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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

#11

Post by mmh0000 »

tomekf wrote: post #7

How it’s done from technical point?

Layers.

PDF is an absurdly complex file format. It's part of the reason there is no single "good" PDF reader, just a lot of mediocre PDF readers that are all terrible in their own way. Which is a topic for another day.

There are several ways to remove data in a PDF:

- Remove the data. This is much harder than it sounds. Many PDF tools won't let you change the content of a PDF, not because it isn't possible, but because you'll likely massively screw up the formatting, and the tools don't want to deal with that.

- Replace the data. This what what all the "blackout" tools do, find "A" and replace with "🮋". This is effective and doesn't break formatting since it's a 1-to-1 replacement. The problem with "replacing" is that not every PDF tool works the same way, and some, instead, just change the foreground and background color to black; it looks nearly the same, but the power of copy-and-paste still functions.

- Then you have the computer illiterate, who think changing the foreground and background color to black is good enough anyway.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#12

Post by kjkjadksj »

xhkkffbf wrote: post #9

So is the data extracted the names of the victims that were supposed to be hidden to protect them? Or is there something else that might be worthy of exposing?

There are pages that are nothing but redacted text. It isn’t going to be a victims name copy pasted 80 times in a row…

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#13

Post by wafflemaker »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #12
xhkkffbf wrote: post #9

So is the data extracted the names of the victims that were supposed to be hidden to protect them? Or is there something else that might be worthy of exposing?

There are pages that are nothing but redacted text. It isn’t going to be a victims name copy pasted 80 times in a row…

>It isn’t going to be a victims name copy pasted 80 times in a row…

You can't possibly know that!

(Sorry, watching Grinch, Jim Carrey spoke through me).

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#14

Post by cmarschner »

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 remove the underlying text; the concealed content could be extracted. This led to extensive discussion and an Inspector General review.

- UK Ministry of Defence submarine security document (UK, 2011) A MoD report had “redacted” sections that could be revealed by copying/pasting the “blacked out” text—because the text was still present, just visually obscured.

- Apple v. Samsung ruling (U.S., 2011) A federal judge’s opinion attempted to redact passages, but the content was still recoverable due to the way the PDF was formatted; copying text out revealed the “redacted” parts.

- Associated Press + Facebook valuation estimate in court transcript (U.S., 2009) The AP reported it could read “redacted” portions of a court transcript by cut-and-paste (classic overlay-style failure). Secondary coverage notes the mechanism explicitly.

A broader “history of failures” compilation (multiple orgs / years) The PDF Association collected multiple incidents (including several above) and describes the common failure mode: black shapes drawn over text without deleting/sanitizing the underlying content. https://pdfa.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/High-Security-PD...

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#17

Post by oliwarner »

tomekf wrote: post #7

How it’s done from technical point?

They drew black boxes over the text. The text is still underneath. On OCR'd scanned documents, the text you'd copy is actually stored in metadata and just linked by position to the image.

Anyway, if you click on a "redaction", you're clicking on the box and can't select the text underneath, but if you just highlight the text around it, you can copy all the original text.

It's a bizarre oversight.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#19

Post by watwut »

kgwxd wrote: post #16
xhkkffbf wrote: post #9

So is the data extracted the names of the victims that were supposed to be hidden to protect them? Or is there something else that might be worthy of exposing?

i assume the downvoters don't see the importance of the question.

The downvoters assume that it is a bad faith question. The downvoters are 99% right with that. If the 1% hit then OP is just exceedingly naive and did not followed the scandal in which case they should maybe first do some reading.

The names of involved powerful people were NOT supposed to be censored. All those names except Bill Clinton name were redacted. To protect Trump and everybody else involved in the scandal except said Bill Clinton. But especially to protect Trump.

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