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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

#241

Post by crossroadsguy »

OneMorePerson wrote: post #231

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…

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.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#242

Post by eviks »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #233
eviks wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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…

> 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!

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#243

Post by tpoacher »

Delk wrote: post #150
tpoacher wrote: post #18

reminds me of that leaky redaction program that won the obfuscated c contest some years back

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.

sorry, yes, that one.

Great contest. And a great entry, I had a big chuckle running it and unredacting my documents, even photos!

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#244

Post by eviks »

TylerE wrote: post #237
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

It gets you the non-existance of a PDF full of reversible black boxes. Can't leak a file that doesn't exist.

But you can leak the content of a file that you printed out and couldn't redact properly by using an inferior method

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#245

Post by pfannkuchen »

red75prime wrote: post #195
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?

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).

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.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#246

Post by rayiner »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #98
cmarschner wrote: post #14

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 remov…

"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…

[flagged]

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#247

Post by zerocrates »

piker wrote: post #211
throwup238 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - 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…

> 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 clie…

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.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#248

Post by zerocrates »

brunoqc wrote: post #58
cynicalsecurity wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe because facism favor loyalty over competence.

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.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#249

Post by WalterBright »

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…

> 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.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#250

Post by Teever »

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.

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.

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