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Manafort Left an Incriminating Paper Trail Converting PDFs to Word

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Re: Manafort Left an Incriminating Paper Trail Converting PDFs to Word

#181

Post by talmand »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #156
fencepost wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You beat me to it. HN readers who don't work with non-technical users may not realize just how lost and unable to explore many people are, particularly when they didn't grow up with computers. There's also a huge problem with "dialog blindness." If you have an understanding of how "computers" (hardware, OS, apps, websites, doesn't matter it's all the same mystery box) work then you can explore with less fear. I deal…

"Didn't grow up with computers" (have contact with computers during compulsory education) in the West is likely people over 50. Can probably go to 55-58 for people who have degrees; ie people who used computers during Uni education. If you're older you've probably had 20 years with computers in the workplace save for some niches, seems long enough to learn to use a simple point-click menu.

There's a great deal of assumptions in that comment.

Re: Manafort Left an Incriminating Paper Trail Converting PDFs to Word

#182

Post by rhino369 »

mbell wrote: post #91
fencepost wrote: post #87

For people thinking that he should have known better on a technical basis, maybe but remember that during the time in question he was a 64-68 year old man (= graduated college around the time Unix was being rewritten in C) who's never worked in a technical field. By the time most of these capabilities existed Manafort had been management/executive for years or decades. That's not to say that he couldn't have learned…

Do you really need a technical background or some sort of college training to find the File > Save As > PDF option?

Does word have save as PDF option if you haven't bought acrobat?

Re: Manafort Left an Incriminating Paper Trail Converting PDFs to Word

#183

Post by s73v3r_ »

marnett wrote: post #165
s73v3r_ wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading the book, "The Chicken Shit Club", it's a combination of the prosecutors being buddy buddy with the big defense lawyer firms (someone who has a reputation for going after white collar crime and being aggressive about it might not get a job with the big defense firms after their time in the DOJ or SEC or what have you), and Congress being buddy buddy with the execs and getting upset when the DOJ does their job…

exactly the book I was thinking of when writing my comment! (:

While that book was really well written, it made me incredibly angry. The fact that I read it mostly in pubs didn't help matters.

Re: Manafort Left an Incriminating Paper Trail Converting PDFs to Word

#185

Post by threeseed »

puppetmaster40 wrote: post #169

OT: Does this have ANYTHING to do w/ Trump Russia Collusion? Separate OT: Do we know any political party that colluded, in primaries? Or that received foreign $? Or used 'bots' to make it seem like they have support? Or that had it's operatives use state instruments to disrupt the opposing party?

Mueller's remit is to investigate any crimes related to the campaign and election. Trump/Russia collusion is just one of many including money laundering and obstruction of justice.

Manafort was campaign chairman and is alleged to have convinced Trump to change positions on Ukraine as a a result of outside funds. Hence investigating money laundering is directly relevant to Mueller's remit.

Re: Manafort Left an Incriminating Paper Trail Converting PDFs to Word

#186

Post by threeseed »

Cw67NTN8F wrote: post #134

FBI has virtually unlimited resources and they really want this guy. So, he only made it easier, no doubt they would have caught that even without the paper trail. FBI had access to his corp returns and to his loan application. Everything he has done is under the microscope and unless he can hand Trump on a silver plate, he's toast. He's almost 70 years old and you're talking about 20 years sentences. When you deal w…

The other factor at play is presidential pardons.

Manafort pleading innocent could be a strategy to appear as the victim of the "deep state".

Re: Manafort Left an Incriminating Paper Trail Converting PDFs to Word

#187

Post by TurningCanadian »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #140
retSava wrote: post #8

Semi-related tip: I despise protected pdfs with a passion. Especially when you download a datasheet and you can't add annotations or highlights to it. So, how to remove this protection? One way is to print to postscript and convert back to pdf, but then you can't copy text from it. Here's how (on windows): download qpdf ( http://qpdf.sourceforge.net/ ) and run qpdf.exe -decrypt encrypted.pdf woho.pdf I made a small b…

> I despise protected pdfs with a passion When I want to "protect" a PDF, I print it as a TIFF and then PDF that document. It's less "protecting" than "making it difficult to alter or copy-paste from," but it works. (Also good for ensuring your redaction blobs can't be moved.)

Why use TIFF? It supports layers, so I'm not sure it'd guarantee that redaction blobs are effective.

Re: Manafort Left an Incriminating Paper Trail Converting PDFs to Word

#188

Post by ajross »

scblock wrote: post #177
ajross wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In what way do you mean flattened? Surely in the context of the episode we're talking about: the discovery of the $4M in fraudulent income claimed in the document. In the Word document, that edit would be discoverable. In PDF it is not. You seem to be making an abstract argument about "PDF security" here. The point of the subthread is a practical point about whether Manafort was correctly generating a fraudulent do…

I am trying to clear up what appear to be hugely misleading assumptions about how PDFs work. Edit: and based on the information provided in these news reports, he was being a massive technology rube.

> I am trying to clear up what appear to be hugely misleading assumptions about how PDFs work.

I'm sure you are. But in the process you are spamming an only tangentially related subthread with the clear implication that PDFs store editting history in the way Word documents do (they don't). This is doing the opposite of what you want.

No one here is talking about "editing PDFs" or making PDFs "secure from editting", so your points are only confusing the matter.

Re: Manafort Left an Incriminating Paper Trail Converting PDFs to Word

#190

Post by Zigurd »

fencepost wrote: post #87

For people thinking that he should have known better on a technical basis, maybe but remember that during the time in question he was a 64-68 year old man (= graduated college around the time Unix was being rewritten in C) who's never worked in a technical field. By the time most of these capabilities existed Manafort had been management/executive for years or decades. That's not to say that he couldn't have learned…

He was working with first tier Russian oligarchs who hold a lot of his debt. They could have readily afforded to provide him with a moonlighting troll bot coder to keep his tradecraft sharp.
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