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

721–730 of 810 posts

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#721

Post by jm4 »

rkagerer wrote: post #537
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…

Never trust a lawyer with a redact tool any more complicated than a marker. I've seen lawyers at major, high-priced law firms make this same mistake. Once it was a huge list of individuals names and bank account balances. Fortunately I was able to intervene just before the uploaded documents were made public. Folks around here blame incompetence, but I say the frequency of this kind of cock-up is crystal clear teleme…

It often comes down to not using the right software and training issues. They have to use Acrobat, which has a redaction tool. This is expensive so some places cheap out on other tools that don’t have a real redaction feature. They highlight with black and think it does the same thing whereas the redaction tool completely removes the content and any associated metadata from the document.

This was basically the only reason we were willing to cough up like $400 for each Acrobat license for a few hundred people. One redaction fuckup could cost you whatever you saved by buying something else.

I would like to believe that the DOJ lacking the proper software might have something to do with DOGE. That would be sweet irony.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#722

Post by JumpCrisscross »

2b3a51 wrote: post #476
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Perhaps an imagemagick pipeline dumping each page out as a png then blanking areas associated with a list of words (a pixel level concordance of the coordinates of all the words having been compiled from a text dump? Hand-waving here). I'm probably overthinking this one but the various lengths of the redaction bars would provide some information perhaps? So three conspirators with names like Stonk, Hephalump and Prag…

> the various lengths of the redaction bars would provide some information perhaps?

Absolutely. It’s why officially-redacted documents typically take out entire sentences and paragraphs, wiping just names only sparingly.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#723

Post by JumpCrisscross »

g947o wrote: post #447
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…

It's not fool proof: https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/28/23777298/sony-ftc-microso...

Nothing is. The point is it’s highly precedented, surprisingly robust and far more competent than half the armchair suggestions being raised in this thread.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#724

Post by ozim »

jm4 wrote: post #721
rkagerer wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never trust a lawyer with a redact tool any more complicated than a marker. I've seen lawyers at major, high-priced law firms make this same mistake. Once it was a huge list of individuals names and bank account balances. Fortunately I was able to intervene just before the uploaded documents were made public. Folks around here blame incompetence, but I say the frequency of this kind of cock-up is crystal clear teleme…

It often comes down to not using the right software and training issues. They have to use Acrobat, which has a redaction tool. This is expensive so some places cheap out on other tools that don’t have a real redaction feature. They highlight with black and think it does the same thing whereas the redaction tool completely removes the content and any associated metadata from the document. This was basically the only r…

I think someone just got free marketing materials to promote the redaction tools.

Now much more people will be aware of the issue.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#725

Post by teach »

TheSkyHasEyes wrote: post #699
weberer wrote: post #676

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comment by Arch-TK is currently the top for me.

Interesting. RajT88 20 minute old post is top on my end.

For me, the top comment is currently cmarschner's day-old comment enumerating a bunch of other examples of botched redaction

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#726

Post by zzzeek »

jm4 wrote: post #721
rkagerer wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never trust a lawyer with a redact tool any more complicated than a marker. I've seen lawyers at major, high-priced law firms make this same mistake. Once it was a huge list of individuals names and bank account balances. Fortunately I was able to intervene just before the uploaded documents were made public. Folks around here blame incompetence, but I say the frequency of this kind of cock-up is crystal clear teleme…

It often comes down to not using the right software and training issues. They have to use Acrobat, which has a redaction tool. This is expensive so some places cheap out on other tools that don’t have a real redaction feature. They highlight with black and think it does the same thing whereas the redaction tool completely removes the content and any associated metadata from the document. This was basically the only r…

not even, anyone still left at DOJ working to protect the president is immensely corrupt, and this is just that careless stupidity that typically goes along with deeply corrupt people.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#727

Post by insane_dreamer »

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?

Not complicated, he represented Trump.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#729

Post by tobyjsullivan »

rkagerer wrote: post #537
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…

Never trust a lawyer with a redact tool any more complicated than a marker. I've seen lawyers at major, high-priced law firms make this same mistake. Once it was a huge list of individuals names and bank account balances. Fortunately I was able to intervene just before the uploaded documents were made public. Folks around here blame incompetence, but I say the frequency of this kind of cock-up is crystal clear teleme…

Always worth remembering that PDFs are basically a graphic design format/editor from the 70s. It was never intended for securely redacting documents and while it can be done, that’s not the default behaviour.

No surprise non-experts muck it up and I don’t see that changing until they move to special-purpose tools.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#730

Post by bg_tagas »

jdlshore wrote: post #573
rkagerer wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never trust a lawyer with a redact tool any more complicated than a marker. I've seen lawyers at major, high-priced law firms make this same mistake. Once it was a huge list of individuals names and bank account balances. Fortunately I was able to intervene just before the uploaded documents were made public. Folks around here blame incompetence, but I say the frequency of this kind of cock-up is crystal clear teleme…

Apple’s Preview app (which has a very thorough PDF markup tool) does this right: it has an explicit “redact” tool which deletes the content it’s used on.

[dead]
Post reply on HN