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The FBI's files on Steve Jobs

muckrock.com

141–150 of 179 posts

Re: The FBI's files on Steve Jobs

#141
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) http://www.datasciencetoolkit.org/ 2) grep

That's really cool, thanks. But I don't think it includes OCR. The best FOSS OCR out there is Tesseract, which we use through DocumentCloud, but it still leaves a lot to be desired compared to commercial solutions.

What do you consider expensive? Transym is really good and not too expensive (disclosure: they are a partner of my company -- but I am endorsing them on that basis)

Re: The FBI's files on Steve Jobs

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trouble is that "terrorism" inherently contains violence, whereas "communism" can be completely peaceful and nice. Terrorist organizations are always bad. Communist organizations can be completely benign, and were generally considered bad purely by association. To put it slightly differently, it's not like asking if someone is associated with a terrorist organization, but more like asking if someone is associated…

> "communism" can be completely peaceful and nice Perhaps some forms of Anarcho-socialism could be argued to be both completely nonviolent (peaceful) and voluntary (nice). However any form of Communism calling for the abolition of capitalism, which asserts that others do not have the right to continue asserting claims to private ownership of capital independently, most certainly cannot be considered either.

By that measure, no political organization can be considered completely peaceful and nice, making it meaningless to say so about communism.

(Excluding full-on no-government libertarians from the above under the assumption that organizing would be contrary to their beliefs.)

Re: The FBI's files on Steve Jobs

#144
post #3

Wow, back in 1991, he was being considered for a Presidential Appointment: http://www.muckrock.com/static/foia_documents/Jobs.pdf That's what all of the documents seem to be from. To be clear, the FBI wasn't keeping tabs on Jobs because they thought he was up to no good, it was the standard background check they do when someone is being considered for a high level government position. Now the speculation starts as to…

And why would you ever ever release information on vetting ok Steve is dead but all the people who where interviewed are not and neither are Steves family. Would you like to read a recently deceased loved ones warts and all developed vetting report - what public interest is served by this. It is also open to abuse by muck raking hacks I sure Guido Fawlks would love to see the files on Polly Toynbees (Guardian journal…

While I'm generally in favor of FOI, the public interest of disclosure needs to be weighed against the impact on both privacy and the integrity of the security vetting process (strong privacy encourages frank comments). In this case the benefit of disclosure is almost entirely to help us gossip about a celebrity so I feel the disclosure is not warranted.

Re: The FBI's files on Steve Jobs

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"He characterized Mr Jobs as a deceptive individual who is not completely forthright and honest. He stated that Mr. Jobs will twist the truth and distort reality in order to achieve his goals." Yep. Looks like he's the man for the position.

"...distort reality..." A lot of people said that about him: it was his famous reality distortion field.

It's funny to see the famed reality distortion field, so often mentioned in terms of admiration of salesmanship and persuasiveness, with so many entrepreneurs attempting to emulate it, appear in an actual FBI file as some sort of evidence of potential criminality or unfitness for public service.

Re: The FBI's files on Steve Jobs

#146
post #141
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's really cool, thanks. But I don't think it includes OCR. The best FOSS OCR out there is Tesseract, which we use through DocumentCloud, but it still leaves a lot to be desired compared to commercial solutions.

What do you consider expensive? Transym is really good and not too expensive (disclosure: they are a partner of my company -- but I am endorsing them on that basis)

£60.00 doesn't sound bad. We'd need it to fit into our automated workflow and be able to handle hundreds of pages at a time, and occasionally 1k+ page documents, and stuff from Nuance we'd looked at would have cost $4k or more a year, plus charge per page which is a deal killer. This might be a good fit ... thanks!

Re: The FBI's files on Steve Jobs

#147
post #33

I don't know how to check this myself, but are the redactions flattened, i.e. so they cannot be removed, or are they just shapes on a another layer drawn over the relevant areas, i.e. is the redacted data still recoverable by editing the pdf? It wouldn't be the first time a "redaction" turned out to be no more than a mere obfuscation in practise.

They are flattened: The FBI prints out files, redacts them, and then scans them back in. A number of federal agencies do this, really making it a pain to search through documents.

I can't help but suspect they do this very much on purpose.

Re: The FBI's files on Steve Jobs

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trouble is that "terrorism" inherently contains violence, whereas "communism" can be completely peaceful and nice. Terrorist organizations are always bad. Communist organizations can be completely benign, and were generally considered bad purely by association. To put it slightly differently, it's not like asking if someone is associated with a terrorist organization, but more like asking if someone is associated…

"Communism" as a general philosophy may not be violent, but if you look in the Communist Manifesto, and the entity which calls itself the Communist Party, the stuff they're concerned about - advocating "armed overthrow of the US government" - was a present and real threat. Not that I'd care to throw out a blanket justification for any and all anti-Communist measures out there, mind you. But it's possible to downplay…

What??? WHERE in the Communist Manifesto does it call for the armed overthrow of the US Government?

Re: The FBI's files on Steve Jobs

#149
The confusing thing about this lot is the redundancy. They got at least 15 people to make statements, but it looks like multiple SA's interviewed the same people and they all said pretty much the same thing (with the exception of the one dude who thought integrity and honesty weren't prerequisites for a job in the government). Does this mean all of these people had multiple visits from different field agents? That must have been incredibly tiresome. And is there some kind of special cut'n'paste they do to end up with practically the same language in every report? Or are they just recycling the same information over and over.
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