[JumpCrisscross]

"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-scanned every page to generate a new PDF with absolutely no digital trace of the original PDF file. There are ways to properly redact a PDF digitally, but going analog is foolproof.

The Trump 2.0 administration, in contrast, is staffed top to bottom with fools."

https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/12/23/trump-doj-pdf-r...

[groestl]

> made their redactions with actual ink, and then re-scanned every page

That's not very competent.

> going analog is foolproof

Absolutely not. There are many way's to f this up. Just the smallest variation in places that have been inked twice will reveal the clear text.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Just the smallest variation in places that have been inked twice will reveal the clear text

Sure. But anyone can visually examine this. That means everyone with situational context can directly examine the quality of the redaction.

Contrast that with a digital redation. You have to trust the tool works. Or you have to separate the folks with context from the folks with techical competence. (There is the third option of training everyone in the DoJ how to examine the inner workings of a PDF. That seems wasteful.)

[_flux]

> But anyone can visually examine this.

Can they? In principle it could be the difference between RGB 0.0,0.0,0.0 and RGB 0.004,0.0,0.0, that could be very difficult to visually see, but an algorithm could unmask the data with some correlation.

If you do it digitally and then map the material to black-and-white bitmap, then that you can actually virtually examine.

> Contrast that with a digital redation. You have to trust the tool works.

While true, I think the key problem is that the tools used were not made for digital redaction. If they were I would be quite a bit more confident that they would also work properly.

Seems like there could be a product for this domain.. And after some googling, it appears there is.

[swiftcoder]

> While true, I think the key problem is that the tools used were not made for digital redaction. If they were I would be quite a bit more confident that they would also work properly.

Adobe Acrobat's redaction tools regularly feature in this sort of fuck-up, and they are (at least marketed as being) designed for such use

[_trampeltier]

Just scan it with black/ white setting.

[jvanderbot]

It's probably fine, but certainly better than what's being discussed ITT.

The larger point is that the "usual" redaction involves a tape pen or paint-style ink (dries opaque), IIRC, then photocopy, because the blocked out area is opaque. Scanner is probably no different than photocopy for these purposes.

[groestl]

> anyone can visually examine this.

They can't, if the variations are subtle enough. For example, many people are oblivious to the fact that one can extract audio from objects captured on mute video, due to tiny vibrations.

Analog is the worse option here. Simple screenshot of 100% black bar would be what a smart lazy person would do.

[g947o]

Case study: https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/28/23777298/sony-ftc-microso...

[bryanrasmussen]

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

[hxtk]

Or if the document is just text, simply scan it in black and white (as in, binary, not grayscale).

[2b3a51]

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 Pragma-Sasquatch would be sort of easy to distinguish between if the public had a limited list of people who might be involved?

[JumpCrisscross]

> 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.

[groestl]

> I'm probably overthinking this one but the various lengths of the redaction bars would provide some information perhaps?

You're definitely not overthinking this. Fitting words by length is the attack vector if the blanking itself has been done correctly.

[netsharc]

It's like Russian spies being caught in the Netherlands with taxi receipts showing they took a taxi from their Moscow HQ to the airport: corrupt organizations attract/can only hire incompetent people...

https://www.vice.com/en/article/russian-spies-chemical-weapo...

Anyone remember how the Trump I regime had staff who couldn't figure out the lighting in the White House, or mistitled Australia's Prime Minister as President?

[wkat4242]

Yes I remember that incident. It was big over here.

However I'm 100% sure that that was not a real spy incident. But rather just a 'message' to be sent from the Russian govt. The same way they have infiltrated our airspace with TU-95 bombers nearly every month for decades. Just a message "Hey we are still watching you".

When you see how ridiculously incompetent they were, not just their phone history but also the gear they had with them. It amounts to nothing more than a scriptkiddy's pineapple. There's no way they would have been able to do any serious infiltration into any kind of even remotely competent organisation.

Also the visible fumbling about in a carpark with overly complex antennas instead of something more hidden (e.g. an apartment across the street, a cabling tent or something). IMO the objective here was to get caught and stir a fuss.

[enaaem]

Reminds of the time Russian security services showed copies of the Sims as evidence of an Ukranian Nazi plot.

[SanjayMehta]

Or the passports discovered intact after a particularly heinous terrorist attack.

[tor825gl]

This wasn't a fuck-up though was it?

Knowing they would die in the attack, the terrorists just didn't care if their identities were known.

[JumpCrisscross]

> with taxi receipts

Please tell me they were saving them for expensing.

[varjag]

Europol is nothing next to Natasha in accounting

[RuslanL]

Yes.

[g947o]

It's not fool proof:

https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/28/23777298/sony-ftc-microso...

[JumpCrisscross]

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.

[stevage]

I would just do the digital version of that: add 100% black bars then screenshot page by page and probably increase the contrast too.

[tdeck]

The bigger difference from my perspective is that they have competent people doing the strategy this time. The last Trump administration failed to use the obvious levers available to accomplish fascism, while this one has been wildly successful on that end. In a few years they will have realigned the whole power dynamic in the country, and unfortunately more and more competent people will choose to work for them in order to receive the benefits of doing so.

[Tostino]

His last administration was filled with traditional Republicans.

I may have disagreed with them on virtually every policy point, but they seemed to disagree with the most harmful Trump policies as well.

We would have never agreed on the right policy, but we definitely agreed that his policy was not the right one.

[vanviegen]

> but they seemed to disagree with the most harmful Trump policies as well.

I imagine Republicans such as this still populate a majority of the house and Senate. If they disagree, they are sure making an effort to do so silently.

[SirHumphrey]

The amount of things Trump did circumventing Congressional approval might suggest that he does not a clean pass even though Republicans have majority in both the house and the senate.

[vanviegen]

They have (had?) the power to impeach the president for a lot less than he's already done. Yet they don't.

[goatlover]

That's on Congress for allowing Trump to repeatedly circumvent their approval.

[ProjectArcturis]

>In a few years they will have realigned the whole power dynamic in the country

I disagree. It felt that way for the first few months, but the wheels are coming off. Trump is too old and unpopular to steal a 3rd term. Therefore everyone around him has to worry about what will happen in 3 years, and plan for post-Trump rather than forever-Trump.

[JumpCrisscross]

> they have competent people doing the strategy this time

They had a great playbook in Project 2025. I'm not convinced Trump ever had the smartest people executing it.

[tdeck]

You don't need to be the smartest person when you're pointing a big gun at someone.

[ekianjo]

> William Barr. Barr is contemptible, yes, but smart AF

You mean the guy who covered up for Epstein's 'suicide' and expected us morons to believe it?

[JumpCrisscross]

> You mean the guy who covered up for Epstein's 'suicide' and expected us morons to believe it?

Let's assume that's true. How does it clash with him being "contemptible...but smart AF"?

[h33t-l4x0r]

Yeah I mean, orchestrating an assassination in a federal prison of a guy the whole world is watching, and never even so much as a whiff of a leak? Because how do you contain that without whacking everyone involved (which we would know about)? You don't. Not without teleportation, time-travel, or at the very least post-hypnotic suggestion.

Oh he's smart AF, all right.

[Ms-J]

There were some leaks. Some of the events I would need to check my offline documents for more specific references but, for example, the Reddit leak with a person who was working at the jail saying that he had to let in someone associated with the military and they left shortly after Epstein was killed.

[eviks]

> 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-scanned every page to generate a new PDF with absolutely no digital trace of the original PDF file.

This is a dumb way of doing that, exactly what "stupid" people do when their are somewhat aware of the limits of their competence or only as smart as the tech they grew up with. Also, this type of redaction eliminates the possibility to change text length, which is a very common leak when especially for various names/official positions. And it doesn't eliminate the risk of non-redaction since you can't simply search&replace with machine precision, but have to do the manual conversion step to printed position

[plantain]

>exactly what "stupid" people do when their are somewhat aware of the limits of their competence

Being aware of one's limitations is the strongest hallmark of intelligence I've come across...

[mapontosevenths]

I'm not so sure it's about knowing his own limitations, rather it's about building a reliable process and trusting that process more than either technology or people.

Any process that relies on 100% accuracy from either people or technology will eventually fail. It's just a basic matter of statistics. However, there are processes that CAN, at least in theory, be 100% effective.

[eviks]

So following that strange logic if a dumb person knows he's dumb, he's suddenly become intelligent? Or is that impossible by your peculiar definition of intelligence?

[awesome_dude]

Knowing your limits has to be a sign of intelligence.

"Dumb" people (FTR the description actually refers to something rather than that which you think it does...) run around on the internet getting mad because they haven't thought things through...

[fc417fc802]

It's an interesting question though. I know quite some "smart" people who lack self awareness to an almost fatal degree yet can outdo the vast majority of the population at solving logic puzzles. It tends to be a rather frustrating condition to deal with.

[awesome_dude]

I think that you are conflating things.

Knowing your limits is a sign of intelligence, but it's not the only one, and it's not a requirement. Meaning that not having that understanding doesn't exclude you from being intelligent.

[HKH2]

Yeah that sounds like wisdom, not intelligence.

[awesome_dude]

Wisdom would be knowing not to try and exceed those limits

Intelligence would be knowing they exist (I know that I cannot fly by flapping my arms, it took intelligence to deduce that, wisdom tells me not to try and jump from a height and flap my arms to fly. Further intelligence can be applied, deducing that there are artificial means by which I can attain flight)

[fc417fc802]

Not at all. It's a procedure that's very difficult to unintentionally screw up. Sometimes that's what you want.

> you can't simply search&replace with machine precision

Sure you can. Search and somehow mark the text (underline or similar) to make keywords hard to miss. Then proceed with the manual print, expunge, scan process.

[nobody9999]

>Sure you can. Search and somehow mark the text (underline or similar) to make keywords hard to miss. Then proceed with the manual print, expunge, scan process.

I suppose a global search/replace to mark text for redaction as an initial step might not be a bad idea, but if one needs to make sure it's correct, that's not enough.

Don't bother with soft copy at all. Print a copy and have multiple individuals manually make redactions to the same copy with different color inks.

Once that initial phase is complete, partner up persons who didn't do the initial redactions review the paper text with the extant redactions and go through the documents together (each with their own copy of the same redactions), verbally and in ink noting redactions as well as text that should be redacted but isn't.

That process could then be repeated with different people to ensure nothing was missed.

We used to call this "proofreading" in the context of reports and other documents provided as work product to clients. It looks really bad when the product for which you're charging five to six figures isn't correct.

The use case was different, but the efficacy of such a process is perfect for something like redactions as well.

And yes, we had word processing and layout software which included search and replace. But if correctness is required, that's not good enough -- a word could be misspelled and missed by the search/replace, and/or a half dozen other ways an automated process could go wrong and either miss a redaction or redact something that shouldn't be.

As for the time and attention required, I suppose that depends upon how important it is to get right.

Is such a process necessary for all documents? No.

That said, if correctness is a priority, four (or more) text processing engines (human brains, in this case) with a set of engines working in tandem and other sets of engines working serially and independently to verify/correct any errors or omissions is an excellent process for ensuring the correctness of text.

I'd point out that the above process is one that's proven reliable over decades, even centuries -- and doesn't require exact strings or regular expressions.

Edit: Fixed prose ("other documents be provided" --> "other documents provided").

[ithkuil]

If the word you need to redact is also an English verb there is a risk that you accidentally mark the name of person in a context where that redacted word has a clear meaning in that context and can be used as a proof that such a term has been accidentally redacted because a large scale search&mark has taken place.

According to a random dictionary I found:

To trump. Verb. Surpass (something) by saying or doing something better.

[eviks]

You process doesn't make sense, why wouldn't you just black box redact right away and print and scan? What does underline then ink give you? But it's also not the process described in the blog

> that's very difficult to unintentionally screw up.

You've already screwed up by leaking length and risking errors in manual search&replace

[JumpCrisscross]

> why wouldn't you just black box redact right away and print and scan? What does underline then ink give you?

These are roughly equivalent. The point is having a hard copy in between the digital ones.

[Teever]

Absolutely. The other comments replying to your original comment that are nitpicking over implementation details miss the purpose and importance of this step.

The fact that this release process is missing this key step is significant too imho. It makes it really clear that the people running this didn't understand all of the dimensions involved in releasing a redacted document like this and/or that they weren't able to get expert opinions on how to do this the right way, which just seems fantastical to me given who we're talking about.

In other threads people are discussing the possibility of this being intentional, by disaffected subordinates, poorly vetted and rushed in to work on this against their will. And that's certainly plausible in subordinates but I have a hard time believing that it's the case for the people running this who, if they understood what they were tasked with would have prevented an entire category of errors by simply tasking subordinates to do what you described regardless of how they felt about the task.

So to me that leaves the only possibility that the people running this particular operation are incompetent, and given the importance of redacting that is dismaying.

Regardless of how you feel about the action of redacting these documents, the extent to which it's done and the motives behind doing it, the idea that the people in charge of this aren't competent to do it is not good at all.

[TheOtherHobbes]

This is one of the biggest document collections ever released to the public (...or will be when it's finally done) and the redactions were done in a hurry by a government agency with limited resources which would usually be doing more useful things.

So it's likely there simply isn't the time to do extended multi-step redactions.

What's happening is a mix of malicious compliance, incompetence, and time pressure.

It's very on-brand for it to be confused, chaotic, and self-harming.

[eviks]

Why would I settle for a rough equivalence? The point was about the chance of making mistakes in redaction, so sure, if you ignore the difference in the chance of making mistakes (which the underline process increases), everything becomes equivalent!

[JumpCrisscross]

> Why would I settle for a rough equivalence?

They're equivalent in security. The digital method is more convenient (albeit more error prone). What confers the security is the print-scan step. Whether one is redacting in between or before doesn't change much.

You'd still want to do a tabula rasa and manual post-pass with both methods.

> point was about the chance of making mistakes in redaction

Best practice is humans redacting in multiple passes for good reason. It's less error prone than relying on a "smart" redactor, which is mostly corporate CYA kit.

[fc417fc802]

The blog has no relevance to your claim that the print and scan procedure somehow fundamentally precludes automated search and replace. I refuted that. You remain free to perform automated search and replace prior to printing the document. You also have the flexibility to perform manual redactions both digitally as well as physically with ink.

It's clearly a superior process that provides ease of use, ease of understanding, and is exceedingly difficult to screw up. Barr's DoJ should be commended for having selected a procedure that minimizes the risk of systemic failure when carried out by a collection of people with such diverse technical backgrounds and competence levels.

Notably, had the same procedure been followed for the Epstein files then the headline we are currently commenting under presumably wouldn't exist.

[eviks]

> The blog has no relevance to your claim that the print and scan procedure somehow fundamentally precludes automated search and replace.

It has direct relevance since it describes the process as lacking the automated search and replace

> I refuted that

You didn't, you created a meaningless process of underlinig text digitally to waste time redacting it on paper for no reason but add more mistakes, and also replaced the quoted reality with your made up situation to "refute".

> and is exceedingly difficult to screw up.

It's trivial, and I've told you how in the previous comment

> Notably, had the same procedure been followed for the Epstein files then the headline we are currently commenting under presumably wouldn't exist.

Nope, this is generic "hack" headline, so guessing a redacted name by comparing the length of plaintext to unmask would fit the headline just as well as a copy&paste hack

[TylerE]

It gets you the non-existance of a PDF full of reversible black boxes.

Can't leak a file that doesn't exist.

[eviks]

But you can leak the content of a file that you printed out and couldn't redact properly by using an inferior method

[TylerE]

But such a document is obviously unredacted. A black boxed PDF appears to be redacted, but isn't. Accidents happen.

[lelanthran]

> This is a dumb way of doing that, exactly what "stupid" people do when their are somewhat aware of the limits of their competence or only as smart as the tech they grew up with.

No, this is an example of someone understanding the limits of the people they delegate to, and putting in a process so that delegation to even a very dumb person still has successful outcomes.

"Smart" people like to believe that knowing enough minutiae is enough to result in a successful outcome.

Actual smart people know that the process is more important than the minutiae, and proceed accordingly.

[eviks]

> someone understanding the limits of the people they delegate to, and putting in a process so that delegation to even a very dumb person still has successful

Oh, man, is he the only smart person in the whole department of >100k employees and an >x contractors??? What other fantasy do you need to believe in to excuse the flaws? Also, if he's so smart why didn't he, you know, hire someone smart for the job?

> even a very dumb person still has successful

Except it's easier to make mistakes following his process for both smart and dumb people, not be successful!

> Actual smart people know that the process is more important

So he's not actually smart according to your own definition because the process he has set up was bad, so he apparently did not know it was important to set it up better?

> important than the minutiae

Demanding only paper redactions is that minutiae.

[JumpCrisscross]

> this type of redaction eliminates the possibility to change text length

This is the only weakness of Barr's method.

> it doesn't eliminate the risk of non-redaction since you can't simply search&replace with machine precision

Anyong relying on automated tools to redact is doing so performatively. At the end of the day, you need people who understand the context to sit down and read through the documents and strike out anything that reveals–directly or indirectly, spelled correctly or incorrectly–too much.

[eviks]

> This is the only weakness of Barr's method.

Of course it isn't, the other weakness you just dismiss is the higher risk of failed searches. People already fail with digital, it's even harder to do in print or translate digital to print (something a machine can do with 100% precision, now you've introduced a human error)

> At the end of the day, you need people who understand the context

Before the end of the day there is also the whole day, and if you have to waste the attention of such people on doing ink redactions instead of dedicating all of their time to focused reading, you're just adding mistakes for no benefit

[JumpCrisscross]

> something a machine can do with 100% precision

Forget about typoes. Until recent LLMs, machines couldn't detect oblique or identifying references. (And with LLMs, you still have the problem of hallucinations. To say nothing of where you're running the model.)

> if you have to waste the attention of such people on doing ink redactions instead of dedicating all of their time to focused reading

You've never read a text with a highlighter or pen?

Out of curiosity, have you worked with sensitive information that needed to be shared across security barriers?

[herewulf]

Reading through material in context and actively removing the telling bits seems very focused to me.

Furthermore, reading through long winded, dry legalese (or the like) and then occasionally marking it up seems like an excellent way to give the brain short breaks to continue on rather than to let the mind wander in a sea of text.

I am for automating all the things but I can see pros and cons for both digital and manual approaches.

[eviks]

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 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 and then spending the last 99% in focused reading trying to find that you've missed "the owner of Mar-a-Lago Club" reference or something more complicated (and then also replace that variant digitally rather than hoping you'd notice it every single time you wade through walls of legalese!)

[JumpCrisscross]

> 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 skipping around, you're missing context. You may catch Trump and Trup, but will you catch POTUD? Alternatively, if you just redact every mention of the President, you may wind up creating a President ***, thereby confirming what you were trying to redact.)

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

[WalterBright]

> this type of redaction eliminates the possibility to change text length, which is a very common leak when especially for various names/official positions

Increasing the size of the redaction box to include enough of the surrounding text to make that very difficult.

[Cpoll]

You'd need to increase it a lot, lest the surrounding text be inferred from context.

[eviks]

But that's a destructive operation!

I mean, sure, you can make the whole paragraph/page blank, but presumably the goal is to share the report removing only the necessary minimum?