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Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

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Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#691
post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really care to have an in depth discussion of self defense scenarios because I don't think that helps us understand common sense gun regulation any better. I'm sure you can find people making that argument if you are curious. My point is not that the AR-15 is an appropriate self defense weapon but that there are better arguments you could have made, and that the one you did make lost someone who is already sy…

I did find someone making that argument, you. I don't think asking for one example out of a hundred is asking for an in depth discussion, but if you claim this is too much for you then I won't push the issue.

It's just not what I'm talking about it the point I'm trying to make. I wasn't making that argument.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#692

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 teleme…

> 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. Absolutely. They know this is confusing, and they're bound and determined not to fix it. At the least, they need a pop-up to let you know that it's not doing what you might think it's doing.

I’m optimistic that because LLMs have brought down the cost of the mere act of typing out code that we will see a shift in focus on certification and verification. Preferably with some legal protection for customers that are sorely lacking today.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#693

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The goal (at least it appears this way to me) is less about having any sort of airtight defense or actually successfully protecting people in the docs so much as giving plausible deniability for the talking heads that support the administration to push as truth. If it’s murky, sloppy, or otherwise unclear, then “no one wins” and “no one is right,” so the event can be easily dismissed. You can open up any popular cons…

Gotta be honest, I think this has just been incompetence from top to bottom. But I also think this is a fracture in the trump coalition. It may be that conservative media is trying to move on from Trump which is why the "this is a nothing burger" defense hasn't been deployed as much. It's clear from early on when they just re-released the same already public docs that the Trump admin thought "Ok, this is over, we can…

Yeah to be clear I don’t think they deliberately screwed up, I think they just don’t care because they don’t need it to be perfect. I think you’re right that at its core this is incompetence

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#694

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NATO works by projecting a united force. Nations unconditionally backing each other up. The USA is now clearly no longer a part of that. That's not to say that the USA will do nothing if a NATO member is attacked. It might. Or not.

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

Limiting Nuclear proliferation was already fucked.

Trump tore up Iran's "we won't do nukes" deal, doesn't matter whether you think they were genuine or not, it demonstrates we will go back on a deal so our word isn't worth anything.

Ukraine shows that the west will not actually protect you like they claim, so your only option is getting nukes to really deter people.

North Korea and Pakistan demonstrate that you can pretty much do whatever you want with just a couple nukes, the west will cower in fear over idle threats.

No country would look at any of this and conclude that they have any choice but to build nukes to protect themselves.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#695
post #597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 teleme…

I think it's part laziness here. Placing a black rectangle on a PDF is easier than modifying an image or removing text from that same PDF.

The consequences of fucking it up are low, too.

If they get caught, they just take the document down and deny it ever got posted. Claim whatever people can show is a fake.

Since they control the levers of government, there's few with the resources and appetite for holding them accountable. So far, we haven't un-redacted anything too damning, so push hasn't come to shove yet.

The only might change if there's a "blue wave" in the midterms, but even then I wouldn't count on it.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#696

I swear the top comment on every popular post is always about semantics or nitpicking and is very rarely about anything in the article itself.

HN rewards "technical discussion" in controversial threads, even when it's not salient or intellectually gratifying. Touching on the political implications is enough to split opinion and guarantee your place towards the middle/bottom of the thread.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#697

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's already bipartisan talk of inherent contempt being applied in the House, so the teeth might not wait for a future justice department.

The discharge petition to all the bill that forced this release was going nowhere until President Trump declared that he was onboard, and then it happened. Until then it was going nowhere. My guess is that someone suggested to Trump that they could redact most of the bad bits and plausibly deny that they were doing that, and he decided that this was the path of least resistance. So I don't think there is any chance t…

This is not correct at all.

The GOP are masters of using parliamentary procedure to avoid votes that would pass that they don't want to pass, nominations and bills that they can't defend voting against.

This was a big issue in the Obama era where Mitch McConnell was determined to make Obama a one term president and decided to "obstruct, obstruct, obstruct" on things that historically never been obstructed, or at least not to the degree they were under Obama. For example, judicial appointments would get stuck in committee and never come up for a vote because the vote would pass. The most famous example of this was the Merrick Garland Supreme Court nomination that was never given a vote for 11 months, which was completely unprecedented.

The GOP has a narrow working majority in the House. The House, unlike the Senate, has the discharge petition process where if a majority of House representatives sign it, it forces a vote. All the Democratic reps signed on so it only took about 4 GOP reps for it to pass.

The lengths Mike Johnson went to to avoid this were unprecedented. 3 Democratic reps have died in office this Congressional session. Texas has consistently delayed a special election to avoid a replacement. Arizona had a special election. A Democrat won and Johnson avoided swearing her in for 7 weeks because she would be the 218th and final signature on the discharge petition.

4 GOP reps signed on and the White House and the Speaker both put incredible pressure on them to change their mind. It was a big part of why Trump fell out with Marjorie Taylor-Greene (she was one of the 4).

Why go to all this effort? Because Epstein was core foundational mythology for MAGA, reps couldn't defend voting against it and everybody knew it.

Johnson then tried to use a procedure to pass a vote called unaminous consent. Basically, rather than go through a roll call of up to 435 members, the House is given the option to object. If anyone does, it forces a vote. Why would he do this? Because there's no voting record for unanimous consent. It gives members cover to say they did or didn't vote for something. A roll call is an official record. Democrats objected and thus we got an official vote with only 1 "no" vote (Rep Clay Higgins).

The SEnate passed it with unanimous consent.

This was a veto proof majority. So if it was so popular, why just not schedule a vote to begin with?

And the obstruction continues. Johnson again put the House in recess 1 day before the 30 day deadline. Coincidence? I think not.

And now we're getting illegal redactions, not meeting the 30 day deadline and a drip feed of document releases because (IMHO) they can't find enough ethically-challenged lackeys to do doc review and redact the names and images of Trump and powerful people, many of whom are likely donors.

Johnson may well lose his position over this. The Attorney General has a non-zero chance of being impeached and removed over it.

There is no putting this genie back in the bottle. It's not going away and at no point was the Trump circle comfortable they could redact their way out of it. They are in full on panic mode right now.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#698

This reminds me of when some government org leaked social security numbers in client-rendered html comments (or something similar) and people who discovered this were called hackers for using browser dev tools

Are you thinking of the Missouri department of education's teacher directory website?

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2022/02/report-missouri-governor...

Luckily someone eventually talked sense into the governor, despite him ignoring the FBI originally when they told him it wasn't a hack

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#699

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't seem to be the case here. Which comment is showing up top for you?

The comment by Arch-TK is currently the top for me.

Interesting. RajT88 20 minute old post is top on my end.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#700

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tool in Acrobat is exactly placing black rectangles on stuff. There's a second step you are supposed to do when you are finishing marking the redactions that edits out the content underneath them, and offers to sanitize other hidden data: https://www.adobe.com/acrobat/resources/how-to-redact-a-pdf.... That failed redactions happen over and over and over is kind of amazing.

I hope you're not blaming the users. It's understandable they would be confused. The software needs to clarify it for the user. Perhaps, when you try to save it, it should warn you that it looks like you tried to redact text, and that text is still embedded in the document and could be extracted. And then direct you to more information on how to complete the redaction.

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