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TSA redaction fail: hidden text easily readable via copy & paste

wanderingaramean.com

11–20 of 57 posts

Re: TSA redaction fail: hidden text easily readable via copy & paste

#11
post #3

Want to know which twelve passports will instantly get you shunted over for secondary screening, simply by showing them to the ID-checking agent? Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Libya, Syria, Sudan, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq, Yemen, or Algeria

That's such an obvious list I'm not sure if it's from the document itself, or if you just wrote down what it would probably be.

Re: TSA redaction fail: hidden text easily readable via copy & paste

#12

This isn't the first time this has happened. Several years back, another government agency made the same mistake. On a slow computer, the text would render first, and could be seen for several seconds before the black boxes would appear. Googling around, it seems to be a fairly common mistake, going back to at least 2000. http://www.securityfocus.com/news/7272 http://cryptome.org/iran-cia/cia-iran-pdf.htm http://blog…

In the same vein, if not the same format: Distributing a Word document from which you've not removed change tracking (and/or other metadata). (Or whatever Word calls it; it's been a while.) I had to correct my teammates on this one, a while back (and yes, the documents were going to external clients). Nothing novel; the problem's been in the news repeatedly. Nonetheless, people -- even "technical" -- still don't get it right.

(I encouraged them to go further and switch to PDF format for the distribution, but they wouldn't.)

Re: TSA redaction fail: hidden text easily readable via copy & paste

#13
post #4

It's helpful to understand a little bit of how a PDF file works. A PDF file stores a sequence of instructions for what do draw on a page. The instructions are commands, such as "write this text here" or "draw a circle there." When you draw black redaction boxes, you are just appending an instruction to the end of the list ("draw a box here"), but most of the time the previous instructions are all still there. Really,…

A government document can't (shouldn't) be rasterized because it would loose all the tagging information making it non-accessible in a 508 sense.

It is however trivial for even a non-technically inclined person to remove the text content through Acrobat's content editing pane.

Just as you suggest, things like this seem to be an example of someone in a large organization not quite understanding how the "magic" behind the tools they use work and winding up with results they didn't expect.

Re: TSA redaction fail: hidden text easily readable via copy & paste

#14
post #11
post #3

Want to know which twelve passports will instantly get you shunted over for secondary screening, simply by showing them to the ID-checking agent? Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Libya, Syria, Sudan, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq, Yemen, or Algeria

That's such an obvious list I'm not sure if it's from the document itself, or if you just wrote down what it would probably be.

I was a little surprised about Cuba. They're not our favorite government, but I don't see them as a security risk.

Re: TSA redaction fail: hidden text easily readable via copy & paste

#15
post #11
post #3

Want to know which twelve passports will instantly get you shunted over for secondary screening, simply by showing them to the ID-checking agent? Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Libya, Syria, Sudan, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq, Yemen, or Algeria

That's such an obvious list I'm not sure if it's from the document itself, or if you just wrote down what it would probably be.

It's from the doc.

Re: TSA redaction fail: hidden text easily readable via copy & paste

#17

This should be required reading on redaction in the government. http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/dod/nsa-redact.pdf

Nice one. I had to giggle at the ubiquity of the MS Office assistant down in the corner... It looks like you're trying to conceal some information from prying eyes. Would you like help with that?

Re: TSA redaction fail: hidden text easily readable via copy & paste

#18
post #11
post #3

Want to know which twelve passports will instantly get you shunted over for secondary screening, simply by showing them to the ID-checking agent? Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Libya, Syria, Sudan, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq, Yemen, or Algeria

That's such an obvious list I'm not sure if it's from the document itself, or if you just wrote down what it would probably be.

The absence of Saudi Arabia is pretty interesting.

Re: TSA redaction fail: hidden text easily readable via copy & paste

#19
post #3

Want to know which twelve passports will instantly get you shunted over for secondary screening, simply by showing them to the ID-checking agent? Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Libya, Syria, Sudan, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq, Yemen, or Algeria

Sounds like George Carlin's seven words you can't say on TV.

Re: TSA redaction fail: hidden text easily readable via copy & paste

#20
post #14
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's such an obvious list I'm not sure if it's from the document itself, or if you just wrote down what it would probably be.

I was a little surprised about Cuba. They're not our favorite government, but I don't see them as a security risk.

Cuba (along with Syria, Sudan, and Iran) compromise the State Department's list of State Sponsors of Terrorism - which I would assume is the origin of their being on that list.
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