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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

#391

Post by amelius »

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…

Maybe the person tasked with the redacting didn't agree so they chose the worst possible way to do it.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#392

Post by digitaltrees »

weird-eye-issue wrote: post #107
digitaltrees wrote: post #106

Its not a hack to copy and paste text that is part of the document data. The incompetence of the people responsible to comply with the law doesnt mean its reasonable to label something a hack. Please change the title.

If I open your laptop and guess your password then that counts as hacking you in both legal and security terms You don't need to do some sophisticated thing for it to be considered hacking

You guessing my password is not the same as a know and expected behavior of a program. Adobe has a specific feature to redact. PDF is a format known to have layers. Lawyers are trained on day one not to make this mistake. (I am a recovering lawyer). This is either incompetence or deliberate disclosure.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#393

Post by TrackerFF »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #184

Stupid question: why is the government even allowed to redact stuff? Isn’t the government keeping secrets from the people totally antithetical to democracy?

The TL;DR:

- To protect victims

- Redact people that are currently under investigation

But here they are clearly blacking out potential co-conspirators, without them being under investigation or having been charged with anything.

Seems like they are just backing out powerful people not to embarrass or implicate them.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#394

Post by digitaltrees »

an0malous wrote: post #155
koolala wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you were blind would a screen reader read the documents? Thats not a hack.

If your intent was to circumvent the redactions it would be

Placing a black box on the text isn’t a redaction any more than placing a sticky note would be. No reasonable person can expect a sticky note to permanently prevent readers from seeing text and no reasonable person can expect a black overlay box in pdf to prevent reading text because this is literally a fundamental feature of pdfs as a layer format file

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#395

Post by exasperaited »

rayiner wrote: post #246
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…

[flagged]

> Had exactly did Barr and Co. accomplish in terms of moving forward the agenda people voted for? These guys were so eager to win accolades from liberals they couldn’t even pick the lowest hanging fruit.

Are you talking about the same Bill Barr? "Eager to win accolades from liberals" is a hilariously Trump-after-he-fired-someone thing to say.

Have you read his Wikipedia page? Do you know who he actually is?

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#396

Post by swiftcoder »

_flux wrote: post #298
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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.

Adobe Acrobat's redaction tools regularly feature in this sort of fuck-up, and they are (at least marketed as being) designed for such use

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#397

Post by digitaltrees »

left-struck wrote: post #356
TOMDM wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone sends me a document with text in it that they meant to remove but didn't and then I read that text, I haven't hacked anything they're just incompetent. Hacking is unauthorised use of a system. Reading a document that was not adequately redacted can hardly be considered hacking.

Hacking is not just authorised use of a system. Hacking and hacking techniques can apply to systems you fully own or systems which you are authorised to hack. Hacking is using something in a way that the designer didn’t anticipate or intend on.

Adobe designed pdf to behave this way. Placing layers over text doesn’t remove the text from the file. They have a specific redaction feature for that purpose.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#398

Post by noduerme »

amelius wrote: post #391
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…

Maybe the person tasked with the redacting didn't agree so they chose the worst possible way to do it.

Normally, I'd never attribute to intention what can be blamed on incompetence. Especially if the government is doing it. But sure, if I were the intern tasked with this job...

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#399

Post by SirHumphrey »

vanviegen wrote: post #371
rcbdev wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They effectively already left NATO What the fuck are you talking about? Someone should tell Russia.

NATO works by projecting a united force. Nations unconditionally backing each other up. The USA is now clearly no longer a part of that. That's not to say that the USA will do nothing if a NATO member is attacked. It might. Or not.

One can only imagine what America not fighting an attack on NATO member would have on nuclear proliferation.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#400

Post by TylerE »

eviks wrote: post #244
TylerE wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It gets you the non-existance of a PDF full of reversible black boxes. Can't leak a file that doesn't exist.

But you can leak the content of a file that you printed out and couldn't redact properly by using an inferior method

But such a document is obviously unredacted. A black boxed PDF appears to be redacted, but isn't. Accidents happen.
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