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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

#791

Post by noduerme »

amelius wrote: post #460
noduerme wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

My personal guess is that only 10% of people love their work, and don't object to doing more of it - governmental or private sector. But the efficacy of those people is amplified in the private sector and nullified in government.

Source: I'm the guy everyone wanted on their group science project in high school, because I'd feel responsible for doing all the work while they smoked weed. I have brothers both in and out of government who work equally hard at similar jobs, and I see the dispatity of motivation.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#792

Post by xorcist »

wisty wrote: post #736
alimw wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oops I guess if this is as much sense as you can make then there wasn't much point in my trying to parse your comment in the first place.

I didn't group NATO and the US separately. You thought I did, but I didn't and you just hadn't read properly. I waffled a bit in my reply to not rub it in too hard. And do you want to contribute with something other than nitpick or insult? Do YOU think that an informed and intelligent person can conclude that Trump is secretly a Russian agent, given he was the driving force behind a massive hike in NATO spending (whi…

> Trump is secretly a Russian agent,

Russian asset, not necessarily agent. At least that's the commonly spread idea, for which there is at least some circumstancial evidence: commercial projects in Russia for several decades and well documented links to Ukrainian and Russian oligarchs under Trump I just to name two.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#793

Post by refurb »

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.

Yup. I’ve gotten documents from an Asian country’s government. One known for its good governance and meritocracy, that had hidden sheets with competitor data.

Don’t underestimate work shoved onto a university intern.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#794

Post by barrkel »

kccqzy wrote: post #776
barrkel wrote: post #772

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps, but it's easier to open up and edit a .ps file in a text editor than a PDF. PDF is a binary format with compressed streams, while postscript is just a stack-oriented programming language.

Tools like qpdf makes it easy to edit a .pdf file in a text editor too. I’d argue using such tools is easier than and simpler than printing to postscript.

Sure. I've not tried it. Was it around in 2002? Because that's when my story occured.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#795

Post by fennecbutt »

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…

Of course we can blame incompetence. It's incompetent not to realise your own incompetencies, also known as overconfidence.

Any lawyer should be like "I don't know what I'm doing here I'll get an expert to help" just like as a software developer I'd ask a lawyer for their help with law stuff...because IANAL uwu

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#796

Post by eviks »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #236
eviks wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reading is focused, but that focus is wasted on menial work, which makes it easier to miss something more important > give the brain short breaks Set a timer if you feel that's of any use? Why does the break have to depend on the random frequency of terms to be redacted? What if there is nothing to redact for pages, why let the mind wander? > I am for automating But you're arguing against it. What's the pro of ma…

> What's the pro of manually replacing all 1746 occurrences of "Trump" instead of spending 0.01% of that time with a digital search & replace and then spending the other 1% digitally searching for variants with typos Because none of this involves a focussed reading. It's the same reason why Level 3 can be less safe than Level 4. If you're skimming, you're less engaged than if you're reading in detail. (And if you're…

> Because none of this involves a focussed reading

That's not a pro, thats an incorrect rejection of the pro of the alternative. The thing is is that it does not preclude focused reading, I don't understand why you make up the "skipping around/skimming" alternative when I've expclitily mentioned that the is that 99% of time you spend on focused reading. It's just when you do that focused reading, you don't have to waste time on trivial redactions that you've already done automatically, and instead you can dedicate that time to catching POTUDs. So in total, you can spend more time on focused reading.

> may wind up creating a President **

How? Even if your 1% on digital alternatives somehow doesn't include this obvious combination, why would the word "President" in "President **" be harder to redact during focused reading?

> If it doesn't matter, automate it. If you care, have a team do a proper redaction.

I don't get, where is the actual option that I've described - do both while saving time???

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#797

Post by NicoJuicy »

rurban wrote: post #335
NicoJuicy wrote: post #251

A mafia state puts loyalists on top and can't produce anything ( smart people leave) and smart people who think for their own can't be promoted. That's also why a mafia extorts and doesn't run complex businesses in general. Perhaps the US can survive this administration. But somewhere down the line it will become broken.

The non-complex mafia businesses is moot since the 50ies already. They run Vegas, most of big sports leagues, politics, secret services and restaurant chains. Everything which can effectively wash money.

Or they just slap their brand on something and call themselves a genius

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#798

Post by crazygringo »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #789
crazygringo wrote: post #779

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't see the pixels when you zoom in? Try again: https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/rss... If you don't see jaggy pixel edges to the letters and form elements, what do you see?

Are you saying that I'm saying that there are no pixels in the document? Like, do you think that I think that scanners have come to operate on pure platonic forms and no longer use the concept of pixels? That would be really cool, wouldn't it. But no, I don't believe that. Hm. Where did this conversation go wrong. I think I was unclear in my last statement. I have yet to see someone show the original scribbles or ink…

> Are you saying that I'm saying that there are no pixels in the document?

I genuinely don't know what you're saying.

> Like, do you think that I think that scanners have come to operate on pure platonic forms and no longer use the concept of pixels? That would be really cool, wouldn't it.

Yes, because that is absolutely a thing. That's what Adobe ClearScan does, converting pixels to smooth vector outlines. Zoom in, and zero pixels in OCR'd text. That's not the case in this file though.

> I have yet to see someone show the original scribbles or ink marks that these OCR layers were generated based on. That's what I meant by "destructive".

I still genuinely don't know what you mean. The original scribbles and ink marks are a physical piece of paper. The MRC layers are generated from the scan and don't destroy anything, they only separate. The resulting layered bitmap is identical, pixel-for-pixel. My best interpretation of what you're saying is you want a higher-resolution scan? But why? Again, nothing "destructive" has happened except maybe reducing the resolution. But "destructive" is not a word people usually use for that.

> so you might want to just cut your losses and stop trying to educate me and let me be uneducated in this matter

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not. I am genuinely happy to help you understand, but if you really don't want to then obviously I won't spend any more time replying. But if you're going to publicly throw suspicion on the validity of the birth certificate, I feel it's important to correct the record here on HN simply for other people who might read this exchange.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#799

Post by 2026iknewit »

scubbo wrote: post #688
2026iknewit wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

> some FBI faboon I'm not familiar with the term, and Urban Dictionary only has "fake babboon" which I suspect is not the intent here - what does it mean?

I wanted to write FBI Baboon

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#800

Post by kgwxd »

watwut wrote: post #19
kgwxd wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i assume the downvoters don't see the importance of the question.

The downvoters assume that it is a bad faith question. The downvoters are 99% right with that. If the 1% hit then OP is just exceedingly naive and did not followed the scandal in which case they should maybe first do some reading. The names of involved powerful people were NOT supposed to be censored. All those names except Bill Clinton name were redacted. To protect Trump and everybody else involved in the scandal e…

I took the question to mean "were the easily circumvented redactions only covering victim details, and maybe suspects from Team Not-One-of-Us?" Implying the "stupidity" card was played to cover the "malice" card.
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