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A case study in PDF forensics: The Epstein PDFs

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

#171

Post by thinkingemote »

acessoproibido wrote: post #41
nubg wrote: 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.

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.

Internet trolls want attention. When the internet gives trolls attention and said that the trolls are culturally and politically important and dangerous it is exactly what was desired.

That many serious commentators didn't see this was itself very funny as anything with lots of attention on the internet does become influential! It is funny to a troll to see people pay serious attention to them "I am just a clown and they think I'm serious!". But don't think that they were actual comedians, lol, they are as serious as HN users.

In the dawkins sense of the word: the "meme" wants to spread and grow and the mechanism for it's virality was the immune response to it.

On another angle, the responses also gave the target an identity. Groups get defined as groups from outside more than from within. And it's always a wrong characterisation which also helps define the in group in relation. "You guys are all toxic Linux dude bros" inside: "but some of us love macs and windows, and some of us are girls, they sure dont understand our ways"

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

#172

Post by normie3000 »

mikkupikku wrote: post #89
juujian wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that I can speak from personal experience or anything... But somebody on an email chain may have requested a scanned version of the document to ensure there is no metadata and the employee might have found it easier to just flatten the pdf and apply a graphical filter to make the document appear like a scanned document. There might even be a webtool available somewhere to do so, I wouldn't know...

> the employee might have found it easier to just flatten the pdf and apply a graphical filter to make the document appear like a scanned document Is that remotely plausible? I can't imaging faking a scan being easier than just walking down the hall to the copier room.

Working from home and no scanner in the house?

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

#173

Post by dahcryn »

mikkupikku wrote: post #89
juujian wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that I can speak from personal experience or anything... But somebody on an email chain may have requested a scanned version of the document to ensure there is no metadata and the employee might have found it easier to just flatten the pdf and apply a graphical filter to make the document appear like a scanned document. There might even be a webtool available somewhere to do so, I wouldn't know...

> the employee might have found it easier to just flatten the pdf and apply a graphical filter to make the document appear like a scanned document Is that remotely plausible? I can't imaging faking a scan being easier than just walking down the hall to the copier room.

If I look at my personal work situation, working from home would mean I can't do it immediately, but would have to remember to do it the next day. Or just do it digitally right now in a few minutes and have it off my to-do list

Don't attribute to malice what can be attributed to laziness, these are government workers

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

#174

Post by turboponyy »

lordgrenville wrote: post #168
tombrossman wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GNOME Desktop users can put this in a Bash script in ~/.local/share/nautilus/ for more convincing looking fake PDF scans, accessible from your right-click menu. I do not recall where I copied it from originally to give credit so thanks, random internet person (probably on Stack Exchange). It works perfectly. ROTATION=$(shuf -n 1 -e '-' '')$(shuf -n 1 -e $(seq 0.05 .5)) for pdf in "$@"; do magick -density 150 $pdf \ -…

Nothing about this is specific to GNOME, right? Imagemagick is cross-platform

I guess the Gnome-specific part is that Gnome comes with the Nautilus file browser, and the instructions add a script for Nautilus.

But yea, this will work as long as you have imagemagick and Nautilus installed.

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

#175

Post by andai »

culi wrote: post #144
ted_bunny wrote: post #34

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.

There was a post on here about a project in stylometry that analyzed HN users comment history. The tool helped find accounts that had an extremely similar writing style to a given account. The site was soon removed due to privacy concerns but many users with multiple account attested to its accuracy https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33755016 It turns out stylometry is actually a pretty well-developed field. It mak…

A while back the government claimed it had used stylometry to identify Satoshi Nakamoto.

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

#176

Post by andai »

fluoridation wrote: post #100
Eisenstein wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have a large enough set to test against and a specific person you are looking for, this is totally doable currently.

Of course it's doable. The question is how reliable the results are.

I wonder if it works on zoomers too. I have noticed a slight mode collapse among this population ;)

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

#177

Post by lordgrenville »

turboponyy wrote: post #174
lordgrenville wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing about this is specific to GNOME, right? Imagemagick is cross-platform

I guess the Gnome-specific part is that Gnome comes with the Nautilus file browser, and the instructions add a script for Nautilus. But yea, this will work as long as you have imagemagick and Nautilus installed.

Oh I missed that part, was just looking at the script

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

#178

Post by streetfighter64 »

dahcryn wrote: post #173
mikkupikku wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the employee might have found it easier to just flatten the pdf and apply a graphical filter to make the document appear like a scanned document Is that remotely plausible? I can't imaging faking a scan being easier than just walking down the hall to the copier room.

If I look at my personal work situation, working from home would mean I can't do it immediately, but would have to remember to do it the next day. Or just do it digitally right now in a few minutes and have it off my to-do list Don't attribute to malice what can be attributed to laziness, these are government workers

I think maybe the old "don't attribute to malice" adage goes out the window when we're talking about a coverup of a giant child sex trafficking ring run by high-up people in the government.

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

#180

Post by mrweasel »

ted_bunny wrote: post #34

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.

The writing style is rather interesting. Epstein seems borderline dyslexic, but almost none of the emails I've seen are written in a coherent way, regardless of the sender.

Either people on that level rarely write anything on their own and have completely forgotten how to construct proper sentences or maybe that just how they communicate. Sort of language internal to the group.

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