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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

#531

Post by sallveburrpi »

pixl97 wrote: post #505
sallveburrpi wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would consider it gross negligence on the journalists part to not know the technical details here. It’s really not that hard; as someone else on this thread pointed out even my grandma knows this… You can find out the technical details in one quick search. How someone like this gets a paying job as a journalist is beyond me.

>How someone like this gets a paying job as a journalist is beyond me. You seem highly confused on what a journalists job is in this era. Very few publishers are about correctness. It's about speed of getting the article out and getting as many eyeballs as possible to look at the ads in the article. Or as the saying goes, A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on.

You could easily replace them with an LLM if that were the case.

Although I don’t completely disagree with your cynical take I don’t think that’s actually the case for most of the Guardians journalists, they do a lot of quality reporting too

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#532

Post by jasonlotito »

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 find it funny to use a hack to argue about the misuse of words and definitions.

Regardless, redaction does not imply that data is missing. The words were censored or obscured. That's it. Simply looking at the documents proves that. Interacting with them showed how easy they were to uncensor, but the simplicity of the method doesn't change facts.

By all means, complain about definitions and words, but get it right.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#533

Post by p-e-w »

kiba wrote: post #503
sallveburrpi wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would consider it gross negligence on the journalists part to not know the technical details here. It’s really not that hard; as someone else on this thread pointed out even my grandma knows this… You can find out the technical details in one quick search. How someone like this gets a paying job as a journalist is beyond me.

To us, it's a life skill. To a non-technical person, it's black magic. Some folks had to be taught on how folder structures work because they grew up with the appliance we called a "phone" as opposed to a real computer that also happened to be known as a "phone".

> To us, it's a life skill. To a non-technical person, it's black magic.

I’m sorry, but “this text is black on black background; the actual letters are still there” isn’t “black magic” unless someone is being deliberately obtuse.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#534

Post by jasonlotito »

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”.

> You’re absolutely correct

They are not. They are factually incorrect. Look up the various definitions of redacted. They fit perfect for the title. Arguing otherwise suggests you are making up definitions and words, in which case, I am still correct.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#535

Post by [deleted] »

sallveburrpi wrote: post #493
pwg wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I would consider it gross negligence on the journalists part to not know the technical details here. It’s really not that hard; as someone else on this thread pointed out even my grandma knows this… You can find out the technical details in one quick search. How someone like this gets a paying job as a journalist is beyond me.

[deleted]

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#536

Post by empath75 »

KnuthIsGod wrote: post #300

Print on paper. Physically cut out the pieces you want to send to remove. Scan. Still suspect that someone can undo this from data may have been accidentally steaganographed across non-deleted parts of the image.

You can also make guesses from font/typeface kerning if it's not from a typewriter.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#537

Post by rkagerer »

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…

Never trust a lawyer with a redact tool any more complicated than a marker.

I've seen lawyers at major, high-priced law firms make this same mistake. Once it was a huge list of individuals names and bank account balances. Fortunately I was able to intervene just before the uploaded documents were made public.

Folks around here blame incompetence, but I say the frequency of this kind of cock-up is crystal clear telemetry telling you the software tools suck.

If the software is going to leverage the familiarity of using a blackout marker to give you a simple mechanism to redact text, it should honour that analogy and work the way any regular user would expect, by killing off the underlying text you're obscuring, and any other correponding, hidden bits. Or it should surface those hidden bits so you can see what could come back to bite you later. E.g. It wouldn't be hard to make the redact tool simultaneously act as a highlighter that temporarily turns proximate text in the OCR layer a vibrant yellow as you use it.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#538

Post by vanviegen »

everyone wrote: post #413
SirHumphrey wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One can only imagine what America not fighting an attack on NATO member would have on nuclear proliferation.

Any country without nukes, that is not currently developing them, is stupid imo.. Nukes are the only thing that can guarantee sovereignty now. Ukraine gave up their nukes.

Do you believe the existing nuclear powers will just allow any country to join their ranks without a fight?

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#540

Post by vanviegen »

SirHumphrey wrote: post #402
vanviegen wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but they seemed to disagree with the most harmful Trump policies as well. I imagine Republicans such as this still populate a majority of the house and Senate. If they disagree, they are sure making an effort to do so silently.

The amount of things Trump did circumventing Congressional approval might suggest that he does not a clean pass even though Republicans have majority in both the house and the senate.

They have (had?) the power to impeach the president for a lot less than he's already done. Yet they don't.
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