How internet sleuths are un-redacting some of the Epstein files
(www.cbc.ca)
from Quilotoa@lemmy.ca to world@lemmy.world on 25 Dec 2025 12:53
https://lemmy.ca/post/57459142
from Quilotoa@lemmy.ca to world@lemmy.world on 25 Dec 2025 12:53
https://lemmy.ca/post/57459142
#world
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This has been known for years (decades?): setting black text against a black background in a PDF doesn’t eliminate the text in the PDF. Duh…
The only reason why this is still an idiotic mistake made by public officials is because public officials are idiots.
Even if the text is removed, if the font is a proportional one, the very exact dimensions of any removed text plus knowledge of stuff like kerning can reveal the text.
The more I read about what’s in some of these files (e.g. a report about Trump being present while a 13yo rape victim’s newborn baby was thrown into lake Michigan), the more I’m starting to think it was intentional.
The people who had to go through this shit to redact it might be fascist pieces of shit, but they’re still ostensibly in fields at least somewhat related to law enforcement. Having to read shit like that, and then be complicit in covering it up… I dunno.
That’s a mistake. Go by Hanlon’s razor: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”
Hanlon’s razor is and has always been bullshit.
It’s always held true for me. Malice - or forethought - require intelligence, something that’s in much shorter supply than anybody would believe.
Stupid usually explains most everything adequately.
Is it, though? Has the system been keeping us down, or are the ppl in charge just stupid and greedy? Assigning intent makes the unfairness sting less.
This is a false choice, it’s both. Not all of them are (or were) stupid. But the system is intentionally like this because people are greedy. For money and power.
Oh, my apologies.
I didn’t realize you were being intractable.
What? I thought we were having a respectful discussion. My bad I guess I misread the situation
Well, I felt you were drawing relevance away from the initial intent of the quoted maxim. Regardless, looks like I might have overreacted. Let’s just chalk this up to internet comments.
It basically just means “be kind“
That’s true of many rules/razors… I wonder if there’s a rule/razor about not putting too much faith in things like murphys law and occams razor.
The important thing is “adequately”. Sometimes the reality can make it improbable.
It wouldn’t be malice, it would be altruism
Hold. What. Where do I find this, please?
I’ve read of the copy/paste unredacting but I’ve yet to read them.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/crime/general/a-strange-tip-sent-to-the-fbi-alleges-donald-trump-was-present-when-a-baby-was-murdered/ar-AA1SYuNA
There’s a link in the article directly to the tip report.
Man, the contortions that editor had to go through to get to that tame headline are spectacular. The tip says that he raped a pregnant 14 year old then oversaw the murder of her newborn baby.
Our media has failed us completely
Thank you. My default is to assume crazy shit in this timeline is true but some of these sound so fantastical.
I saw this yesterday (read the tip pdf, not the article), but am having a hard time believing this. Sounds a bit far fetched
Yeah… after finding out the Nasser letter was fake…
Yeah this more feels like something else though - tip came through 2020 at peak Epstein hype craze, names multiple high profile individuals in an absurdly grotesque crime, that even if true, they’d likely have “people” for these kinds of clean ups, just doesn’t pass the smell test for me.
Also with the amount of redactions in trump related files this feels like something they “feed” us so that we pull the string until they can prove its a fake to discredit us
You may never have heard of the AAAA, the Advertisers Against Advertising Alliance…
Imagine a cigarette-company wants some advertising-work done…
Imagine that you’re dead set against cigarette-companies, but they don’t know that…
Imagine getting the contract, & doing advertising-design for them, where they get an advertising-campaign which to them looks good, but … doesn’t work on people…
Imagine that that is exactly what you had intended…
No card-carrying, no meetings, no visible-connections: only independent people contributing independently.
( I suspect that the drugstore “Life” brand, at Shopper’s Drug Mart was done by a member of the AAAA: NOBODY with health-sense would buy that shit, as a result of the campaign they had, years ago, when I lived in a city )
Now remap it from AAAA to someone ordered to redact evil, to protect the regime against accountability…
Imagine you know exactly that this highlighting-with-black won’t work…
Imagine that this is exactly why you use the method: to protect accountability, in a dying-empire’s deathspasms…
It then becomes possible to “do one’s job” & be complicit within the regime ( but notice those falsifying-quotes! ),
while one protects integrity, Justice, & accountability, by doing one’s “job” in a way which enables actual-Journalism, should there be any left, to dig-in…
Beauty, eh?
_ /\ _
Sooo, malicious compliance?
My favorite
As pointed out in the article, how do we deal with documents from people filling the blanks with whatever they want and claim they "unredacted" it?
By following the law that required this release of files, which includes things like limiting redactions to specific topics, accompanying the redactions with explanations as to their content, and retaining the unredacted versions for congressional inspection.
They are deliberately creating doubt and confusion to avoid accountability.
If they tell you how they did it, you can just do the same thing to the file and see for yourself.
Because that’s not how Ctrl+C works.
The documents are public and the unredacters are documenting what they’re doing to reveal the text.
that is thousands of FBI man hours wasted for you lol
Will the get tax credits for that ?