251–260 of 810 posts
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.
This site has really gone downhill lately with drivel like this being upvoted. Any real developers on this site anymore?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
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…
how much lower can they go ?!
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…
"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake" - Napoleon Bonaparte Let all the files get released first. Then show your hacks.
Also don’t assume the mistake wasn’t intentional.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
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.
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").
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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.