Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 810 posts

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#291

Post by yetihehe »

agentifysh wrote: post #255
OneMorePerson wrote: post #231

It's funny seeing this play out because in my personal life anytime I'm sharing a sensitive document where someone needs to see part of it but I don't want them to see the rest that's not relevant, I'll first block out/redact the text I don't want them to see (covering it, using a redacting highlighter thing, etc.), and then I'll screenshot the page and make that image a PDF. I always felt paranoid (without any real…

it's absolutely bewildering how ridiculous everything has been so far in terms of competence and this really takes the cherry on the top near Christmas too. how much lower can they go ?!

USA is still very high, so they can go much much lower, but I think they might go to some still lower places, finding them where we didn't even know such places could exist. Some ideas:

- Leave NATO

- Start openly supporting Russia and North Korea

- Arrest whole International Criminal Court

- Preventively invade China

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#292

Post by gmueckl »

culi wrote: post #257
refurb wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also don’t assume the mistake wasn’t intentional.

This was my initial reaction to this news. I mean think about it The Trump team knows that nobody is gonna buy whatever they put out as being the full story. Isn't this just the perfect way to make people feel like they got something they weren't supposed to see? They can increase trust in the output without having to increase trust in the source of it And as far as I've heard there hasn't been anything "unredacted"…

This is probably one of those events where everyone on the inside has their own story that won't fit into a neat overarching narrative of how the files are handled because they only gets to feel part of the elefant each.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#294

Post by cmarschner »

heavyset_go wrote: post #215
cmarschner wrote: post #14

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 remov…

I want to believe this is malicious compliance.

Since hundreds of people were involved the most likely explanation is incompetence

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#295

Post by groestl »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #286
groestl wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> made their redactions with actual ink, and then re-scanned every page That's not very competent. > going analog is foolproof Absolutely not. There are many way's to f this up. Just the smallest variation in places that have been inked twice will reveal the clear text.

> Just the smallest variation in places that have been inked twice will reveal the clear text Sure. But anyone can visually examine this. That means everyone with situational context can directly examine the quality of the redaction. Contrast that with a digital redation. You have to trust the tool works. Or you have to separate the folks with context from the folks with techical competence. (There is the third optio…

> anyone can visually examine this.

They can't, if the variations are subtle enough. For example, many people are oblivious to the fact that one can extract audio from objects captured on mute video, due to tiny vibrations.

Analog is the worse option here. Simple screenshot of 100% black bar would be what a smart lazy person would do.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#296

Post by pinkmuffinere »

b00ty4breakfast wrote: post #289

"hacks" lol. Next, ctl+alt+del and it's equivalents are gonna be called arcane theurgy

Hacks don’t have to be pretty — if it works it works. Here’s my “hack” to get into many school computer systems:

Username: admin

Password: password

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#297

Post by varjag »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #104
netsharc wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like Russian spies being caught in the Netherlands with taxi receipts showing they took a taxi from their Moscow HQ to the airport: corrupt organizations attract/can only hire incompetent people... https://www.vice.com/en/article/russian-spies-chemical-weapo... Anyone remember how the Trump I regime had staff who couldn't figure out the lighting in the White House, or mistitled Australia's Prime Minister as Pres…

> with taxi receipts Please tell me they were saving them for expensing.

Europol is nothing next to Natasha in accounting

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#298

Post by _flux »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #286
groestl wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> made their redactions with actual ink, and then re-scanned every page That's not very competent. > going analog is foolproof Absolutely not. There are many way's to f this up. Just the smallest variation in places that have been inked twice will reveal the clear text.

> Just the smallest variation in places that have been inked twice will reveal the clear text Sure. But anyone can visually examine this. That means everyone with situational context can directly examine the quality of the redaction. Contrast that with a digital redation. You have to trust the tool works. Or you have to separate the folks with context from the folks with techical competence. (There is the third optio…

> But anyone can visually examine this.

Can they? In principle it could be the difference between RGB 0.0,0.0,0.0 and RGB 0.004,0.0,0.0, that could be very difficult to visually see, but an algorithm could unmask the data with some correlation.

If you do it digitally and then map the material to black-and-white bitmap, then that you can actually virtually examine.

> Contrast that with a digital redation. You have to trust the tool works.

While true, I think the key problem is that the tools used were not made for digital redaction. If they were I would be quite a bit more confident that they would also work properly.

Seems like there could be a product for this domain.. And after some googling, it appears there is.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#299

Post by bryanrasmussen »

groestl wrote: post #279
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"There are major differences between the Trump 1.0 and 2.0 administrations. In the Trump 1.0 administration, many of the most important officials were very competent men. One example would be then-Attorney General William Barr. Barr is contemptible, yes, but smart AF. When Barr’s DOJ released a redacted version of the Mueller Report, they printed the whole thing, made their redactions with actual ink, and then re-sca…

> made their redactions with actual ink, and then re-scanned every page That's not very competent. > going analog is foolproof Absolutely not. There are many way's to f this up. Just the smallest variation in places that have been inked twice will reveal the clear text.

I suppose the best process would be this, and then after rescanning putting a black bar over each redacted text with image editing.
Post reply on HN