DrDNA writes "After a Freedom of Information Act request, the US Justice Department released a study on workplace diversity. However, nearly half of the memo was blacked-out. In what was apparently an incredible goof, it was posted in a PDF format called Image+Text. The folks at The Memory Hole simply removed the image, revealing the redacted text. The redacted text was highly critical of the DOJ's diversity efforts, as the New York Times reports." Folks, if you're going to be sneaky, at least do enough research to make sure you're really being sneaky.
There was an occasion where this happened before...I believe it was in blacking out some sources on a PDF document...so some enterprising chap removed the blackouts...and voila, there were the "classified" sources. Obviously nobody in government learns from their mistakes.
yep, in fact it's actually happened several times before. One time names of undercover agents were revealed. Now we just need to get some improperly redacted FOIA responses about area51, roswell, and all the stuff out there that makes me wear this tinfoil hat all the time.
This is a little bit different than the one than you seem to be thinking of. In 2000, The NY Times obtained classified documents about the 1953 coup that brought the Shah of Iran into power. They incorrectly redacted the document to preserve their sources and protect some government operatives before publishing it. (See Iranian Coup Plotters Exposed By PDF File [slashdot.org])
In this case, the government handed over the document with the naughty bits already blocked out, but didn't release that PDF is more like a collage
Actually, I believe it was the participants in the plot to overthrow Premier Mossadeq of Iran that were exposed. The shah was already in power at the time, and was essentially a puppet of the U.S. and Great Britain. Mossadeq was a very popularly elected official who was attempting to regain some control of Iran's destiny- mostly by removing the oil reserves that Britian had bought for a song (actually, they bribed the Shah with a variety of shiny things) from foreign control.
The U.S., of course, labeled this as 'communism' and began agitating to get Mossadeq dissmissed by the Shah. This included such charming acts of democracy as sending F.D.R's grandson (a CIA operative) out onto the streets of Tehran to hand out $50 bills to get Iranians to gather in front of the Shah's palace and demand Mossadeq's ouster. The Shah capitulated to the West and the "popular" demand, and Mossaeq was driven from office.
If you're ever curious why a bunch of extremist nuts that not even the Iranians like are running Iran, little anecdotes like this are a good start.
While Mossadeq is long gone, the PDF screw up may have exposed the families of the Iranian participants in the coup to a great deal of scrutiny if they were still living in Iran. It isn't healthy anywhere to be associated with someone who betrayed their country to a foreign interest, and moreso if you're living in Iran and the foreign government in question was the U.S.
Why, if only the US government could have someone come to the US and give a talk on the limitations of some of Adobe's security mechanisms.
Surely if someone was to do something like that, they would welcome him with open arms, and thank him for his useful expose ? After all, he would be doing them a service, wouldn't he ?
Arent the people who do this pretty much putting a big white and red target on themselves? I was under the impression, with things like the PATRIOT act, as well as the DMCA, that this type of thing would get you detained without a lawyer.
Granted, I'm not american, but judging how the country has been going, I'm surprised the people uncensoring these reports arent vanishing without a trace.
You see, this document was supposed to be released to the public anyway. The redaction was dirty pool, and none of the information was a national secret. It was simply embarrasing to those in power.
Truth be told the fact it was redacted in the first place is far more disturbing than the actual content that was removed. Especially since its release was the subject of a Freedom of Information Act case.
--I wonder if the guy who had to do the blacking-out was Clueful and didn't like/agree with his orders... Maybe he did this intentionally, so it would appear like he was doing his job (CYA) but secretly wanted a way for other people to reconstruct the original document, so he could protect himself.
"Truth be told the fact it was redacted in the first place is far more disturbing than the actual content that was removed."
Government representatives are only supposed to keep stuff secret that would give a potential enemy vital information... blacking out anything that doesn't meet this criteria should be a hanging offense. If this report is true, then this is obviously corruption in its most base and basic form.
Next thing you know we will be trillions of dollars in debt spending half our income on taxes with social security about to collapse and being told that everything will be okay. Oh wait a sec...
The rub is that this document was supposed to be for public consumption to start with. It was prepared by an outside firm with no axe to grind, and the DOJ was skewered. The DOJ was so utterly embarrased they threw together this clip-art show.
Is it just me, or does anyone else wish that the government was forced to enforce its own laws, instead of picking and choosing when and where to do so? There are a truly ridiculous number of laws on the books that are rarely enforced, until the prosecutors feel they have a "good" case to drop the hammer on some poor schmuck.
The public doesn't care about laws that aren't enforced, so most people break the law every day blissfully unaware. It would seem that laws that nobody cares about need to be done away
1 entry found for Redacted. [reference.com]
redact
To draw up or frame (a proclamation, for example).
To make ready for publication; edit or revise.
So I guess this could be taken to mean "un-edited", but it still seems like pretty poor word choice to me. Although "Un-redacted" might be a good word to describe slashdot in general.
yes, the definition in proper English is merely to edit, but in the jargon of the "Intelligence Community" redaction is the process of editing out anything you don't want the world to see.
Folks, if you're going to be sneaky, at least do enough research to make sure you're really being sneaky.
Yes, but how do we know this wasn't intentional? Maybe the employee in charge of the redacting wanted that part of the memo to get out, so he deliberately redacted improperly.
Yes, but how do we know this wasn't intentional? Maybe the employee in charge of the redacting wanted that part of the memo to get out, so he deliberately redacted improperly.
This would be a brilliant idea to spread false information. Instead of just publishing false information, write false information into a PDF and cover it with black rectangles. Not only do you have all the conspiracy theorists believiing whatever BS you wrote, you also have have a defense should anyone find out: it was blacked out, you weren't supposed to read it.
If I had information that I didn't want the public to see I would have at least made sure that the
information was not accessible by someone who is using a hex editor. I made a PDA program for myself
that stored passwords I had for various websites (when you have a different one for each site, it sometimes
gets a little hard to keep track of them in your head). However, before I actually started using it, I
looked at the binary image of the record or the PDA that was being created. Well, it turned out that the
mechanism for "securely" storing the information was just making it inaccessible through the API. In the
end, I had to write my own storage mechanism using a standard encryption technique. The moral of this story
is, just because you can't get to it doesn't mean it's not there for someone to find.
Of course the people/person at The Memory Hole will be labeled as a hacker/pirate/terrorist by the justice department.
If I had information that I didn't want the public to see I would have at least made sure that the information was not accessible by someone who is using a hex editor.
Yes I have yet to meet a person on the street who doesn't agree 100% with this statement.
If I had information that I didn't want the public to see...
The people who are replying to this story are some of the most immature idiots with zero knowledge of government. Has NOBODY worked for our legal or justice system? Anybody ever graduate high school civics?
Information is blacked out and the black marks are LEFT there intentionally to SHOW that something was blacked out. If they wanted to "hide" the information, they would excise it. They don't. They *want* you to know that something was tak
Sorry, but you're just wrong. You describe one reason that documents may be redacted in legal circles. However, that is not by far the reason that documents are usually redacted in government as a whole. Documents are often released to comply with FOIA requests that are redacted to the point of saying nothing other than "something happened to somebody on this date, and somebody else said something to somebody", but you can't figure out what they said or who it was too - this isn't generally done to protect the government from libel charges, it's done to avoid releasing embarrassing information.
Your analogy of a redacted court document to a redacted internal government report doesn't seem to hold up. The judicial system doesn't have any vested interest in preventing embarrasment of parties to law suits beyond the requirements of the law, and the protection of their legally guaranteed privacy, but government _bureaucrats_ have every interest in protecting their superiors, their superiors' superiors, and the elected officials who appointed them.
The idea of equal opportunity and equal rights should be that you just hire whoever is better for the job, and hit anyone making this not so with a big stick that has a nail in it. Aiming for exactly 50% one thing or another is no less sexist/racist than only hiring women or only hiring men (etc).
The idea of equal opportunity and equal rights should be that you just hire whoever is better for the job, and hit anyone making this not so with a big stick that has a nail in it.
Actually, according to the memo, the issue here was not just about diversity, but active discrimation. They were not hiring whoever was better for the job, they were giving better chances to caucasians: certain career opportunities were only offered to caucasians, critical information was withheld from minorities. The playing field was severly skewed against minorities. Yes, in this memo lack of diversity is just a polically correct euphemism for outright racism!
Aiming for exactly 50% one thing or another is no less sexist/racist than only hiring women or only hiring men (etc).
It was not about aiming at exactly 50%, but rather about aiming at anything above 0% for the minority employees!
I think it is most interesting to see what the government has decided shouldn't be revealed to the public. Classified sources? Nope. National Security threat? Nope. Poor HR? Yes. Discrimination within the government? Yes.
Not to incite flames, but this speaks volumes about the Bush administration.
However, I wish I knew about this kind of shit from the Clinton administration. Maybe this happened then, too. Maybe not. I honestly haven't a clue what happened then because the Republicans were so obsessed with his dick.
> However, I wish I knew about this kind of shit from the Clinton administration. Maybe this happened then, too. Maybe not.
Yeah, I was wondering the same thing. The current Administration is secretive as a knee-jerk reaction to anything, to the point of looking like a petty third world dictatorship. But were other recent Administrations any different, or just less amateurish about it?
> I honestly haven't a clue what happened then because the Republicans were so obsessed with his dick.
Actually, they were obsessed with getting anything they could find on him. It just so happens that after 7 years and $40,000,000 all they could find was dick, so that's what they had to settle for.
You can bet that the Republicans are working harder to find some poop on Howard Dean than they are on finding WMD right now.
Buts its nice how we keep giving them millions to continue their search. Its so blissful living in such a faith based country that we'll pay to make any reality the truth, even if it takes covering up all those annoying little facts and painting over them with distraction after horribly fearsome distraction.
Its a good thing God exists. If he doesn't there are a lot of delusional people in this country who are prime targets for intesive psychotherapy.
This is a tired old canard. Sudan was not offering bin Laden. Some joker who claimed to have authority that he didn't have claimed that he could get the Sudanese government to offer bin Laden. There was no reason to believe that he was trustworthy. Conservatives make this an issue now even though there is no doubt that a conservative administration would have given this guy just as much attention as did the Clinton administration.
"Not to incite flames, but this speaks volumes about the Bush administration."
The NYT article stated that these documents were edited before release by career lawyers at the DOJ and that Bush-appointed employees of DOJ made no changes at all.
Mr. Corallo said career lawyers who routinely decide how to censor material before public release made the recommendations about what to delete from the diversity report. He said their recommendations were sent to the office of the deputy attorney general, where it wa
Have you ever read any documents released through the Freedom of Information Act that has any actual substance?
The act is supposed to protect us against abuse from the government, yet it gives the government full power to remove whatever parts they see fit. Who does the editing? A neutral party? I don't think so.
Am I the only person who feels such actions are an atrocity, as they are willful censorships of documents critial of the department? Unless the department can be held accountable for such deeds, these scenarios are going to play out repeatedly.
Just one day after releasing an uncensored version of a Department of Justice report on racial diversity in the work place, operators of the web site "Memory Hole" have been charged with violating terms of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. According to a complaint filed by the Department of Justice in the 6th Federal Circuit Court, Memory Hole illegally circumvented electronic controls used to protect confidential material.
On October 31st, the Department of Justice responded to a request under the Freedom of Information Act and released the report. However, several sections of the report were blacked out. Memory Hole discovered that the file format (PDF) used an image laid over the censored text, and simply removed the images and published the memo.
On Saturday morning, Agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms and the FBI raided the offices of Memory Hole, the home of the publisher, and their ISP and confiscated several computers. The web site has not yet been ordered to be taken down, but a request is pending with Judge Y. H. Barrett Thompson to have the site terminated monday morning.
I am distraught that the editors and many posters find it simply amusing that the DOJ was technologically incompetent in this situation, and that that is all there is too it. What frightens me is when they do become competent, and these breakdowns cannot or do not happen, whether it be via more 'perfect' DRM systems, or simply more competent DOJ employees/contractors.
It is in our interest to have the government flawed when it comes to secrecy.
Take document and with an X-Acto knife, cut out words you wish to redact.
Take resulting full-of-holes document and scan with scanner.
It's foolproof.
IF THE WORDS PHYSICALLY ARE NOT THERE, THEY CAN NEVER BE RECOVERED!
Using a marker might not be foolproof if you miss a spot, or funky reflections, or whatever may result in some parts of the document becoming visible. Give it a try, you'll see what I mean.
I saw a similar botched attempt to hide info in a document from a networking company. It was intended to illustrate some web-based employee-finding application. Various sensitive information was "X"-ed out.
But on an older computer there was a delay between rendering the sensitive info and rendering the overlaid "X"s. The "hidden" data was in plain sight for a readable fraction of a second. A quick screen-grab at the right time could easily capture a static image of the employee data on the CEO and other employees listed in the figure.
...about this is the level of technical competency implied in the organization that is responsible for "justice" in cases involving things like MS, DMCA, DRM and so on. The "holing up in a cabin in Montana" thing is looking more and more appealing...
So, in additon to hiring the same lawyer (Boise), I see the DOJ has hired SCO's encryption team of MIT mathmaticians to handle its super-secret documents. Next they will hire SunnComm to write a document locking program that uses the windows auto-play feature, change their font to Chinese script, and make it black on black background. Shhhh.. don't tell the Russians to hold down the shift-key.
Notice that the blacked out text is always negative, where positive text is left in. This makes the redacted official version a deliberate deception. The people responsible should be held accountable.
While I agree this is "absolutely appaling," re "Notice that the blacked out text is always negative, where positive text is left in:"
Even complimentary conclusions were deleted, like one that said "attorneys across demographic groups believe that the Department is a good place to work" and another that said "private industry cites DOJ as a trend-setter for diversity." Beyond that, a recommendation that the department should "increase public visibility of diversity issues," was kept out of the public r
Subject: DoJ uses Word's "Highlight" tool to redact, doesn't work
Hi Declan, Dave:
A HARD LESSON TO LEARN: don't use Microsoft Word's "Highlight tool" with the color set to black to redact documents--one can still copy and paste "highlighted" text!
The really interesting part about this DoJ case is reading the un-redacted document and seeing what was "blacked out" under FOIA exemptions (un-redacted document is here: http://www.thememoryhole.org/feds/doj-attor ney-div ersity-unredacted.pdf ).
I wonder how many other electronic FOIA-released documents are out there where a simple copy and paste will reveal redactions?
Pertinent paragraph:
"It turns out the [DoJ's] report began its life as a Microsoft Word document, and whoever was in charge of sanitizing it for public release did so by using Word's highlight tool, with the highlight color set to black, according to an analysis by Tim Sullivan, CEO of activePDF, a maker of server-side PDF tools. The simple and convenient technique would have been perfectly effective had the end product been a printed document, but it was all but useless for an electronic one."
Joe
--- http://www.securityfocus.com/news/7272
Justice e-censorship gaffe sparks controversy
By Kevin Poulsen, SecurityFocus Oct 22 2003 3:46PM
A government watchdog group Wednesday accused the Justice Department of improperly censoring portions of a key report on internal workplace diversity, after online activists successfully unmasked the blacked-out portions of an electronic copy of the document.
The 186-page report was released to the public under the Freedom of Information Act last week and posted to Justice Department's website in Adobe's "Portable Document File" (PDF) format. But the department blacked out vast portions of the document's text, citing an exemption to FOIA that permits agencies to keep internal policy deliberations private.
The text didn't stay concealed for long. On Tuesday a website called the Memory Hole, dedicated to preserving endangered documents, published a complete version of the report, with the opaque black rectangles that once covered half of it completely removed. Memory Hole publisher Russ Kick won't say how he unmasked it, but experimentation shows that the concealed text could be selected and copied using nothing more than Adobe's free Acrobat Reader. Once copied, the text is easily pasted into another document and read.
It turns out the report began its life as a Microsoft Word document, and whoever was in charge of sanitizing it for public release did so by using Word's highlight tool, with the highlight color set to black, according to an analysis by Tim Sullivan, CEO of activePDF, a maker of server-side PDF tools. The simple and convenient technique would have been perfectly effective had the end product been a printed document, but it was all but useless for an electronic one. "Using Acrobat, I'm actually able to move the black boxes around," says Sullivan. "The text is still there."...
The ACLU should start a class-action suit against the federal government of the USA. The current administration is redacting far too much information under the excuse of "national security". NS used to be used only when necessary, and only very selectively (for example to redact field agents identities). Now DOJ documents showing lack of workplace diversity are being redacted - a subject not related to NS in the very least.
The citizenry are quickly losing all control of the government, and the government is actively hiding information from the citizens. We need to regain control of the government, media, and military before the USA starts looking more like the USSR...
This happened once before... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:This happened once before... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:This happened once before... (Score:3, Interesting)
This is a little bit different than the one than you seem to be thinking of. In 2000, The NY Times obtained classified documents about the 1953 coup that brought the Shah of Iran into power. They incorrectly redacted the document to preserve their sources and protect some government operatives before publishing it. (See Iranian Coup Plotters Exposed By PDF File [slashdot.org])
In this case, the government handed over the document with the naughty bits already blocked out, but didn't release that PDF is more like a collage
Re:This happened once before... (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, I believe it was the participants in the plot to overthrow Premier Mossadeq of Iran that were exposed. The shah was already in power at the time, and was essentially a puppet of the U.S. and Great Britain. Mossadeq was a very popularly elected official who was attempting to regain some control of Iran's destiny- mostly by removing the oil reserves that Britian had bought for a song (actually, they bribed the Shah with a variety of shiny things) from foreign control.
The U.S., of course, labeled this as 'communism' and began agitating to get Mossadeq dissmissed by the Shah. This included such charming acts of democracy as sending F.D.R's grandson (a CIA operative) out onto the streets of Tehran to hand out $50 bills to get Iranians to gather in front of the Shah's palace and demand Mossadeq's ouster. The Shah capitulated to the West and the "popular" demand, and Mossaeq was driven from office.
If you're ever curious why a bunch of extremist nuts that not even the Iranians like are running Iran, little anecdotes like this are a good start.
While Mossadeq is long gone, the PDF screw up may have exposed the families of the Iranian participants in the coup to a great deal of scrutiny if they were still living in Iran. It isn't healthy anywhere to be associated with someone who betrayed their country to a foreign interest, and moreso if you're living in Iran and the foreign government in question was the U.S.
Parent
Re:This happened once before... (Score:5, Funny)
Surely if someone was to do something like that, they would welcome him with open arms, and thank him for his useful expose ? After all, he would be doing them a service, wouldn't he ?
Parent
Re:This happened once before... (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:This happened once before... (Score:5, Insightful)
Granted, I'm not american, but judging how the country has been going, I'm surprised the people uncensoring these reports arent vanishing without a trace.
Parent
Re:This happened once before... (Score:5, Insightful)
Truth be told the fact it was redacted in the first place is far more disturbing than the actual content that was removed. Especially since its release was the subject of a Freedom of Information Act case.
Parent
Re:This happened once before... (Score:4, Interesting)
(/conspiracy-theory)
Parent
Can we give the parent comment a score of 6? (Score:5, Insightful)
Government representatives are only supposed to keep stuff secret that would give a potential enemy vital information... blacking out anything that doesn't meet this criteria should be a hanging offense. If this report is true, then this is obviously corruption in its most base and basic form.
Next thing you know we will be trillions of dollars in debt spending half our income on taxes with social security about to collapse and being told that everything will be okay. Oh wait a sec...
Parent
Re:This happened once before... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This happened thrice before... (Score:5, Informative)
W
Parent
Ashcroft is doing a bit of this, isn't he (Score:3, Interesting)
The public doesn't care about laws that aren't enforced, so most people break the law every day blissfully unaware. It would seem that laws that nobody cares about need to be done away
Re:This happened once before... (Score:4, Funny)
You know what they say: "Good enough for government work."
Parent
Huh.... (Score:3, Funny)
redact
To draw up or frame (a proclamation, for example).
To make ready for publication; edit or revise.
So I guess this could be taken to mean "un-edited", but it still seems like pretty poor word choice to me. Although "Un-redacted" might be a good word to describe slashdot in general.
Re:Huh.... (Score:3, Informative)
Sneakiness (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, but how do we know this wasn't intentional? Maybe the employee in charge of the redacting wanted that part of the memo to get out, so he deliberately redacted improperly.
Or maybe that's just what he wants us to think...
Re:Sneakiness (Score:5, Interesting)
This would be a brilliant idea to spread false information. Instead of just publishing false information, write false information into a PDF and cover it with black rectangles. Not only do you have all the conspiracy theorists believiing whatever BS you wrote, you also have have a defense should anyone find out: it was blacked out, you weren't supposed to read it.
Parent
your tax dollars at work (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course the people/person at The Memory Hole will be labeled as a hacker/pirate/terrorist by the justice department.
Re:your tax dollars at work (Score:3, Funny)
Yes I have yet to meet a person on the street who doesn't agree 100% with this statement.
Re:your tax dollars at work (Score:3, Informative)
The people who are replying to this story are some of the most immature idiots with zero knowledge of government. Has NOBODY worked for our legal or justice system? Anybody ever graduate high school civics?
Information is blacked out and the black marks are LEFT there intentionally to SHOW that something was blacked out. If they wanted to "hide" the information, they would excise it. They don't. They *want* you to know that something was tak
Re:your tax dollars at work (Score:4, Insightful)
Your analogy of a redacted court document to a redacted internal government report doesn't seem to hold up. The judicial system doesn't have any vested interest in preventing embarrasment of parties to law suits beyond the requirements of the law, and the protection of their legally guaranteed privacy, but government _bureaucrats_ have every interest in protecting their superiors, their superiors' superiors, and the elected officials who appointed them.
Parent
Still waiting... but... (Score:3, Insightful)
The idea of equal opportunity and equal rights should be that you just hire whoever is better for the job, and hit anyone making this not so with a big stick that has a nail in it. Aiming for exactly 50% one thing or another is no less sexist/racist than only hiring women or only hiring men (etc).
Re:Still waiting... but... (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea of equal opportunity and equal rights should be that you just hire whoever is better for the job, and hit anyone making this not so with a big stick that has a nail in it.
Actually, according to the memo, the issue here was not just about diversity, but active discrimation. They were not hiring whoever was better for the job, they were giving better chances to caucasians: certain career opportunities were only offered to caucasians, critical information was withheld from minorities. The playing field was severly skewed against minorities. Yes, in this memo lack of diversity is just a polically correct euphemism for outright racism!
Aiming for exactly 50% one thing or another is no less sexist/racist than only hiring women or only hiring men (etc).
It was not about aiming at exactly 50%, but rather about aiming at anything above 0% for the minority employees!
Parent
Please ignore... (Score:4, Funny)
(Spins handle to fan up flames)
What they remove (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to incite flames, but this speaks volumes about the Bush administration.
Re:What they remove (Score:5, Interesting)
However, I wish I knew about this kind of shit from the Clinton administration. Maybe this happened then, too. Maybe not. I honestly haven't a clue what happened then because the Republicans were so obsessed with his dick.
Parent
Re: What they remove (Score:4, Interesting)
> However, I wish I knew about this kind of shit from the Clinton administration. Maybe this happened then, too. Maybe not.
Yeah, I was wondering the same thing. The current Administration is secretive as a knee-jerk reaction to anything, to the point of looking like a petty third world dictatorship. But were other recent Administrations any different, or just less amateurish about it?
> I honestly haven't a clue what happened then because the Republicans were so obsessed with his dick.
Actually, they were obsessed with getting anything they could find on him. It just so happens that after 7 years and $40,000,000 all they could find was dick, so that's what they had to settle for.
You can bet that the Republicans are working harder to find some poop on Howard Dean than they are on finding WMD right now.
Parent
Re: What they remove (Score:3, Insightful)
Buts its nice how we keep giving them millions to continue their search. Its so blissful living in such a faith based country that we'll pay to make any reality the truth, even if it takes covering up all those annoying little facts and painting over them with distraction after horribly fearsome distraction.
Its a good thing God exists. If he doesn't there are a lot of delusional people in this country who are prime targets for intesive psychotherapy.
Re: What they remove (Score:4, Insightful)
> > That's because there are no WMD.
> Umm, they just diappeared? You do agree that there were WMD at one time, right?
Sure, back in 1991, before the UN made them disarm.
Parent
Re: What they remove (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a tired old canard. Sudan was not offering bin Laden. Some joker who claimed to have authority that he didn't have claimed that he could get the Sudanese government to offer bin Laden. There was no reason to believe that he was trustworthy. Conservatives make this an issue now even though there is no doubt that a conservative administration would have given this guy just as much attention as did the Clinton administration.
Re: What they remove (Score:3, Funny)
That -i586mmx is incorrect. -squirrelGoFaster.wheel is the proper modifier.
Re:What they remove (Score:3, Informative)
The NYT article stated that these documents were edited before release by career lawyers at the DOJ and that Bush-appointed employees of DOJ made no changes at all.
FIA is a sham (Score:3, Insightful)
Have you ever read any documents released through the Freedom of Information Act that has any actual substance?
The act is supposed to protect us against abuse from the government, yet it gives the government full power to remove whatever parts they see fit. Who does the editing? A neutral party? I don't think so.
Accountability for such actions? (Score:4, Insightful)
Good (Score:3, Insightful)
Memory Hole Goes To Jail (Score:4, Funny)
Reuters 11-01-03
Just one day after releasing an uncensored version of a Department of Justice report on racial diversity in the work place, operators of the web site "Memory Hole" have been charged with violating terms of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. According to a complaint filed by the Department of Justice in the 6th Federal Circuit Court, Memory Hole illegally circumvented electronic controls used to protect confidential material.
On October 31st, the Department of Justice responded to a request under the Freedom of Information Act and released the report. However, several sections of the report were blacked out. Memory Hole discovered that the file format (PDF) used an image laid over the censored text, and simply removed the images and published the memo.
On Saturday morning, Agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms and the FBI raided the offices of Memory Hole, the home of the publisher, and their ISP and confiscated several computers. The web site has not yet been ordered to be taken down, but a request is pending with Judge Y. H. Barrett Thompson to have the site terminated monday morning.
Last Updated: Saturday Nov 1 2003 @ 2:50:34 PM
Re:Memory Hole Goes To Jail (Score:5, Insightful)
In reality, though, I'd rather give it "+1 Scary".
Soko
Parent
Why do we encourage them to be more skeaky? (Score:3, Insightful)
I am distraught that the editors and many posters find it simply amusing that the DOJ was technologically incompetent in this situation, and that that is all there is too it. What frightens me is when they do become competent, and these breakdowns cannot or do not happen, whether it be via more 'perfect' DRM systems, or simply more competent DOJ employees/contractors.
It is in our interest to have the government flawed when it comes to secrecy.
encryption techniques (Score:5, Funny)
Do It Right (Score:4, Interesting)
If you're going to redact something, do it right.
Here's how it's done:
Take document and with an X-Acto knife, cut out words you wish to redact.
Take resulting full-of-holes document and scan with scanner.
It's foolproof.
IF THE WORDS PHYSICALLY ARE NOT THERE, THEY CAN NEVER BE RECOVERED!
Using a marker might not be foolproof if you miss a spot, or funky reflections, or whatever may result in some parts of the document becoming visible. Give it a try, you'll see what I mean.
Old computers reveal hidden info. (Score:3, Interesting)
But on an older computer there was a delay between rendering the sensitive info and rendering the overlaid "X"s. The "hidden" data was in plain sight for a readable fraction of a second. A quick screen-grab at the right time could easily capture a static image of the employee data on the CEO and other employees listed in the figure.
Sometimes older computer can be more fun.
What really worries me... (Score:3, Interesting)
...about this is the level of technical competency implied in the organization that is responsible for "justice" in cases involving things like MS, DMCA, DRM and so on. The "holing up in a cabin in Montana" thing is looking more and more appealing...
DOJ Memo - encrypted by SCO and SunnComm (Score:5, Funny)
No wonder they can't catch Bin Laden.
absolutely appalling (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:absolutely appalling (Score:3, Informative)
While I agree this is "absolutely appaling," re "Notice that the blacked out text is always negative, where positive text is left in:"
to fully understand the situation... (Score:4, Informative)
http://politechbot.com/pipermail/politech/2003-
Subject: DoJ uses Word's "Highlight" tool to redact, doesn't work
Hi Declan, Dave:
A HARD LESSON TO LEARN: don't use Microsoft Word's "Highlight tool"
with the color set to black to redact documents--one can still copy
and paste "highlighted" text!
The really interesting part about this DoJ case is reading the
un-redacted document and seeing what was "blacked out" under FOIA
exemptions (un-redacted document is here:
http://www.thememoryhole.org/feds/doj-atto
).
I wonder how many other electronic FOIA-released documents are out
there where a simple copy and paste will reveal redactions?
Pertinent paragraph:
"It turns out the [DoJ's] report began its life as a Microsoft Word
document, and whoever was in charge of sanitizing it for public
release did so by using Word's highlight tool, with the highlight
color set to black, according to an analysis by Tim Sullivan, CEO of
activePDF, a maker of server-side PDF tools. The simple and convenient
technique would have been perfectly effective had the end product been
a printed document, but it was all but useless for an electronic one."
Joe
---
http://www.securityfocus.com/news/7272
Justice e-censorship gaffe sparks controversy
By Kevin Poulsen, SecurityFocus Oct 22 2003 3:46PM
A government watchdog group Wednesday accused the Justice Department
of improperly censoring portions of a key report on internal workplace
diversity, after online activists successfully unmasked the
blacked-out portions of an electronic copy of the document.
The 186-page report was released to the public under the Freedom of
Information Act last week and posted to Justice Department's website
in Adobe's "Portable Document File" (PDF) format. But the department
blacked out vast portions of the document's text, citing an exemption
to FOIA that permits agencies to keep internal policy deliberations
private.
The text didn't stay concealed for long. On Tuesday a website called
the Memory Hole, dedicated to preserving endangered documents,
published a complete version of the report, with the opaque black
rectangles that once covered half of it completely removed. Memory
Hole publisher Russ Kick won't say how he unmasked it, but
experimentation shows that the concealed text could be selected and
copied using nothing more than Adobe's free Acrobat Reader. Once
copied, the text is easily pasted into another document and read.
It turns out the report began its life as a Microsoft Word document,
and whoever was in charge of sanitizing it for public release did so
by using Word's highlight tool, with the highlight color set to black,
according to an analysis by Tim Sullivan, CEO of activePDF, a maker of
server-side PDF tools. The simple and convenient technique would have
been perfectly effective had the end product been a printed document,
but it was all but useless for an electronic one. "Using Acrobat, I'm
actually able to move the black boxes around," says Sullivan. "The
text is still there."
Apple re-redacts the un-redacted document. (Score:4, Informative)
Under Preview.app (OS X's PDF viewer, Panther's in my case), all the yellow sections are removed.
It's a conspiracy I tell you!
Re:Time to bet (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Blacking out non-security issues... (Score:4, Insightful)
The citizenry are quickly losing all control of the government, and the government is actively hiding information from the citizens. We need to regain control of the government, media, and military before the USA starts looking more like the USSR...
Parent