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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

#471

Post by stingraycharles »

Arch-TK wrote: post #462

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 dis…

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.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#472

Post by afavour »

Arch-TK wrote: post #462

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 dis…

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”.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#473

Post by kungito »

afavour wrote: post #472
Arch-TK wrote: post #462

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 dis…

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”.

They failed to redact data. That's it. People just read the files afterwards, only formatting was wierd.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#474

Post by mannykannot »

afavour wrote: post #472
Arch-TK wrote: post #462

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 dis…

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”.

How about "the documents were clarified" or "their contents were revealed"? Maybe "formatted for reading on your device"?

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#475

Post by pwg »

Arch-TK wrote: post #462

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 dis…

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).

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#476

Post by 2b3a51 »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #299
groestl wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I suppose the best process would be this, and then after rescanning putting a black bar over each redacted text with image editing.

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?

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#477

Post by barrkel »

jwrallie wrote: post #409
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…

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.

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.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#478

Post by _trampeltier »

_flux wrote: post #298
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 optio…

> 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…

Just scan it with black/ white setting.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#479

Post by harywilke »

__alexs wrote: post #367
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…

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?

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.
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