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A case study in PDF forensics: The Epstein PDFs

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41–50 of 254 posts

Re: A case study in PDF forensics: The Epstein PDFs

#41
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure Epstein tried to meet with moot at least once: https://www.jmail.world/search?q=chris+poole

He met with moot ("he is sensitive, be gentile", search on jmail), and within a few days the /pol/ board got created, starting a culture war in the US, leading to Trump getting elected president. Absolutely nuts.

I always wondered how much of a cultural etc influence 4Chan actually had (has?) - so much of the mindset and vernacular that was popular there 10+ years ago is now completely mainstream.

Re: A case study in PDF forensics: The Epstein PDFs

#42
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure Epstein tried to meet with moot at least once: https://www.jmail.world/search?q=chris+poole

He met with moot ("he is sensitive, be gentile", search on jmail), and within a few days the /pol/ board got created, starting a culture war in the US, leading to Trump getting elected president. Absolutely nuts.

/pol/ in no way started the American culture war. It was brewing for a while.

Re: A case study in PDF forensics: The Epstein PDFs

#43

Has anyone analysed JE's writing style and looked for matches in archived 4chan posts or content from similar platforms? Same with Ghislaine, there should be enough data to identify them atp right? I don't buy the MaxwellHill claims for various reasons but it doesn't mean there's nothing to find.

Stylometry is extremely sophisticated even with simple n-gram analysis. There's a demo of this that can easily pick out who you are on HN just based on a few paragraphs of your own writing, based on N-gram analysis.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33755016

You can also unironically spot most types of AI writing this way. The approaches based on training another transformer to spot "AI generated" content are wrong.

Re: A case study in PDF forensics: The Epstein PDFs

#44
What is the legal basis for releasing the someone's private files and communications? If they can do it to Epstein, they can do it to you, to the Washington Post journalist, to former President Clinton, etc.

Is the scope at least limited somehow? Generally I favor transparency, but of course probably the most important parts are withheld.

Re: A case study in PDF forensics: The Epstein PDFs

#45
post #14

> DoJ explicitly avoids JPEG images in the PDFs probably because they appreciate that JPEGs often contain identifiable information, such as EXIF, IPTC, or XMP metadata Maybe I'm underestimating the issue at full, but isn't this a very lightweight problem to solve? Is converting the images to lower DPI formats/versions really any easier than just stripping the metadata? Surely the DOJ and similar justice agencies have…

This is speculation but generally rules like this follow some sort of incident. e.g. Someone responds to a FOI request and accidentally discloses more information than desired due to metadata. So a blanket rule is instituted not to use a particular format.

Re: A case study in PDF forensics: The Epstein PDFs

#46
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He met with moot ("he is sensitive, be gentile", search on jmail), and within a few days the /pol/ board got created, starting a culture war in the US, leading to Trump getting elected president. Absolutely nuts.

/pol/ in no way started the American culture war. It was brewing for a while.

pol was made to contain all posting on the American culture war so it could be banned from the other (more active) boards

Re: A case study in PDF forensics: The Epstein PDFs

#47
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He met with moot ("he is sensitive, be gentile", search on jmail), and within a few days the /pol/ board got created, starting a culture war in the US, leading to Trump getting elected president. Absolutely nuts.

/pol/ in no way started the American culture war. It was brewing for a while.

In no way?

Re: A case study in PDF forensics: The Epstein PDFs

#48
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure Epstein tried to meet with moot at least once: https://www.jmail.world/search?q=chris+poole

He met with moot ("he is sensitive, be gentile", search on jmail), and within a few days the /pol/ board got created, starting a culture war in the US, leading to Trump getting elected president. Absolutely nuts.

Which meeting are you seeing? That search doesn't seem to work for me, I'm only seeing the one Jan 2012.

Re: A case study in PDF forensics: The Epstein PDFs

#49

Has anyone analysed JE's writing style and looked for matches in archived 4chan posts or content from similar platforms? Same with Ghislaine, there should be enough data to identify them atp right? I don't buy the MaxwellHill claims for various reasons but it doesn't mean there's nothing to find.

Stylometry is extremely sophisticated even with simple n-gram analysis. There's a demo of this that can easily pick out who you are on HN just based on a few paragraphs of your own writing, based on N-gram analysis. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33755016 You can also unironically spot most types of AI writing this way. The approaches based on training another transformer to spot "AI generated" content are wron…

Why are they wrong? Surely it depends on how you train it?

Re: A case study in PDF forensics: The Epstein PDFs

#50
post #44

What is the legal basis for releasing the someone's private files and communications? If they can do it to Epstein, they can do it to you, to the Washington Post journalist, to former President Clinton, etc. Is the scope at least limited somehow? Generally I favor transparency, but of course probably the most important parts are withheld.

I'd assume it was the nature of the case, and that discovery was done with him being dead.
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