Un-redacted text from released documents began circulating on social media on Monday evening
People examining documents released by the Department of Justice in the Jeffrey Epstein case discovered that some of the file redaction can be undone with Photoshop techniques, or by simply highlighting text to paste into a word processing file.
Un-redacted text from these documents began circulating through social media on Monday evening. An exhibit in a civil case in the Virgin Islands against Darren K Indyke and Richard D Kahn, two executors of Epstein’s estate, contains redacted allegations explaining how Epstein and his associates had facilitated the sexual abuse of children. The exhibit was part of the second amended complaint in the state case against Indyke and Kahn.
Don’t underestimate how important this particular screw up is: It means that there’s now publicly available proof that they redacted information in a manner that violates the law, and that it can enter the conversation while the Epstein files still have the public attention, rather than months or years later.
Can’t wait for the Supreme Court to decide in 10 years that releasing a document with ineffective redactions means the document was not technically redacted, so no laws were violated.
… while simultaneously ruling that the information that was supposed to have been redacted can not be used because they say so.
But only this time for this ruling.
Or they’ll blame anything incriminating on the person who undid the bad reduction, saying they also altered the info
We’re founding a committee to oversee discussions about how to consider moving forward with this. Action will be taken at a faster rate than usual compared to usual congressional processes. This legislative action is expected to take place in 2047 once deliberations are complete.
The good place really is just democrats
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“Hacks” lol
The ultimate hack: Ctrl+C Ctrl+V
Woah. Are you 4chan!?
The hacker?!?! 4chan the hacker?!?!?
I know better than to try this and shutdown my computer. I’m not an idiot.
https://usdictionary.com/definitions/hack/
See definitions 3 and 5 for reference, I believe the term fully fits.
Life hack: turn the doorknob to open a door
You’ve cracked it, thanks!
“Doorhacker, I’m afraid there’s another one. Can you help us once again, old friend?”
They call me the “Door Whisperer.” Inward swinging? Outward swinging? Hell, sliding!? I do it all, as long as it’s not locked.
It vaguely fits the original definition of computer hacking: poking around in code to improve an app or the system.
Also, Wiktionary is much better at nuanced meanings than mainstream dictionaries — continuing the tradition of the old Webster dictionary, which Wiktionary imported wholesale back in the day.
Hardly a strategy, very little effort.
Lifehacker.
I choose to believe that this was done deliberately by disgruntled FBI agents.
It was probably just incompetence, but let me believe what I want.
This is what happens when you pull in people that don’t normally do records management. They redact using black highlighter instead of the redaction tool.
Or, this is what happens when people who work for the government really hate Donald Trump.
Malicious compliance
Hanlon’s Razor: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”
It’s a good general rule, but taking this as gospel makes it very easy for the malicious to pass off their cruelty as stupidity.
If your goal is to reduce general stress, take it as it is and leave it there. If your goal is to distinguish what exactly is actually going on, then this is a tool worth keeping around, but it’s not going to do the job on it’s own.
Oh absolutely, weaponized incompetence. My wife’s ex-husband is a master at that.
You have to be more careful than many people expect think with the redaction tool. Sometimes it’s text being redacted. Sometimes it’s a graphic. Sometimes it’s both on top of each other.
That’s why my final step in redacting documents for Open Records (I do a LOT of it) is to flatten the PDF.
But the real bitch is protected docs. Some docs keep the redaction tool from working (e.g. docs with digital signatures). Sometimes I actually have to print a doc out and re-scan it to get the redactions to stick.
why are there so many people in this thread that redact things often enough to have favorite workflows?
I work in government and Open Records requests are regular things, and I have to redact a bunch of stuff to protect people’s privacy.
Thank you for your service
Hang in there
I do all my markup, attempt to flatten, then print the result to PDF, then open the result and export the text to validate.
they are all incompetent, i call it bottom of the barrel, no one complement wants to work there.
the technical term is Kakistocracy.
How is copying text from a PDF a hack?
I see 2 potential paths to this, possibly both:
-
Unknowledgeable individuals were tasked with redactions, and didn’t understand adding black bars over documents is closer to a sticky note than a marker.
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Knowledgeable individuals taught others to ‘redact’ in this manner to sabotage the effort, and those who signed off on the release didn’t look any further than the rendered result, if they even did that.
Adding to theory 2, I bet there was very little record keeping regarding which agent was redacting which document. The point of a coverup is that you try to reduce accountability. Even if only Trump loyalist FBI agents were selected for the censorship job, I doubt they all could remain loyalists after reading the Epstein files.
-
Someone shouldn’t have blabbed about it so quickly. There are more files to release, and now they will do a better job redacting them.
I was gonna say, “Never interrupt your enemy when they are making a mistake”.
Ctrl+A and Ctrl+C is a hack now. Neat.
So long as you say “I’m in” after you hit Ctrl+V, it counts.
When the average level is so low, it is.
Ever show someone under 30 a keyboard shortcut? They act like you’ve performed magic.
Maybe for like, Ctrl+Tab or Ctrl+Shift+T but not for copy and paste man c’mon.
I swear it. I’ve taught five people in their 20s how to copy paste with the keyboard in the past few years.
They right click every time, I’ve seen it.
I mean it’s all just keyboard button clicks. How many clicks minimum until it counts as hacking?
As few as you please on hackertyper
simply highlighting text to paste into a word processing file.
Did they just change the back and foreground colours to black and call it a day?
I would like to think that it was on purpose. So whoever was working on that knew that someone could realize it. I don’t know why I keep having faith in people.
It makes sense. They didn’t flush the entirety of the FBI and we know Patel isn’t doing all this himself, so I too believe that there are people just doing some good ol’ malicious compliance. Apparently documents from previous administrations didn’t have this issue so they could do it correctly, they just aren’t.
Absolutely.
People who work for the government usually like the idea of government.
It’s a shockingly common source of data leaks. There are some versions with more subtlety, like actually redacting the text but a copy of it remains in the file for version tracking, as a separate layer, or things like that.
PDF is derived from printer control tools, and has a lot of features built in that add flexibility for office document purposes, but can be surprising for people not expecting it.
If you’re working as a team to redact documents you might deliberately use something reversible so that the person checking your work can 1) see what you redacted 2) unredact if they think you shouldn’t have.
Sometimes people also just don’t know there’s actual reaction tools built in.The part that I’m more surprised by is that whatever process they have for releasing documents didn’t involve passing it through a system of some sort that automatically fixed that sort of thing.
People have been making these same mistakes for literally decades… How does the government not have a 1-click dedicated tool for this yet?
They do have such tools. The CIA uses it all the time for their declassifications. This was done on purpose.
Because Elon probably dodged the people who knew their job
literally saw this shit in a “complete beginner” CTF challenge years ago
So what did the redacted sections say… … … anyone 🩻
Click the link? That’s literally what the article is about…?
There’s links?! WHERE
Read the article.
I was sooo expecting this. They can’t/don’t do anything correctly.
Same. This is the same admin that had people claiming they were going to rewrite decades of code in “months”.
I’m sure some dumbass told them AI was up to the task.
Totally unrelated, but it makes me happy they said “paste into a word processing file”, and not M$ Word.
Is vim a word processing file?
Keep it up us govt. it seems you are the best disseminating information against yourself.
Edit is to us
LOL, I think I called this weeks ago, not that it took very much foresight to assume massive, easily-avoidable fuck-ups from the admin that thought someone like “Big Balls” was going to be able to figure out decades of COBOL code…
