not present in the sceenshot image metadata?
| userbinator wrote:
| PDF has something called an "info dictionary", which most
| mainstream PDF-writing software will fill out with various
| bits of info that you might not want known.
|
| Image files usually have substantially less metadata by
| default, unless it's one taken by a camera.
| morshu9001 wrote:
| Screenshots specifically tend to have very little
| metadata
| ge96 wrote:
| The one that was crazy to me is undoing a blur effect (based on
| its algo), so yeah I also will layer and screenshot something
| GistNoesis wrote:
| If it's not done properly, and you happen at any point in the
| chain to put black blocks on a compressed image (and PDF do
| compress internal images), you are leaking some bits of
| information in the shadow casted by the compression algorithm :
| (Self-plug : https://github.com/unrealwill/jpguncrop )
| RamRodification wrote:
| I was thinking I understand what's going on but then I came
| to the image showing the diff and I don't understand at all
| how that diff can unredact anything.
| OtherShrezzing wrote:
| It's not that you can unredact them from scratch (you could
| never get the blue circle back from this software). It's
| that you can tell which of the redacted images is which of
| the origin images. Investigative teams often find
| themselves in a situation where they have all four images,
| but need to work out which redacted files are which of the
| origins. Take for example, where headed paper is otherwise
| entirely redacted.
|
| So with this technique, you can definitively say "Redacted-
| file-A is definitely a redacted version of Origin-file-A".
| Super useful for identifying forgeries in a stack of
| otherwise legitimate files.
|
| Also good for for saying "the date on origin-file-B is
| 1993, and the file you've presented as evidence is provable
| as origin-file-b, so you definitely know of [whatever
| event] in 1993".
| RamRodification wrote:
| Ok thanks. That sounds reasonable.
|
| _>... and therefore you can unredact them_
|
| from that readme is just not true then I guess?
| user34283 wrote:
| I mean, even the "crop" isn't used at all correctly, is
| it?
|
| I think the word should be "redact".
| GistNoesis wrote:
| And that's just in the non-adversarial simple case.
|
| If you don't know the provenance of images you are putting
| black box on (for example because of a rogue employee
| intentionally wanting to leak them, or if the image sensor of
| your target had been compromised to leak some info by another
| team), your redaction can be rendered ineffective, as some
| images can be made uncroppable by construction .
|
| (Self-plug : https://github.com/unrealwill/uncroppable )
|
| And also be aware that compression is hiding everywhere :
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_sensing
| layla5alive wrote:
| Right, using stenography to encode some parity bits into an
| image so that lost information can be reconstructed seems
| like an obvious approach - all sorts of approaches you
| could use, akin to FEC. Haven't looked at your site yet,
| will be interested to see what you've built :)
|
| Edit: I checked it out, nice, I like the lower res
| stenography approach, can work very nicely with good
| upscaling filters - gave it a star :)
| 333c wrote:
| steganography -- stenography is courtroom transcription
| helterskelter wrote:
| People protect their secrets from stenographers with
| steganography.
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| >Let's crop it anyway
|
| That is not cropping.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cropping_(image)
|
| >Cropping is the removal of unwanted _outer_ areas from a
| photographic or illustrated image.
| GistNoesis wrote:
| Please forgive my outside the box use of word.
|
| I used it at the time as a reference to the "PNG
| aCropalypse" (
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35208721 where I
| originally shared it in a comment).
|
| The algorithm does also work if you remove the outer
| areas of the photo.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| Somewhat related, I once sent a FOI request to a government
| agency that decided the most secure way to redact documents
| was to print them, use a permanent marker, and then scan
| them. Unfortunately they used dye based markers over laser
| print, so simply throwing the document into Photoshop and
| turning up the contrast made it readable.
| cout wrote:
| I remember noticing that a teacher in high school had used
| white-out to hide the marks for the correct multiple choice
| answer on final exam practice questions before copying
| them. Then she literally cut-and-pasted questions from the
| practice questions for the final. I did mediocre on the
| essay, but got the highest score in the class on the
| multiple choice questions, because I could see little black
| dots where the white out was used.
| OneMorePerson wrote:
| I'm trying to understand this cause it sounds fascinating but
| I don't get it. I don't have an advanced understanding of
| compression so that might be part of why.
|
| If you compare an image to another image, you could guess by
| compression what is under the blocked part, that makes some
| sense to me conceptually, what I don't get is for the PDF
| specifically why does it compressing the black boxes I put
| have any risk? It's compressing the internal image which is
| just the black box part? Or are you saying the whole
| screenshot is an internal image?
| tetha wrote:
| Personally, I only trust an image manipulation tool to put down
| solid colored blocks, or something that does not involve the
| source pixels when deciding on the redacted pixel. Formats like
| PDF are just so complicated to trust.
| prameshbajra wrote:
| I feel the same and do the same.
| amelius wrote:
| Me too.
| 9dev wrote:
| In practical terms, a more convenient way to achieve this is
| just printing the document to a PDF, which rasterises the
| visible layer into what the printer would see. Most pdf tools
| support this.
| vanviegen wrote:
| That seems like a dangerous approach. Though printer drivers
| do often use rasterization, especially when targeting cheap
| printers, many printers can render vector graphics and text
| as well. Print-to-PDF will often use the later approach,
| unless of course the source program always rasterizes it's
| output when sending it out to the printer driver, or the used
| Print-to-PDF driver is particularly stupid.
| OneMorePerson wrote:
| You can, but I don't trust software for these types of niche
| but critical tasks hah. Next thing I know I'd be reading a
| headline about how "bug in print to PDF actually retains XYZ
| metadata"
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| I then convert the image to grayscale only. Then I apply a
| filter so that only 16 colors are used. And I then adjust
| brightness/contrast so that "white is really white". It's all
| scripted: "screenshot to PDF". One of my oldest shell script.
|
| 16 shades of grey (not 50) is plenty enough for text to still
| be smooth.
|
| I do it for several reasons, one of them being I often take
| manual notes on official documents (which infuriates my wife
| btw) but then sometimes I need to then scan the documents and
| send them (local IRS / notary / bank / whatever). So I'll just
| scan then I'll fill rectangle with white where I took
| handnotes. Another reason is when there's paper printed on two
| sides, at scan times sometimes if the paper is thin / ink is
| thick, the other side shall show.
|
| I wonder how that'd work vs adversarial inputs: never really
| thought about it.
| nubg wrote:
| care to share the script?
| amelius wrote:
| Maybe the person tasked with the redacting didn't agree so they
| chose the worst possible way to do it.
| noduerme wrote:
| Normally, I'd never attribute to intention what can be blamed
| on incompetence. Especially if the government is doing it.
| But sure, if I were the intern tasked with this job...
| amelius wrote:
| > Especially if the government is doing it.
|
| Also if doing it right means more work?
| jwrallie wrote:
| I learned that a long time ago when I was a student and wanted
| to submit a pdf generated by a trial version of some software
| as an assignment and was trying to be clever and cover the
| watermark that said unregistered with a white box.
|
| When opening the file in my slow computer, I could see all the
| rendering of the watermark happening in slow motion until the
| white box would pop up on top of the text.
| tor825gl wrote:
| It's actually quite easy to open the pdf and see that there
| are several different elements per page to the document, eg
| the main text, an image, the footer, the title.
|
| Randomly removing these by trial and error will usually quite
| easily allow you to find the watermark and nix it, with the
| advantage that even a sophisticated recipient will not be
| able to find out from the pdf file what the watermark was.
| barrkel wrote:
| When I was a student, and using a shareware or trial version
| of some software and wanted some printed output from it
| without a watermark, I printed to postscript (chose a printer
| that supported postscript and the driver used it instead of
| rasterized images), but using a file instead of a printer.
|
| I could then open up the postscript, delete the commands that
| rendered the watermark, save it, then I converted it to PDF
| so it would be easy to print.
| kccqzy wrote:
| You don't need PostScript for that. The PDF text commands
| are Tj and TJ, and rarely ' and ". They are easy to delete
| without going through PostScript. Tj means showing a simple
| text string. TJ means showing an array of strings possibly
| with space adjustments. ' means moving to the next line and
| showing a simple string. " means doing that and setting
| character spacing.
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| A mafia state puts loyalists on top and can't produce anything (
| smart people leave) and smart people who think for their own
| can't be promoted.
|
| That's also why a mafia extorts and doesn't run complex
| businesses in general.
|
| Perhaps the US can survive this administration. But somewhere
| down the line it will become broken.
| rurban wrote:
| The non-complex mafia businesses is moot since the 50ies
| already. They run Vegas, most of big sports leagues, politics,
| secret services and restaurant chains. Everything which can
| effectively wash money.
| eBombzor wrote:
| This site has really gone downhill lately with drivel like this
| being upvoted. Any real developers on this site anymore?
| supermatt wrote:
| Regardless of the content itself, naive redaction of a high
| profile PDF still exposing the text contents is something that
| seems relevant to the community. Maybe you are in the wrong
| place?
| scirob wrote:
| Man if you can do this should keep it secret until they release
| more bad redactions...
| b00ty4breakfast wrote:
| "hacks" lol. Next, ctl+alt+del and it's equivalents are gonna be
| called arcane theurgy
| pinkmuffinere wrote:
| Hacks don't have to be pretty -- if it works it works. Here's
| my "hack" to get into many school computer systems:
|
| Username: admin
|
| Password: password
| b00ty4breakfast wrote:
| it's even less impressive; somebody left the credentials
| typed into the text boxes and went to get a slimfast out of
| the staff breakroom and you walked into the computer lab and
| hit enter.
| pinkmuffinere wrote:
| What is the proper way to do this? I see a couple suggestions in
| the comments:
|
| 1. Draw a black box over it in image editor, save a screenshot
|
| 2. Crop the info out
|
| Are there other good ways?
| user_7832 wrote:
| PDFs _do_ have a "burn and destroy the parts/layers below" as
| part of the spec meant explicitly for redaction like this.
| Apparently they didn't use it, I guess?
| KnuthIsGod wrote:
| Print on paper. Physically cut out the pieces you want to send to
| remove. Scan.
|
| Still suspect that someone can undo this from data may have been
| accidentally steaganographed across non-deleted parts of the
| image.
| hexfish wrote:
| Not sure but that might actually add your printer's unique dots
| to the scanned image.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_tracking_dots
| fodkodrasz wrote:
| Microdots may leak your identity this way (though I guess a
| really high resolution scan is needed for that)
| immibis wrote:
| It's no problem if they leak the fact that an FBI office
| printer was used to print the documents the FBI released.
| arendtio wrote:
| I think even after printing and scanning there could still be
| jpg artfacts from the original (e.g. if you scan lossless).
|
| However, I wonder whether heavily compressing the redacted
| image would help remove any unwanted artefacts. But the best
| solution is probably to render the original file from scratch,
| without compression, before redacting the image.
| empath75 wrote:
| You can also make guesses from font/typeface kerning if it's
| not from a typewriter.
| rbbydotdev wrote:
| when i first saw this, i thought it was a meme. There is no way
| the DOJ could be so incompetent to fumble their own cover up.
| anovikov wrote:
| hacks :facepalm:
| entropiae wrote:
| Not the first time; in 2005 the US report about Nicola Calipari's
| death in Baghdad was redacted (and unredacted by italian
| newspapers) in the same way.
| UrineSqueegee wrote:
| i wouldn't trust any of these "undo's"
| jtrn wrote:
| Shout out to Stirling PDF that can be self hosted and has a
| relatively robust and easy to use redaction tool. All for
| free.... For now....
| delbronski wrote:
| This is probably just pure stupidity, but part of me hopes there
| is some tech person in there who knew exactly what they were
| doing. I'd take a job as a tech person in this administration
| just to sabotage stuff like this.
| wutwut182 wrote:
| I "hacked" my facebook account the other day. I forgot my
| password and used the "forget password" link to gain access .
| maCDzP wrote:
| Maybe someone knows law can answer this. Is it a crime to
| "unredact" files in the US? You probably know that the
| information is classified since you are putting in the work.
| Where I live I believe it's a crime if you share information that
| is classified even if it's leaked. So I would not publicly brag
| about this online.
| DoneWithAllThat wrote:
| In the US this is protected by the first amendment. Exceptions
| apply only for military and government employees who agree to
| prosecution in such cases as a condition for employment or
| enlistment (getting a clearance, basically). For everyone else
| it is lawful.
| jFriedensreich wrote:
| is there an overview page somewhere just about what was redacted?
| criddell wrote:
| https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/23/politics/epstein-redactions-g...
| brachkow wrote:
| pdf is just a computer version of laminated paper
| Arch-TK wrote:
| It sets a bad precedent to call things like this hacks.
|
| Firstly, calling this redaction implies that the data is missing,
| and calling what was done "unredacting" is akin to saying someone
| "decrypted" a cryptographic hash function.
|
| Nobody unredacted anything here, they merely discovered that it
| hadn't been redacted, and simply looked like it was redacted.
|
| Calling this a hack places responsibility on the people who
| discovered the information, rather than on the people were put in
| charge of handling the redaction and screwed it up.
| e38383 wrote:
| Thank you, I came here just to verify that no "hack" was
| involved.
| stingraycharles wrote:
| I also like to think this was maybe done as a form of malicious
| compliance. Someone inside the agency was tasked with redacting
| this, and found a way to sneak the information through but
| still getting it passed by their supervisors, so that the
| information got out.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| It reminds me of the 2008 Underhanded C code contest. The
| subject was exactly this.
|
| https://www.underhanded-c.org/_page_id_17.html
|
| And the winner's solution is incredibly simple and clever.
| sallveburrpi wrote:
| To me this is the only explanation that makes sense. However
| wouldn't they risk repercussions when this is inevitably
| found out? I assume they have records who redacted which
| documents
| stingraycharles wrote:
| Yes they may get fired, but it will be difficult to prove
| intent and very easy to claim incompetence.
|
| So I don't think there will be jail time if that's what
| you're referring to.
| seg_lol wrote:
| The mal-redacted file actually points to a crime itself
| of redacting things it shouldn't have.
| fwip wrote:
| Or, if there is indeed an ongoing investigation on those
| two, it could be leaking that fact, right?
| seg_lol wrote:
| Not in this case, this is just a cover for the guilty
| because this shows that Epsteins Estate also works for
| Trump. The rot runs deep. There is no investigation, that
| is the point.
| DerArzt wrote:
| Some peopledo things acknowledging that there may be
| backlash for an action when they feel it's the right thing
| to do.
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| Out of a thousand people? Where they probably have an email
| from a PHB that says something like "put a black box over
| all references to <this list of things?"?
| rtkwe wrote:
| This happens too regularly across both minor and major
| issues for me to think this is entirely redactors
| intentionally messing up. It's just a lot of people being
| pulled on to the job and not all of them are competent.
| Maybe some of it is intentional but not all of it I'm
| certain.
| mbesto wrote:
| > I assume they have records who redacted which documents
|
| (1) Considering it was a rush job (2) general ineptness of
| this administration and (3) the management wouldn't have
| defined the explicit job description ("completely black
| out, not use black highlighter"), the likeliness that there
| is any evidence that this was intentionally malicious is
| pretty low.
| afavour wrote:
| You're absolutely correct but I think your comment also
| highlights something important: we don't have a good word to
| represent what it is
|
| Unfortunately "hack" became a catch all word long ago. Just
| look at "life hacks".
| kungito wrote:
| They failed to redact data. That's it. People just read the
| files afterwards, only formatting was wierd.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| They're likely viewing the electronic documents by analogy
| to photocopies with blacked out sections where there is
| nothing to distinguish the text from the redacting marks
| and nothing you can project out. They don't know the
| structure of the file format and how information in it is
| encoded or rendered, or even that there is a distinction
| between encoding and rendering.
|
| (A better analogy might be the original physical document
| with redaction marks. If the text is printed using a laser
| printer or a type writer, and the marker used for redaction
| uses some other kind of ink - let's say one that doesn't
| dissolve the text's ink or toner in any way - then you can
| in principle distinguish between the two and thus recover
| _visibility_ of the text.)
| calgoo wrote:
| To complicated, the people doing the redacting pasted
| digital stickers ontop of the text, people are just
| removing the stickers.
| mjevans wrote:
| File formats are complicated. The only reliable way to
| redact is to reduce that complication to one which humans
| can manage. This is even true for software that is
| written by humans.
|
| Plain text and flat images are my preferred formats for
| things which must be redacted. Images require a slight
| bit of special care, as the example in the underhanded C
| contest highlights, but it's possible to enforce visible
| redaction and transcription steps that destroy hidden
| information.
| silveira wrote:
| If you unlock a lock, that's still a lock.
|
| Also, in light of everything that is happening, is
| incredible that the top comment on this thread is about
| some minor semantic definitions.
| shkkmo wrote:
| And it is still a lock if it was just hanging there and
| not actually locked as in this case.
| pessimizer wrote:
| There's nothing else to say about this. Also, your
| comment is nested even deeper within the same semantic
| squabbling, so it's odd that you think that it's a waste
| of time in light of more important things _that you are
| also not talking about._
| flufluflufluffy wrote:
| Yeah but there was no lock; somebody put a box around the
| doorknob without anything holding it there, and somebody
| removed the box and opened the door.
| afavour wrote:
| I think that doesn't do the scenario justice. They tried to
| redact and did so in a way that looks visibly redacted (in
| screenshots many have seen) but can be uncovered.
|
| If you say "they failed to redact data" to a layperson
| looking at a visibly redacted document they're going to be
| confused.
| mannykannot wrote:
| How about "the documents were clarified" or "their contents
| were revealed"? Maybe "formatted for reading on your device"?
| epolanski wrote:
| Just like my friends and family call everything AI now.
|
| Special effects in movies? AI
|
| Some edited photo? AI
|
| Illustration for advertising? AI
| paraselene_ wrote:
| To be fair, I put partial blame on the advertisers. They've
| been claiming "AI" on their products on anything that has
| an algorithm basically for the past few years.
| yunwal wrote:
| Just look at hackernews
| jasonlotito wrote:
| > You're absolutely correct
|
| They are not. They are factually incorrect. Look up the
| various definitions of redacted. They fit perfect for the
| title. Arguing otherwise suggests you are making up
| definitions and words, in which case, I am still correct.
| FeteCommuniste wrote:
| I'd call it a "workaround," which has less connotation of
| technical cleverness (or malice) than "hack."
| pwg wrote:
| The journalist writing the story has the same level of
| technical knowledge about how to "redact" properly in the
| digital realm as the individuals doing the redaction. To the
| journalist, with zero knowledge of the technical aspects,
| viewing the "redacted" document, it appears to be "redacted",
| so when someone "unredacts" it, the action of revealing the
| otherwise hidden material appears to be "magical" to them (in
| the vein of the Arthur C Clarke quote of: "Any sufficiently
| advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic").
|
| To the journalist, it looks like "hackers at work" because the
| result looks like magic. Therefore their editor attaching
| "hacks" to the title for additional clickbait as well.
|
| To us technical people, who understand the concept of layers in
| digital editing, it is no big deal at all (and is not
| surprising that some percentage of the PDF's have been
| processed this way).
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| It's not a hard technical concept to grasp that placing a
| stick-it onto some thing doesn't make the thing behind it
| disappear.
| pwg wrote:
| No, it is not. But given the abysmal lack of technical
| knowledge of the "typical computer user" they don't see the
| redacted PDF's as "having black stick-it notes stuck on top
| of the text". They see the PDF as having had a "black
| marker pen" applied that has obliterated the text from
| view.
|
| When someone then shows them how to copy/paste out the
| original text, because the PDF was simply black stick-it
| notes above the text, it appears to them as if that someone
| is a magical wizard of infinite intelligence.
| sallveburrpi wrote:
| I would consider it gross negligence on the journalists part
| to not know the technical details here.
|
| It's really not that hard; as someone else on this thread
| pointed out even my grandma knows this...
|
| You can find out the technical details in one quick search.
|
| How someone like this gets a paying job as a journalist is
| beyond me.
| Fricken wrote:
| >some of the file redaction can be undone with Photoshop
| techniques, or by simply highlighting text to paste into a
| word processing file.
|
| That's the first sentence of the article, and that's all
| there is to it.
| kiba wrote:
| To us, it's a life skill. To a non-technical person, it's
| black magic.
|
| Some folks had to be taught on how folder structures work
| because they grew up with the appliance we called a "phone"
| as opposed to a real computer that also happened to be
| known as a "phone".
| phantasmish wrote:
| I can assure you that plenty of people who were using
| computers before smartphones, and who have used them
| every day at work for decades, also do not grasp what we
| could consider the very basics of file management.
| A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote:
| I think.. the way to understand it is: levels. After all,
| files as the abstractions work with are not exactly there
| in the form of files in a cabinet. In a sense, even names
| are made made up fiction, BUT.. a helpful one.
| p-e-w wrote:
| > To us, it's a life skill. To a non-technical person,
| it's black magic.
|
| I'm sorry, but "this text is black on black background;
| the actual letters are still there" isn't "black magic"
| unless someone is being deliberately obtuse.
| ben_w wrote:
| So I don't know your specialty, but I'm going to make a
| wild guess and assume that it isn't stage magic.
|
| State magicians have a whole range of different ways to
| make something seem like it's levitating, or to
| apparently get a signed playing card inside a fruit that
| they get someone in the audience to cut open to reveal.
|
| To a magician, these things are cute, not mysterious.
|
| To the general public... a significant percentage have
| problems with paged results and scroll bars. Including my
| dad, who developed military IFF simulation software
| before he retired, and then spent several years of
| retirement using Google before realising it gave more
| than three results at a time.
|
| Would he, with experience working with the military, have
| made this soecific mistake about redaction? Perhaps,
| perhaps not, but the level of ignorance was well within
| his range. (I'm not better, it's just my ignorance is
| e.g. setting fire to resistors).
|
| *Our* "common sense" isn't universal.
| p-e-w wrote:
| Your analogy fails because the purpose of stage magic is
| concealing what's going on. That's not what happened
| here. Someone just made a really stupid mistake that even
| non-technical folks can accidentally discover.
|
| There are undoubtedly _some_ people who would be fooled
| by this, but you don't have to be technical in order to
| not be one of them.
| ben_w wrote:
| > the purpose of stage magic is concealing what's going
| on. That's not what happened here
|
| That's * _literally_ * what "redaction" is.
|
| These people are bad at magic, were told to do magic,
| fooled only themselves and other people who are also bad
| at magic.
| tsunamifury wrote:
| Please explain to me, in detail, without using an LLM how
| expert manifolds work.
|
| I'm guessing to you, it is also black magic.
| pixl97 wrote:
| >How someone like this gets a paying job as a journalist is
| beyond me.
|
| You seem highly confused on what a journalists job is in
| this era. Very few publishers are about correctness. It's
| about speed of getting the article out and getting as many
| eyeballs as possible to look at the ads in the article.
|
| Or as the saying goes, A lie can travel halfway around the
| world before the truth can get its boots on.
| sallveburrpi wrote:
| You could easily replace them with an LLM if that were
| the case.
|
| Although I don't completely disagree with your cynical
| take I don't think that's actually the case for most of
| the Guardians journalists, they do a lot of quality
| reporting too
| ben_w wrote:
| Back when LLM chatbots were new and shiny, I was
| comparing the failure modes to journalism by way of the
| Gell-Mann amnesia effect.
|
| Sure, deep investigative jounalism with real skill and
| effort behind it is a thing; but it is an expensive
| thing, and opinion pieces disguised as jounalism are much
| cheaper, as is reporting on other people's reports.
| Forgeties79 wrote:
| At the end of the day, we the audience reward the
| behavior unfortunately
| Cpoll wrote:
| > You could easily replace them with an LLM if that were
| the case.
|
| We're already seeing this happen.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| The journalist should have used the LLM to explain how
| this wasn't a hack but a common mistake made by untrained
| workers.
| adolph wrote:
| And the lawyers should have used an LLM to perform a
| first pass of the redactions and methods of redaction.
|
| Going forward the full stack of perpetrators, unindicted
| coconspirators, lawyers, judges, legislators,
| journalists, editors, fact checkers, ... it'll all be LLM
| all the way down such that nothing will be trustable save
| something akin to Stephenson's gargoyles and Flock
| cameras for which people will conduct spectacles to shape
| the salience landscape.
| EGreg wrote:
| Um - and not just journalists.
|
| Most "bullshit jobs" are already being replaced. The era
| of bullshit jobs is coming to an end:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs
| sallveburrpi wrote:
| I wish it was true. From the bullshit jobs in the book, I
| can only see the box tickers being replaced. The
| flunkies, goons, task masters, and duct tapers will
| probably continue to exist.
|
| Als unless we come up with something like UBI or a
| dramatic rethinking of how capitalism works in our
| society there will probably be __more__ bullshit jobs.
| sigwinch wrote:
| But there is a more-powerful combo we're beginning to
| see: journalists can take a story and prompt their way
| into a list of missing perspectives. The Lindbergh baby,
| for example.
| pwg wrote:
| Most journalists are ex. English majors (or some other non-
| technical degree). I would not expect _any_ (even the
| supposed tech. journalists) to understand the technology
| they report upon to the level that us here on HN understand
| that same technology.
|
| Their job is to write coherent articles that gather views,
| not truly understand what it is they are writing about.
| That's why the Gell-Mann Amnesia [1] aspect so often crops
| up for any technical article (hint, it also crops up for
| _every_ article, but we don 't recognize the mistakes the
| journalist makes in the articles where we don't have the
| underlying knowledge to recognize the mistakes).
|
| [1] https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/
| tsunamifury wrote:
| I'm my experience most posters on HN are don't under
| technology either. So they both don't understand people
| or technology putting them two steps behind a journalist.
| oblio wrote:
| You don't need to defend your entire field.
|
| Journalists are people, like everyone else, and most
| people are bad at their jobs.
|
| Plus, what even is the job? For most journalists out
| there, it's just writing something that draws ad
| impressions and clicks.
|
| The percentage of journalists that work for outlets where
| the content itself is the cash source is very small
| (NYTimes, probably a bunch of other paid subscriptions).
| And even the NYTimes isn't above clickbait.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| It's important to understand who becomes a journalist in
| this age.
|
| It's people who are very good with words, and at talking to
| anyone and everyone about anything, both is a friendly and
| confrontation way.
|
| They also have almost no understanding of math, science or
| technology. If they did, they'd get better paying jobs.
|
| Journalism used to be a well paid prestigious career that
| attracted brilliant people. There is not enough money in
| what's left of that industry to do that anymore.
| Avicebron wrote:
| I agree they have no understanding of math, science or
| technology. But I disagree with your assessment of
| motivations to get "better paying jobs", most people who
| went into journalism I knew were in brownstones right out
| of college. They didn't need the money, they inherited
| it, it was the lifestyle they were after.. that's why we
| get the journalism we do..
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Yeah, I should have resisted speculating about the why,
| when the fact/assertion itself is the important part.
| caseysoftware wrote:
| ^ This.
|
| They're not after money. They're motivated by prestige
| which CAN be money (ew, tacky) but is actually measured
| by access to key figures, your name being in the right
| places with the right people, and the cocktail party
| circuit.
|
| My wife was a reporter in DC and she was at the White
| House Correspondents Dinner and everything. Living in
| those circles is surreal. The namedropping is a whole
| other level. When I realized I was doing it too (with
| some legit impressive names at the time), I gtfo. I'd
| rather be evaluated by what I've done or can do vs who I
| know or knows me.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I think you have the source of the problem wrong. It's
| just rich kids who don't actually need the salary, and
| want to align to a point of view that gets them a
| contract to write a book, so they get invited to the
| right parties. They don't know anything, or care about
| anything.
|
| Journalism school is "eye-wateringly" expensive:
|
| > J-school attendees might get a benefit from their
| journalism degree, but it comes at an eye-watering cost.
| The price tag of the Columbia Journalism School, for
| instance, is $105,820 for a 10-month program, $147,418
| for a 12-month program, or $108,464 per year for a two-
| year program. That's a $216,928 graduate degree, on top
| of all the costs associated with gaining the
| undergraduate prerequisites. (Columbia, it seems
| important to say, is also the publisher of Columbia
| Journalism Review, the publication you're now reading.)
|
| https://www.cjr.org/special_report/do-we-need-j-
| schools.php
|
| > It's people who are very good with words,
|
| They are also not good with words.
| quesera wrote:
| State schools also offer journalism degrees.
|
| And FWIW, in my very limited and anecdotal experience,
| the programs are inhabited by people who fully understand
| their employment and salary prospects, but believe in the
| work, and often have above-average family wealth to
| compensate for the gaps. They're good people, but they
| are not experts.
| tsunamifury wrote:
| Haha. I was a journalist for many years. I went to UC
| Berkeley. I likely currently have a far better paying job
| than you and have invented technical concepts that
| founded the LLM.
|
| Me thinks the fool speaks of himself.
| quesera wrote:
| If you had a better understanding of math and science,
| you'd know the difference between the concepts of "one"
| and "statistically meaningful".
| tsunamifury wrote:
| It's worth pointing out one contradiction to someone who
| passes such vast and foolish judgement.
| quesera wrote:
| It really isn't.
|
| Obviously, "who becomes a journalist in this age" does
| not translate to "every person who is alive now who has
| ever been a journalist".
|
| I'm not sure if your error lies in parsing colloquial
| English, or in basic statistics. Either way, I think you
| have fully illustrated the commenter's point.
|
| Journalists are not reliably selected for, or
| demonstrative of, comprehension or accuracy.
| tsunamifury wrote:
| This is dumb trying to call others dumb.
|
| Maybe Christmas just leaves the worst on HN ...
| statistically.
| kube-system wrote:
| I don't think you have an understanding of job
| specialization.
|
| I know some journalists. They are smart people. However,
| they are not experts in math, science, or technology.
| They are experts in journalism. This wasn't any different
| at any time in the past.
| caseysoftware wrote:
| Gell Mann Amnesia ftw
|
| My wife was a reporter with a top tier news agency in DC
| and I was shocked how they divvied up topics.
|
| At best, it was "you're good with computers, go report on
| this hearing on cybersecurity" but more commonly, it was
| "who has this morning open? You do? Great. Go cover this
| 9am on the Israel-Palestine negotiations and what the
| implications are. We'll do a segment in the 11am hour."
| njharman wrote:
| Journalists report, they don't analyze.
|
| The error is consumers believing journalist news is
| anything but uninformed, hot take heresy; spun in the most
| sensationalistic way.
|
| They are hired to get eyeballs for advertisers. Not to be
| accurate, thorough truthful, or unbiased.
| skeltoac wrote:
| The journalist is not necessarily responsible for the title.
| Editors often change those and they don't need to get the
| approval of the journalist. The editor knows what they are
| doing and that it will irk some tech folks.
| pwg wrote:
| As far as creating a click bait title, yep, the editor
| knows what they are doing, and most likely picked the word
| for the click bait factor.
|
| But I'd also bet the editors technical knowledge of how
| this "revelation" of the hidden material really works is
| low enough that it also appears to be magic to them as
| well. So they likely think it is a 'hack' as well.
| streetnoodles wrote:
| I seriously doubt the journalist doesn't understand exactly
| how this "hack" worked too. Right in the first paragraph,
| "simply highlighting text to paste into a word processing
| file."
|
| A lot of people in the thread here are calling them a non-
| technical English major who doesn't understand the
| technology. Word processors also happen to be the tools of
| their trade, I am sure they understand features of Word
| better than most of the computer science majors in this
| thread...
| Melatonic wrote:
| Agreed - not sure why so many are being so critical here.
| They probably didn't write the title and for better or
| worse "hack" has now become a common word casually used
| by many to mean "workflow trick" or similar.
| seg_lol wrote:
| > The journalist writing the story has the same level of
| technical knowledge ...
|
| You are supposing. The article doesn't read like that at all.
| Your post smells of exceptional tech elitism.
| SilasX wrote:
| This. Similar issue if you introduce someone to how you can
| "view source" and then edit (your view of) a website. They're
| like "omg haxors!"
|
| True story: one time I used that technique to ask for a
| higher credit card limit than the options the website
| presented. Interestingly enough, they handled it gracefully
| by sending me a rejection for a higher amount and an
| acceptance for the maximum offered amount (the one I edited).
| And I didn't get arrested for hacking!
| sillyfluke wrote:
| > "view source" and then edit (your view of) a website.
|
| Yes, but you see it says "view source" not "edit page
| live". Don't really see why it wouldn't be "omg" for them.
| sebastiennight wrote:
| I have helped someone get an executive job at a Fortune 500
| company... by teaching them how to use the dev tools and
| edit the DOM to replace text and images.
|
| They had been asked for an assignment as part of the
| interview process, where they were supposed to make
| suggestions regarding the company's offers. They showed up
| on the (MS teams) interview having revamped what looked
| like the live website (www. official website was visible in
| the browser bar).
|
| The interviewers gave them the job pretty much on the spot,
| but did timidly ask at the end "do you mind putting it back
| though, for now?", which we still laugh about 5 years later
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| Using view-source to accomplish something could be
| considered hacking in the old school MIT sense* of curious
| exploration of some place or thing for clever purposes.
|
| *: disclaimer, I didn't attend MIT, but did hang out with
| greybeards on 90s IRC
| bird0861 wrote:
| Typical quality of The Guardian unfortunately. Don't read
| their energy reporting if you're at all literate about any of
| those topics. Any time they do a story on fusion I just about
| have an embolism.
| blitzar wrote:
| Furthermore, this happens so often, so frequently, in so many
| high profile cases that even my 80 year old mother knows this
| "secret hack to unredact a pdf".
|
| If you are CIA / FBI / Court / Lawyer or professional full time
| redactor of documents you should know that the highlighter
| doesn't delete the text underneath it.
| relic wrote:
| I think the more likely cause was precisely that it wasn't a
| technical professional/lawyer/writer doing the redacting, but
| someone in the administration or close to it that has no idea
| how to redact information correctly.
| inopinatus wrote:
| Here on the hacking news website we sure are persnickety about
| the difference.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| The funny part is that people with screen readers may have gone
| through the redaction without realizing it.
| FeteCommuniste wrote:
| That is pretty funny. All it takes to be a hacker is to use
| assistive software.
| TZubiri wrote:
| It also removes blame from the departments that redacted, it's
| not like they messed up big time, no, some resourceful brainiac
| hackers did things that were not allowed to undo the redaction
| process that was put in place to protect victims.
| braiamp wrote:
| Considering that only the title of the article says "hacks", I
| would say this is the editor decision.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| I find it funny to use a hack to argue about the misuse of
| words and definitions.
|
| Regardless, redaction does not imply that data is missing. The
| words were censored or obscured. That's it. Simply looking at
| the documents proves that. Interacting with them showed how
| easy they were to uncensor, but the simplicity of the method
| doesn't change facts.
|
| By all means, complain about definitions and words, but get it
| right.
| lloydatkinson wrote:
| Calling everything a hack is the only way to make tech
| illiterate boomers and zoomers alike understand anything.
| BoredPositron wrote:
| I think we should all come to terms with it that "hack" doesn't
| mean anything anymore so we don't have to fight over words that
| were never clearly defined anyways. On most days this site here
| should be called "frontendnews".
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| It does seem to raise the risk that someone would be prosecuted
| for DMCA violation if we refer to it that way.
| dspillett wrote:
| That is a very low bar. If methane's chemical representation
| was present in a DVD key, you could be done for DMCA
| violation every time you fart.
| figassis wrote:
| I agree, but this would mean that almost anything can't be
| called hacking, bc it usually relies on vulnerabilities and
| implementation defects. If something is poorly encrypted and
| you retrieve data, you didn't hack because it wasn't encrypted
| to begin with. That can't be the standard.
| clhodapp wrote:
| It's true, but aren't most hacks like this? If you understand
| the system flaw, the hack is obvious.
| dspillett wrote:
| _> It sets a bad precedent to call things like this hacks._
|
| That ship sailed a _long_ time ago. The "phone hacking scandal"
| in ~20101 was mostly calling answering services that didn 't
| have pins or other authorisation checks set.
|
| These days any old trick gets called a hack, heck tying your
| shoelaces might get called a miraculous footwear securing hack.
|
| --------
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_International_phone_hacki...
| badgersnake wrote:
| Talk about missing the point. It's almost like you're trying to
| deflect the audience.
| dang wrote:
| Ok, we've un-with-hacksed the title above.
| indubioprorubik wrote:
| Can you shadowprofile the redactions by length of the black box
| and heuristic occurance bundling?
| throw-12-16 wrote:
| The US really is pathetic.
|
| When do we find out that the nuclear launch codes got changed to
| "YoureFired!".
| albert_e wrote:
| "hacks".
|
| This is like putting a post-it on a printed document and
| circulating it as "redacted" -- and calling anyone who lifted the
| post-it a criminal/thief.
| beasthacker wrote:
| The U.S. federal government is bad at redactions on purpose.
|
| The offices responsible for redactions are usually in-house legal
| shops (e.g., an Office of Chief Counsel inside an agency like
| CBP) and the agency's FOIA office. They're often doing redactions
| manually in Adobe, which is slow, tedious, and error-prone.
| Because the process is error prone, the federal government gets
| multiple layers of review, justified (as DOJ lawyers regularly
| tell courts) by the need to "protect the information of innocent
| U.S. citizens."
|
| But the "bad at redactions" part isn't an accident. It functions
| as a litigation tactic. Makes production slow, make FOIA
| responses slow, and then point to that slow, manual process as
| the reason the timeline has to be slow. The government could
| easily buy the kind of redaction tools that most law firms have
| used for decades. Purpose built redaction tools speed the work up
| and reduce mistakes. But the government doesn't buy those tools
| because faster, cleaner production benefits the requester.
|
| The downside for the government is that every so often a judge
| gets fed up and orders a normal timeline. Then agencies go into
| panic mode and initiate an "all hands on deck." Then you end up
| with untrained, non-attorney staff doing rushed redactions by
| hand in Adobe. Some of them can barely use a mouse. That's when
| you see the classic technical failures: someone draws a black
| rectangle that looks like a redaction, instead of applying a real
| redaction that actually removes the underlying text.
| pessimizer wrote:
| This is an extremely interesting perspective. I haven't really
| heard it before, but I once worked for the state in a technical
| capacity and watched as they spent entire workdays and
| scheduled multiple meetings with the sole purpose of figuring
| out ways to slow down or narrow FOIA requests.
|
| I didn't really know how they slept at night, but I don't know
| how a lot of people sleep at night. I only had to be involved
| because I had to do the actual trawling through the emails.
| They spent their time trying to narrow the keywords that I'd
| have to search, and trying to figure out new definitions of the
| words "related to."
| throwup238 wrote:
| There's a great Australian comedy called Utopia about a
| government department that has a whole episode B-plot of the
| characters working on the Aussie equivalent of a FOIA
| request. It's pretty funny and in the end one of the workers
| just finds it easier to leak the document to the requesting
| journalist rather than deal with the official process, even
| though it was mundane contract details on a carpark that came
| in ahead of schedule and under budget.
|
| In another episode they're trying to find out the length of a
| stealth submarine for construction planning purposes of a
| port or something, and they have to go through endless layers
| of security checks with the military that lead nowhere. In
| the end a reporter filming a documentary episode on the
| government agency tells them the length because they were
| allowed to film the submarine on another program.
|
| Definitely recommend the show and my friends in government
| say it's scarily accurate.
| ryukoposting wrote:
| Please refer to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor
|
| No, there isn't an enormous cohort of bureaucrats going to work
| every day, collectively wringing their hands and saying "haha,
| we're going to be STUPID today!"
| alerighi wrote:
| To me is strange that for such important document they didn't
| print them and scan with a scanner (that way it's physically
| impossible that some metadata or other thing that is not on the
| printed piece of paper ends up in what is released).
|
| It's the standard practice.
| hypeatei wrote:
| I never want to hear a MAGA supporter whine about DEI or
| meritocracy ever again. Supposedly you're against that stuff but
| just hire loyalists who fuck everything up? Embarrassing.
| lt_snuffles wrote:
| I feel like it is some form of malicious compliance from some fbi
| agents
| mbix77 wrote:
| Nice. Love malicious compliance.
| Forgeties79 wrote:
| I love how every single comment here is litigating whether or not
| this qualifies "hacking" (yes I know obviously it does not) so I
| can't really find any discussion on the contents lol
| guerrilla wrote:
| Actually there are two type of comments: "it's not hacking" and
| "it's malicious compliance". That makes of 90% of what's here,
| split about 50/50.
| Forgeties79 wrote:
| And now we have our third! A meta-analysis of the HN comment
| chain!
| guerrilla wrote:
| You're welcome.
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| This is "fake stupidity", a decoy to make the public think it is
| uncovering stuff that was meant to be hidden while in reality the
| really damning documents have been filtered and or doctored
| already. You might get thrown some meaningless and practically
| worthless + innocent scraps and bones like Trump wrapping his arm
| around a young woman and that's it.
|
| You think you uncovered the hidden layer but that was just a
| decoy.
|
| You guys are too gullible.
| ronbenton wrote:
| This reminds me of when some government org leaked social
| security numbers in client-rendered html comments (or something
| similar) and people who discovered this were called hackers for
| using browser dev tools
| flaminHotSpeedo wrote:
| Are you thinking of the Missouri department of education's
| teacher directory website?
|
| https://krebsonsecurity.com/2022/02/report-missouri-governor...
|
| Luckily someone eventually talked sense into the governor,
| despite him ignoring the FBI originally when they told him it
| wasn't a hack
| guerrilla wrote:
| Doesn't sound like much interesting was found otherwise that'd be
| what's making all the headlines... Everything in that article is
| pretty much what I'd expect.
| stevenwoo wrote:
| I did not expect the one case in other documents where a 13
| year old pregnant child was raped by Trump and her baby was
| killed by a relative.
| https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%208/EFTA000250...
| hedora wrote:
| Trump has openly admitted to child prostitution in official
| statements, so the first part of that isn't surprising at
| all.
|
| Look at the early quotes where Trump complains about Epstein
| being a creep. The main problem Trump had was that Epstein
| poached Trump's favorite kids for prostitution _years_ after
| they were hired by Trump.
| guerrilla wrote:
| These rape allegations are from 2016 originally. There's
| already a court case about it. So, it's both already known
| and just allegations. That doesn't help us and shouldn't
| surprise us.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_sexual_misconduct.
| ..
| shwaj wrote:
| Rather than bemoaning the ignorance of those who can't grasp that
| the text still exists under black rectangles, we should thank our
| lucky stars that this method of deredacting still works, well
| over a decade after the first time I heard of it.
|
| May it continue to work in the decades to come!
| xecaz wrote:
| When i hack something, it generally takes a bit more than just
| copy pasting..
| nabbed wrote:
| CNN has an article claiming that the botched redaction work is
| the fault of the Virgin Islands' attorney general's office, not
| the Justice Department. From
| https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/23/politics/epstein-redactions-g...:
|
| "The glitch appears to affect only a tiny number of the hundreds
| of thousands of documents that the Justice Department has posted
| online this past week because of a new Epstein-related
| transparency law. And it appears this redacting error wasn't
| committed by the Justice Department - but rather by the Virgin
| Islands' attorney general's office when it first posted the
| original court filing onto a public docket in 2021."
| willmadden wrote:
| Terrible headline. The unredacted data was included in the file.
| That's not a hack.
| m-p-3 wrote:
| Not hacks, (malicious?) incompetency.
| aethelyon wrote:
| "some" or a single file?
| notorandit wrote:
| It depends on what do you mean "hack". Redacting important
| documents can qualify as a heck of a hack.
| marysminefnuf wrote:
| I swear the top comment on every popular post is always about
| semantics or nitpicking and is very rarely about anything in the
| article itself.
| AppleBananaPie wrote:
| This doesn't seem to be the case here. Which comment is showing
| up top for you?
| weberer wrote:
| The comment by Arch-TK is currently the top for me.
| TheSkyHasEyes wrote:
| Interesting. RajT88 20 minute old post is top on my end.
| teach wrote:
| For me, the top comment is currently cmarschner's day-old
| comment enumerating a bunch of other examples of botched
| redaction
| ziml77 wrote:
| I noticed my most recent nitpick comment got a significant
| number of upvotes. I spent some time today wondering if HN
| needed a way to indicate something is a nitpick and cause the
| votes on it to carry less weight in the sorting. Because if the
| nitpick is valid I don't think downvotes are appropriate since
| people might end up seeing it and having misconceptions
| corrected, but it also shouldn't detract from discussions on
| the meat of the post.
|
| Of course I'm probably the odd one out, wanting to apply that
| modifier to my own nitpick comments, so that idea probably
| wouldn't end up being very useful in general.
|
| (There is also some irony in me commenting on your comment here
| where it's completely unrelated to the actual post...)
| rtaylorgarlock wrote:
| Ah, you new 'round these parts? It's unfashionable to speak
| directly--we must fragment, hypothesize, add complexity and
| nuance rather than simply leave someone's slightly vague
| statement uncorrected. -_-
| A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote:
| As nitpicks go ( public misundersatnding based on word
| selection by summarizing party ), this one is valid.
| bigyabai wrote:
| HN rewards "technical discussion" in controversial threads,
| even when it's not salient or intellectually gratifying.
| Touching on the political implications is enough to split
| opinion and guarantee your place towards the middle/bottom of
| the thread.
| fallingfrog wrote:
| My favorite excerpt so far:
|
| Case ID #: 50D-NY-302757
|
| Witness Information
|
| First Name: Donald
|
| Middle Name:
|
| Last Name: Trump
|
| Age: 70
|
| DOB:
|
| Additional Info: Again, just trying to find out the NYPD
| detective on the FBI sex trafficking task force that called me a
| couple of weeks ago and spoke to me about some of these issues.
|
| How is Contact Known: He participated regularly in paying money
| to force me to ------ with him and he was present when my uncle
| murdered my newborn child and disposed of the body in Lake
| Michigan.
|
| Type: Business
|
| Address:
|
| City: Washington DC
|
| State: District of Columbia
|
| Zip: 20500
|
| Country: United States
| broabprobe wrote:
| thank you for using the old.reddit link, it's a small miracle
| they keep that running...
| itsthecourier wrote:
| The Epstein Files Transparency Act signed into law last month
| permits the Department of Justice "to withhold certain
| information such as the personal information of victims and
| materials that would jeopardize an active federal investigation"
|
| just wow.
| tim-tday wrote:
| A better headline would've been: "authorities utterly fail in
| their attempts to redact documents. Again."
|
| This would be comical if it weren't so serious.
| RajT88 wrote:
| I tried to reproduce this - turns out the affected files weren't
| in the data sets recently released, but other files on the DOJ
| site (now taken down).
|
| I guess the big take-away is scrape everything ASAP when it comes
| out. I haven't found any meaningful differences yet, but file
| hashes are different in the published data set zip files
| available today versus when Archive.org took a snapshot a few
| days ago.
|
| I did write a bit of a tool which will detect and log and dump
| the text of affected PDF's, since redacting via drawing black
| boxes as well as using dark-colored highlights are both
| programmatically detectable. Pretty trivial to do so. Happy
| Holidays for anyone else who has the day off!
| namuol wrote:
| Sounds like a different take on this Onion headline:
| https://theonion.com/cia-realizes-its-been-using-black-highl...
| nephihaha wrote:
| One of the most pathetic things that has come out of this is that
| the British press refuse to say the phrase "Prince Andrew"
| anymore. It has to be Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.
| throwup238 wrote:
| Because he was officially stripped of the title. He's no longer
| a Prince. It's not some grand conspiracy to distance him from
| the royal family, that's just how titles work and the British
| are real sticklers about that class nonsense.
| cush wrote:
| I bet the width of the redacted areas also be used to determine
| some idea of the content too
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| The article buried the lede. Last sentence:
|
| > It was unclear how property material complies with the
| redaction standard under the law.
|
| In other words, who knows what else was redacted that is
| unrelated to either the victims or jeopardizing an active federal
| investigation (are there any related to Epstein? I thought those
| all got killed, except those ordered by Trump to investigate
| Democrats of course.)
| andix wrote:
| This has to be on purpose, right?
|
| Redacting documents is hard for people who didn't learn how to
| properly do it, and don't have the right tools. But for courts,
| the FBI or the DOJ this shouldn't apply. They know how to do it
| right.
|
| I can only imagine, that some people didn't redact the documents
| properly on purpose. Plausible deniability.
| JensRantil wrote:
| Fun fact: Many times you can also declassify numbers by simply
| looking at the width of the text boxes. I wrote a blog post about
| it many years ago: https://jensrantil.github.io/posts/how-to-
| partially-declassi...
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-12-24 23:01 UTC)