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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

#451

Post by vkou »

rurban wrote: post #332
vkou wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would the roadmap for turning a democracy into a one party dictatorship differ from the trajectory we are on?

Which democracy? The USA isn't one for decades already

I've no doubt that if we plopped you down in the middle of, say, modern-day Russia, you'd be able to observe a few important differences in the political organization of the two countries.

Fewer than you would a year or nine ago, certainly, and a lot of people are working very hard on closing the gap.

Democracy is a spectrum. There have always been significant flaws with American democracy, but you'd be mad to not observe significant, active regression and effort by the government to replace it with something else.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#452

Post by Loughla »

irishcoffee wrote: post #79
Loughla wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I truly believe we're headed that direction. I've lived long enough to have seen a wide variety of presidents, both good and bad. This one is easily the worst one, in terms of bare naked power grabs. I believe Trump will manufacture a crisis before he's out of office in a bid to maintain control. I believe he will have learned from Bush Jr. that a simple war isn't good enough, and it needs to be a genuine emergency.…

This is one of those instances where I with hn had some kind of remindMe feature.

I hope I'm wrong, but I legit believe that will happen.

See you in about 2 years.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#453

Post by mctt »

juujian wrote: post #63

Apart from the technological and procedural question, I would love to learn why the DOJ found it important to protect Indyke. He was Epstein's lawyer, and now we learn that he was personally involved. He is not a Washington person. We expected there to be politically motivated protection of certain people, but is the DOJ just going to blanket protect anybody in the docs?

..."Indyke, an attorney who represented Epstein for decades, has not been criminally indicted by federal authorities. He was hired by the Parlatore Law Group in 2022, before the justice department settled the Epstein case. That firm represents the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and previously represented Donald Trump in his defense against charges stemming from the discovery of classified government documents stored at Trump’s Florida estate."...

From the Guardian UK https://archive.md/lO08a

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#454

Post by Jcampuzano2 »

culi wrote: post #260
Dusseldorf wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Colleagues whose full time job is doing this sort of thing for various bits of the government have told me this is exactly the case here. People from all over the government have been deputized to redact these documents with little or no prior training.

If there's that many people who have access to these files, I'm shocked there hasn't been leaks until this point.

When other people close to the case end up dead you have a pretty decent reason to not leak.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#455

Post by caminante »

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.

>Please change the title.

HN discourages editorializing headlines.

While I wouldn't call it a "hack," common usage even here on HN isn't limited to "to gain illegal access to (a computer network, system, etc.)" [0]

[0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hack

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#456

Post by vidarh »

thdrtol wrote: post #369
cmarschner wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Once I worked for a company that got a quote in the form of a Word document. Turned out it had history turned on and quotes to competitors could be recovered. There is a lot of incompitence when it comes to file formats.

For one of my first jobs I negotiated a better offer because "strings" on the document revealed the previous offer they'd sent out, and made me confident I could ask for more.

Though, makes me wonder if someone has intentionally sent out offers like that with lower numbers to make people think they're outsmarting them.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#457

Post by 2026iknewit »

__alexs wrote: post #367
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…

This has happened so many times I feel like the DoJ must have some sort of standardised redaction pipeline to prevent it by now. Assuming they do, why wasn't it used?

Of course there is a process.

There was also a process on how to communicate top secret information, but these idiots prefered to use signal.

I'm completly lost on how you can be surprised by this at all? Trump is in there, tells some FBI faboon to black everything out, they collect a group of people they can find and start going through these files as fast as they can.

"When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn't become a king; the palace instead becomes a circus."

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#458

Post by tremon »

baby wrote: post #438
heavyset_go wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to believe this is malicious compliance.

Lots of loyalists have replaced people there. It's for sure incompetence.

Indeed, incompetence is basically guaranteed if the organization selects for allegiance rather than competence. But I prefer to think that at least part of this was malicious compliance, because that suggests that at least some people at the FBI still have their soul.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#459

Post by tremon »

legulere wrote: post #450
heavyset_go wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to believe this is malicious compliance.

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor

The other side of that same coin is to never admit to malice if your actions can be adequately excused by stupidity.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#460

Post by amelius »

noduerme wrote: post #398
amelius wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

> Especially if the government is doing it.

Also if doing it right means more work?

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