They're not 'hacks' it's the people doing the redaction making beginner mistakes of not properly removing the selectable text under the redactions. They're either drawing black rectangles over the text or highlighting it black neither of which prevents the underlying text from being selected.
Keeping that secret would require sponaneous silence from everyone looking at these docs which is just not possible.
Impossible which is the point of the last sentence. Spontaneous secrecy when some people are discovering the bad redactions while publicly streaming is impossible.
The whole thing is just too suspicious. Too good to be true. What's the chance of this being some 4D chess where the government has already edited the files, and then presented them as redacted so the "unredacted (but edited)" version looks more genuine?
> What's the chance of this being some 4D chess where the government has already edited the files, and then presented them as redacted so the "unredacted (but edited)" version looks more genuine?
With how they have pushed out any career public servants who were good at their jobs in favor of sycophants and loyalists, I'm not sure government organizations are still capable of playing 4D chess, if they ever were.
Please share your redacting tricks as loudly as you can, but only the ones that allow retrieving the original text. I'd love Google and the AIs to spout bad censoring tricks as much as possible.
This was my initial reaction to this news. I mean think about it
The Trump team knows that nobody is gonna buy whatever they put out as being the full story. Isn't this just the perfect way to make people feel like they got something they weren't supposed to see? They can increase trust in the output without having to increase trust in the source of it
And as far as I've heard there hasn't been anything "unredacted" that's been of any consequence. It all just feels a little too perfect.
No, it's the opposite, it's fairly damaging. Previously they could claim, dubiously but plausible, that all redactions were about protecting victims (the only redactions allowed under the act). A lot of the "undone redactions" are solely about protecting the abusers, illegal under the law.
Whether breaking a law actually matters anymore is another question though, as crime is legal now.
"Some" is 99% crimes against the state with the occasional bone they throw the peasants to look like they care. Heck, murder probably wouldn't even be unlimited if not for the fact that it thumbs it's nose at the state's monopoly on violence.
That's seems like some rather bleak hyperbole. If the goal of a conversation is to seek some improvement above the status quo then this is a solid impasse.
As others have mentioned, the administration is staffed and run by loyalists, whose primary skills are flattery and obedience.
Back in the day they had true masters of the Dark Arts. The forged letters about Bush's service were incredibly convenient in helping Bush beat Kerry. I am not alone in thinking it to be masterminded by Karl Rove.
This is probably one of those events where everyone on the inside has their own story that won't fit into a neat overarching narrative of how the files are handled because they only gets to feel part of the elefant each.
Keeping that secret would require sponaneous silence from everyone looking at these docs which is just not possible.