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

wanderingaramean.com

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

#21

Post by weaksauce »

mschwar99 wrote: post #13
cduan wrote: 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…

I understand that but why would they not just replace the area with text that says [ redacted ] instead of the black box?

Edit: you can pad the redacted box with spaces to keep the formatting consistent.

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

#22

Post by naz »

sage_joch wrote: post #18
staunch wrote: 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.

The absence of Saudi Arabia is pretty interesting.

Right, didn't half the 9/11 hijackers have Saudi passports? They wouldn't even get secondary.

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

#23

Post by derefr »

weaksauce wrote: post #21
mschwar99 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I understand that but why would they not just replace the area with text that says [ redacted ] instead of the black box? Edit: you can pad the redacted box with spaces to keep the formatting consistent.

Perhaps they want to keep the formatting, and don't want pages to reflow after they've already been layed out? The Unicode character "█" works well for this purpose.

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

#24

Post by brown9-2 »

weaksauce wrote: post #21
mschwar99 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I understand that but why would they not just replace the area with text that says [ redacted ] instead of the black box? Edit: you can pad the redacted box with spaces to keep the formatting consistent.

Occum's Razor: because "they" did not understand PDF and thought that they were making the text unreadable simply by drawing boxes over it.

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

#25

Post by mschwar99 »

weaksauce wrote: post #21
mschwar99 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I understand that but why would they not just replace the area with text that says [ redacted ] instead of the black box? Edit: you can pad the redacted box with spaces to keep the formatting consistent.

From what I have seen in working with the government and the web I think that anigbrowl's comment is spot on. Many people use tools that are designed for the web or the desktop in the same way that they used to use tools designed for print. In this case just slapping a black line over it works in print, and it does not occur to many people that don't fully understand the technology they use that it might not be directly analogous.

A significant portion of my day job involves working with people in government that have a mental model of content distribution that was constructed during the era of print. Its a fun challenge to help people adjust those models to make things more efficient / more informative / less dangerous.

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

#26

Post by sorbus »

Using the link in the article, it appears that it's already been taken down (link leads to a 404 page). However, from the comments in the article, it's been mirrored at http://cryptome.org (at the top of the list, in fact, filename is tsa-screening.zip, in case that makes it easier to find it).

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

#27

Post by oiuytgfhn »

endtime wrote: post #14
staunch wrote: 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.

Are you serious!!!!

America has been living under the shadow of imminent Cuban aggression for 50years. There have been Cuban attempts to invade America and numerous assassination attempts on the US president by Cuban agents.

And their chemical weapons kill 1000s of Americans after being secretly delivered from Canada.

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

#28

Post by oiuytgfhn »

weaksauce wrote: post #21
mschwar99 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I understand that but why would they not just replace the area with text that says [ redacted ] instead of the black box? Edit: you can pad the redacted box with spaces to keep the formatting consistent.

Black boxes look much more secret agent?

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

#29

Post by [deleted] »

oiuytgfhn wrote: post #27
endtime wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Are you serious!!!! America has been living under the shadow of imminent Cuban aggression for 50years. There have been Cuban attempts to invade America and numerous assassination attempts on the US president by Cuban agents. And their chemical weapons kill 1000s of Americans after being secretly delivered from Canada.

[deleted]
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