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Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

theguardian.com

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Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#221

Post by eviks »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #205
eviks wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 a…

> 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

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#222

Post by eviks »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #196
eviks wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> 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.

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!

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#223

Post by [deleted] »

eviks wrote: post #130
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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-sca…

> 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 te…

[deleted]

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#224

Post by JumpCrisscross »

eviks wrote: post #222
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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!

> 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.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#225

Post by greatgib »

juujian wrote: post #63

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?

He was probably considered as a "victim" of having his crimes exposed...

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#226

Post by sigwinch »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #209
red75prime wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Is the Department of Justice not a part of the government?

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.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#227

Post by eviks »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #216
eviks wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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 underst…

> 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

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#228

Post by drdaeman »

tequila_shot wrote: post #198
pfannkuchen wrote: post #184

Stupid question: why is the government even allowed to redact stuff? Isn’t the government keeping secrets from the people totally antithetical to democracy?

Because the redaction was only supposed to protect the victims.

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?

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#229

Post by sigwinch »

juujian wrote: post #63

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?

He’s one of the executors of Epstein’s will. Better not piss him off.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#230

Post by sigwinch »

mmh0000 wrote: post #11
tomekf wrote: post #7

How it’s done from technical point?

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 becau…

qpdf has a redaction option. It’s routinely used to anonymize medical records for studies.
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