Slashdot Mirror
Memory Hole Un-Redacts Redacted DOJ Memo
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.
How is this news? It was all over yahoo YESTERDAY.
In Soviet Russia, articles before post read *you*!
Yipes. Someone should introduce the fine folks at Memory Hole to bittorent.
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.
How much time before the DOJ shuts them down ? 5$ on next week.
United States of America, good ol' backers of world peace.
1 entry found for Redacted.
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.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
After they did this during the MS trial with PDF and black rectangles.
*SIGH*
You tax dollars at work, glad to see were getting our money's worth.
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.
Or maybe that's just what he wants us to think...
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
And in other news, Ford today announced a new initiative to reinvent the wheel.
Said spokesman, Bill Patteyunk, "We've tried and we've tried, but we keep getting this circular thing. We'll keep trying and trying until we've accomplished what we've set out to do."
Ford shares were up with the news.
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.
Who was being sneaky here? The department, for wanting to block out so much of the report? Or perhaps a person down low in the organization, who knew it was going to be put on the web site after "editing", and deliberately did it in such a way that the clueless PHB would okay it, but that the info would be available if anyone cared to really go after it?
Slaves resist their masters in many subtle ways. Wage slaves do, too.
On the whole measuring diversity is pointless.
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).
Beep beep.
(Spins handle to fan up flames)
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
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.
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.
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
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.
As Cat Schwartz knows, Photoshop sometimes leaves extra stuff behind, like your breasts.
I loaded up XPDF, highlighted a blacked-out portion, cut and paste, and blammo, I got the text! Way to go.
No, honestly. There's more to fear from a tyranny than an enemy, and it's hard to run a Tyranny when your completely incompetent.
No, that was unfair. They're only mostly incompetent.
What makes you think that all of this was unintentional?
If you wanted lots of people to read something, what would you do? Release a gov't document that is easily accessible, or release one that is actually easily accessible but appears to be a massive cover up?
Seems like someone inside the DOJ or possibly someone at KPMG wanted the information to get out, and decided that this was a surefire way of getting to a large audience.
Beep beep.
Uh oh, it's the New York Times. Better double-check the facts to make sure they're not lying again.
Sometimes the DOJ will serve Justice better by not being capable of doing what they want to do.
Ok $2M for 186 pages of survery results, I'll gladly write a couple pages for $10,753 per page. So about a week of work and I won't have to work for 2 years, or according to the graphs in the pdf, 1.75 years if I were a woman, or only 1.5 years if I were black, homey don't play that!
Couldn't you just say "Memory Hole Dacts Redacted DOJ Memo"
___
Cogito cogito, ergo cogito sum.
Memory Hole to be Charged With DMCA Violation
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
W
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
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.
I suppose this is better than just changing the font to wingdings, but then SCO probably has a patent on that
Aren't they only allowed to black out stuff because of national security concerns or if it relates to ongoing operations, not just critisism?
Travis
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.
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.
Sometimes older computer can be more fun.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
...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...
"I'm a scientist! I don't think, I observe!" - Dr. Clayton Forrester
damn you! they're not there!
I havent checked the article or whatsoever, but based on what I've readen here... its a PDF with a black image over the text, right?
if that's so, why not put a fake document image with some missleading text that make everybody think that's the real content of the document, avoiding smart hackers' suspicion.
I might just be wrong anyway. sorry.
don't flame... I'm just a regular slashdot observer.
If there is a resonable risk to national security (i.e., revealing information about intelligence collecting techiniques, agents in the field, et al) it can be censored. This, however, is a report about diversity. I seriously doubt there's anything in there about the number of undercover agents and their assignments.
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 with, instead of criminalizing large portions of the population.
I just hope the feds never try to housebreak my cat.
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I'm sorry if I just don't get it, but I did not really see any mention of anything that actually refuted any of the DOJ claims.
All I see is a bunch of clarification of the points that would not have been appropriate to mention at a press conference (the likes of which the soundbytes were taken from).
I also notice that none of the new powers can simply be used willy-nilly. They all require the permission of a judge (who may well interpret the warrant request as, well, unwarranted).
I recall from an earlier interview how a number of DOJ lawyers read /. and they were talking about how they would be just as quick to defend violations of the GPL as they were to throw people in jail over a few songs.
I haven't heard the DOJ say a single word about SCO up to this point.
It really is bizarre what's happening in the federal government. It's like the powers that be think they can just spin everything and nobody is ever going to remember a word of it later. Just keep on lying and make sure they get another shot of Ms. Rice and the President. There's nothing racist about Bush's policy in the Mideast --why look, he's taking a picture with a black woman right now!
Or maybe it's best that Governments actually *don't* read the manual!!
Great get out clause for whiste-blowers!
---- The Open Source Record Label : : LOCARECORDS.COM
Free Mirror for both files [Zip Format]
"diversityanalysis.zip">
MD5 D6BC1FA89F8AF7AF27A94916F9570D85
I suggest downloading each file completely, and then viewing locally (vs viewing with a plug-in, downloading one page at a time in your browser). Trying to pull down a page at a time as you scroll isn't efficient with PDFs unless you're local (10mbit+):
IPv4:
diversityanalysis.pdf
doj-attorney-diversity-unredacted.pdf
IPv6:
diversityanalysis.pdf
doj-attorney-diversity-unredacted.pdf
But it does speak volumes about your personal prejudices.
Is it possible that minorities feel slighted because they view themselves as being "minorities"?
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them
It's a little odd how they chose to edit it. For example, they would sometimes cover the summary sentance of a paragraph, but the meaning of it could still be guessed based up the rest of the paragraph.
Other places are more logical coverings, though.
Cogito ergo sum in Slashdot.
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.
No wonder they can't catch Bin Laden.
... that thought this was about a buffer overflow bug allowing someone to read classified documents?
This is just proof of W's admin using the issue of National security to avoid anything that would be critical of it.
This is entirely made up.
Always knew that wysiwyg was a stupid people trap.
Doh, ZIP really is your friend with these PDFs (60% compression, ~2mb vs ~6mb):
IPv4:
diversityanalysis.zip
doj-attorney-diversity-unredacted.zip
IPv6:
diversityanalysis.zip
doj-attorney-diversity-unredacted.zip
Democracy Now ran a good story on thursday's edition i believe. They also ran an whole hour segment on the voting machine scandal.
Adobe Reader 6.0 (maybe earlier versions, never checked) has a feature to "read out loud" text under the view menu. I tried this on the original blacked-out report....and it read the censored text just like i expected. what a blunder.
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.
If you don't like the way this site is moderated, you can always take your eyeballs elsewhere.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Folks, if you're going to be sneaky, at least do enough research to make sure you're really being sneaky.
Reminds me of my first and only attempt at forgery. Got a detention in 4th grade, notice of which had to be signed by my parents. I made a copy of the detention notice, pasted my dad's signature on the bottom, and made a copy of that. All went well and the teacher bought it, but I left the original in the copying machine which my parents naturally found later that day.
Export the pdf to a text document and there it all is. In acrobat 6 all you do is select Save As Text from the File Menu... The people who blocked out the text are obviously just idiots, I hope this costs them their job.
Exactly. The sneakiness showed the Department of Justice has NO respect for the law.
The question I have is why on earth would you censor a report like this? What material in this report would harm national security?
I guess this is just further proof that the people on top are idiots.
They cared about the fact that he lied under oath which is perjury, a felony. If you or I did the same thing in the paula jones trial we'd be in prison.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
Yeah, I want my DOJ staff selected out of the Vibe want adds.
New York Times story, via google.
From the NYT article: "This was a study that we commissioned of our own volition to get a look at what our work force looked like," Ms. Duffy said. "We didn't have to let people know we were doing this." YES YOU DO HAVE TO LET PEOPLE KNOW !! This woman clearly has not heard of the Freedom of Information act, or clearly misunderstands it's intentions. It's to allow the average american to know what his/her government is doing ! Comments like these from government officials scare me.
On one hand their shouldn't even be a diversity report on the DoJ, the idea that a lack of diversity means that discrimination is prevalent is ludicrous (sp?). Maybe the most competent employees happen to be white males? Ever consider that?
On the other hand W and his cronies are continuing to look like cowards due to silly, dumb actions like this. Conservatives are looking like the whiny bitches that we all know liberals are what with stuff like this and Fox news suing Al Franken. Conservatives shouldn't do stuff like this because we. are. better. than. they. are.
I'm not a FOIA lawyer, but I browsed the FOIA exemptions and exclusions and I see no reason whatsoever that this information that was naively blacked out was excluded.
Think about what ELSE they aren't telling us... And, they probably don't usually don't make such stupid mistakes.
Affirmative Action = Racism. It discriminates against middle and lower income Euro-Americans.
"Sorry Jimmy, you worked your ass off but Raynisha gets the free University ride because she is black and your grandparents might have done something to her ancestors even though none of your family was here until 1920. Nevermind her GPA is nearly a whole point below yours and she never took part in any extra-curricular activities. Oh yeah, we are also have less money than her but you're white so you're fscked. Nevermind that her parents are neuro-surgeons." Great policy.
Or is there some other explanation for your failure to get a joke?
Clear, Dark Skies
I noticed this a few days ago and have had a good time scanning the unedited report. The Memory Hole was even helpful enough to highlight the formerly blacked-out sections in yellow, so you know exactly what you were missing.
It's sad because it's obviously not a huge conspiracy that was covered up. It was "just" the racism and sexism that everyone knows is still present in America, but no one likes to admit.
Here's some stuff I thought was interesting. I don't think it's amazingly surprising (which is sad) but it's pathetic they found it 'bad' enough to try and cover up. These aren't all directly related to diversity, just stuff I found interesting.
Page 4: "Attorneys across demographic groups believe that the Department is a good place to work. Most attorneys across race/ethnicity, gender, and component groups report that the environment is collegial and productive."
This is actually blacked out in the origonal document. That's just stupid. Why would it possibly be blacked out?! It's employees saying GOOD THINGS!
Page 4: "Minorities perceive unfairness in a number of human resources practices, such as hiring and promotion."
Ah ha. Now we begin to see...
Page 5: "Minorities are significantly under-represented in management ranks." and "Minorities are substantially more likely to leave the Department than whites."
Then there's a long section on the background of the study and how it was conducted...very little blacked out here...
Then there are just weird things to cover up. Like on page 26: "The organizational culture varies by office and is influenced by the leadership in each office and the Regional Counsel that oversees it."
Wouldn't that seem obvious? Your superiors will change the attitude of your office. Duh.
Page 37: "It is especially noteworthy that a large majority of both women and minorities answered unfavorably about the item asking about tolerance of dissent."
Page 89: "Note that promotion rates for minorities are highly correlated with, but consistently less than, promotion rates for whites."
Page 94: "When controlling for component, grade, and salary, we found that the average minority is currently residing approximately one-third step lower than the average white, and the average woman is currently residing approximately one-half step lower than the average man. These effects are statistically significant."
Page 97: "...women and minorities received statistically significantly more recognition in the form of time-off awards in 2001 compared to men and whites, respectively."
"[but] women were both less likely than men to receive cash awards and received fewer awards per person among those who did receive them. Likewise, racial minorities were less likely than wites to receive cash awards (although they received the same number of awards among people who receive any). A more refined analysis of the race result shows that blacks and Asians were the least likely to receive cash awards (41% compared to 50% for whites and 56% for Native Americans)."
You get the gist. The document is over 200 pages long, but even if you scroll quickly and just glance at the highlighted stuff, you can come out with a good picture of what was covered up.
Basically, anything with substance.
-Trillian
The truly ironic part is that when I read the unredacted version I began to gain a greater understanding of the complexities and challenges of the DOJ and tended to be less judgemental and dissmissive of their leadership.
Complex and huge challenges such as improvement of racial diversity and national security absolutely require the good will and support of the general population in order to be achieved. Therefore openness and transparency of government authority is vital to maintaining this good will and support.
It is very clear that the current administration has rejected openness and transparency in favor of secrecy and in so doing they are actually threatening great harm to our national security in the long term. It is a very ignorant and short-sighted view. They think that secrecy helps them to catch the 'bad guys' and reduce the flak of negative publicity. What they completely fail to realize is that public confidence in the honesty and integrity of government institutions is infinitely more important to our security in the long term.
mhack
Building a better ribosome since 1997
The government doesn't have to say a damned thing about it. People have to ask for it first.
Does that count as a DMCA violation? (I hope not!)
... or run it on a CPU emulator. Or just run lots of crap in the background. The emulator would probably be best, especially if you could freeze it.
Reminds me of a computer column I read in a newspaper about 10 years ago, where the writer talked about a friend who always got higher scores on DOS games than he. Then he learned his friend's secret: he played the games under Windows (3.1) rather than directly under DOS.
Or VA Software, for that matter?
What efforts are you guys doing to promote diversity among your ranks, particularly management?
Folks, if you're going to use such a smug, self-righteous tone when you post these stories, at least make sure sure your own house is in order.
If i recall correctly, the term is dingbats, you dingbat.
infiltration?
What groups are counted as minorities? It seems that for this study Asians, Hispanics, and Blacks are counted as minorities, but that Jewish people are counted as white. Doesn't this skew the report just a bit?
Admittedly, you can encrypt documents, but it's seldom done.
This particular one was absurdly easy. You can just use the text selection tool, and grab the text behind the blackouts.
But: with the full version of Acrobat, you can delete or move text or entire text or graphical objects -- nearly as easy, why didn't they do that before hand? The same tools can help un-black those objects.
Also: Acrobat is, by default, a text format. You can usually find all kinds of juicy things in the text. Text on a page is usually found (in parentheses). Tools such as the "Browser.api" plug-in help see all the bits and pieces that make up the contents of a page. At that point, you might be in DMCA reverse-engineer land, but just barely.
So, kiddies: encrypt, redact properly, protect, and then double-check.
Design for Use, not Construction!
Take this shit to DU
Did DOJ follow its own published guide to Exemption 5? Slog through DOJ Guide to FOIA Exemption 5 and decide for yourself.
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
After reading thrugh a few of the censored (call the spade black, for pity's sake) entries, I have to ask the question...
Why cover up the truth?
I don't get it. Sometime the truth hurts, but it's easier to deal with than the aftereffects of lying to cover up the truth. It's easier to say "OK, we're not perfect, we have diveristy issues to address" and deal with them than to stick heads in the sand and when something like this leaks out, proceed to conduct damage control.
It's easier to tell a consistent truth than a series of consistent lies.
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
= 9J =
As in any other cases simplicity and the appearance of simplicity are two entierly different things. The seeming simplicity many tools in the Windows-world offer is fake. As soon as you leave the narrow focus of what the designers expected the tool to be used for, many things break, including in many cases security.
It is far better to have a hard to use tool (e.g. commandline, although many people find that actually easier to use) that does not surprise you than a seemingly easy to use tool that does (sometimes massively) surprise you. This is no new wisdom. It applies everywhere in engineering. Some parts of the software industry are still not aware of this sound engineering principle.
Of course there is a second issue here: the users that are by now so uneducated about the nature of the tools they use that severe mistakes become likely. It is not that the users are less sophisticated than in the past (at least I hope so), but the tools they work with have become massicely more complex and many people have not realy noticed and therefore are not able to anticipate any pitfalls.
To put ist short, if they wanted to keep the redacted stuff confidential they should at least have used a tool they understand, like printed paper, or they should have consulted an expert first. This was a highly unprofessional mistake.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Its so absurd its not even funny that these sort of things happen, and the worst thing is that people will start saying "oh those damn hackers" or something stupid like that. People really need educating about technology and not just some "IT training course" proper education about computers and technology and the people who need it most are the politicians and judges and anyone else in important positions.
And if they are "too old" to learn then its time to get rid of them, people who cant learn shouldnt be in those positions.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Almost correct, but not quite. The US never sold saddam WMDs, they did sell him weapons back during the Iran Iraq war in the 80s in an attempt to "even up" the fight. Supposedly, saddam was also sold materials that could be used in a chemical or biological weapons programs (such as laboratory media etc.). But the US never actually shipped him mustard gas or anything like that, and we certainly weren't stupid enough to sell him weapons after the 1991 gulf war, like some others did. The US isn't blameless, but what you are saying isn't correct.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
but hey I live down here in GA and was tired of rapin' my daughter.................
you stupid fuck
Sweet, my stock rises ever higher with each SCO troll.
--
Love, Daryl.
From the ACLU Freedom Network. The following are exempt from FOIA requests.
1. National Security
2. Internal Agency Rules
3. Governed By Other Statutes
4. Business Information
5. Internal Government Memos
6. Private Matters
7. Law Enforcement Investigations
8. Regulation Of Financial Institutions
9. Oil Wells
Nowhere does it state 'items embarrassing to the government.' This is a federal violation on the part of the DOJ. Maybe we can get Ashcroft to investigate himself.
I swear...the more I read the more I am furious with the douchebags in power. Obviously, no matter who you vote for there will be corruption. I say, let the people rise up and show that they won't take it. Yes. Vigilantism may be the last best hope.
Blar.
click heeah
think about it...
last week the white house creates a new robots.txt file to block access to iraq files. now this gaff?
seems to me they are fishing around with these docs, so that they can better learn to hide the things that will get bush/cheney impeached and possibly imprisoned.
but that's a bit of a stretch even for this president.
I don't see how the information that they attempted to remove should have been allowed to be removed in the first place.. it was vital to the report.
You aren't allowed to just remove whatever you feel like it from an FOIA requested document. the whole point of the FOIA is so you can see documents you have a right to see; like this report.
Exemptions are made for things like national security, fair enough.. and privacy.. but simply crossing out the "bad" parts of a report is absurd.
Considering the situation with the DMCA, Diebold, Patriot Act, Victory Act, Enron, SCO, Microsoft, RIAA, MPAA, Ashcroft and Generals on a Crusade isn't bad enough? now the Department of Justice gets caught trying to cover some back side.
Now remember, all of these guys are just looking out for the best interests of the "American People." after all they don't want to upset an already BAD situation by adding fuel to the fire, right? That is why it is in the interest of national security.(tell me it aint so)
at risk of being moded redundant I will repeat in my own words what I heard earlier on this subject..."Next time I see a document with black magic marker allover it,go ahead, TRY and convince me it is in the "interest of national security"
Maybe they are right, in thinking if the "American People" knew about HALF of the things that probably go on daily, they would probably revolt, which does, sadly give weight to their arguement.
"In the interest of national security we cannot tell you how corupt the system is because it would be disruptive TO that system (and your security)."
"Totam Spem Relinquite Hunc Locum Adeuntes"
indeed.
I don't think the slashdot poster was fully able to highlight the gravity of this:
O ct ober/000143.html
r ney-div ersity-unredacted.pdf
...
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."
...not for Memory Hole's sake, but if the DoJ does do it, I would have an affirmative piece of evidence to motive the sheeple I know to fight the DMCA. Till now, the DMCA actions brought are either too complex, or not a clear enough violation of fair use standards to be palatable to the general public.
You're rewritting history:
-
The anti-war folks claim there was no possibility of WMD when in fact there was a very significant possibility.
- This combined with the fact that Iraq itself claimed to possess said weapons, had not cooperated with UN inspections,
-
AND had made public its support of terrorism against one of our allies (Israel) was, in my opinion, enough reason to overthrow Saddam.
- Incidentally, we had satellite surveillence and spies testimony.
- Whether or not that intelligence was accurate is still up for debate. If it was not, the intelligence community is to blame, not Bush.
-- MarkusQNo, they claim there was no proof, when Bush told the world he had proof and then failed to produce it or the weapons.
They were actively claiming they had destroyed the weapons, and were cooperating with the UN inspectors, who themselves opposed the invasion, asking instead for more time to inspect.
Dispite the fact that it is illegal (under our laws) for us to do so? I don't think Saddam was a good person, and I can't say the majority of the world will miss him, but I do say that our principles ought to mean more to us than they seem to.
The administration claims we did. That claim now seems questionable.
Hardly. In general, they warned against the use of the faulty information (some of which was publicly known to be forged, etc.). The administation largely ignored their concerns. NASA anyone?
When viewing the report supplied by Memory Hole under Adobe Reader 6.0 the redacted parts in yellow show up and all is fine.
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!
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
Shooting Lawyers appears to be really popular lately...
Teh US government is so not r33t!!!11 I use my SUPAR-S3CUrE shell pipeline for meh sens1t1ve data LIEK SO!!!11:
.gov h4x0r5 intercepted me putting t4ht on teh Int4rw3b, they still wouldn't know what it was LOL! Free Kev1n! I bet no one, not even teh hole of /. COULD decrypt MEH TOP-SECRET text omfg!1
$ cat omg_hiddent_data_lol.txt | bzip2 -cz9 | tac
OMG! Even if tehy
Mod up parent! $8,000 of my tax money went to cover that find statue--I might as well get a laugh out of it.
I was hoping it would be a prosecutor...shooting your own lawyer seems kinda dumb...especially considering that the guy isn't in jail!
Blar.
It was good for a laugh, but it couldn't happen..
Since government documents are in the Public Domain, they're not covered by copyright, so the DMCA wouldn't apply.
Nothing motivates "the sheeple" until a Cop is standing on their doorway proceeding to take something away from them personally.
Even then, they whine a bit, vote either the red or blue clone into office, and whine a bit more.
Sheeple, en mass, are never motivated until a substantial number of them have been decimated in a manner public enough for them to expect they WILL (not may) be next. Or, the powers that be expend enough money to convince them to drink whatever the kool-aid of the day is.
Until that fateful day the watchword will always be "do on to others whatever you wish, let 'em die in the streets for all we care, just send the money our way and keep the bodies out of sight."
Sad, perhaps, but that is the human experience.
"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...
but it's the only thing we've got.
The bigger shame is how few Americans actually read the stuff.
If you'd like to avail yourself of this "sham", please feel free to visit the National Security Archive.
If you'd like to learn something more about the pricks who are currently running this country.
I especially advise you check out the section on the Iran Contra Affair. Many of the criminals mentioned in these docs are currently serving in the Bush administration.
If you would like to get some perspective on the Taliban, Al Q'aeda, and September 11 that the mainstream press doesn't quite cover, read the September 11th Sourcebooks.
And always remember to search beyond the collections to find the stuff they forgot was released in other investigations (such as this evidence that Rumsfeld, Poindexter and pals were paying for thier illegal terrorist operations in Central America with DRUG MONEY)
There may be problems with FOIA, but the biggest problem is that not enough of you are willing to make use of what is available.
Read, L
The big problem with most people is they tend to think you can give government a break. You can't it's out after yuo libertiy and freedom so it's job is more convient. It can't ever be trusted.
If you don't like what I write don't be a CS and mod it down. Refute it.
Yea I can't spell. So what is your point?
>Obviously, no matter who you vote for there will
>be corruption.
Or who you don't vote for. Call me a conspiracy theorist if you will....
Maybe you should read a little about Columbia (or maybe spend some time there), they have a history of shooting judges, as well as the nasty consequences that follow.
mhack
Building a better ribosome since 1997
Hmm tried to visit the site and it was down.. I wonder if they pissed off the wrong poeple? Or maybe they were just slashdotted... Anyone know the legality of what they've done? Could they be held responsible for publishing classified info?
The 6 meg .pdf ain't gonna happen on my dialup.
Is the blackened out part a legitimate national security issue, or is it just the government covering up its embarassment?
"Has [being a kidnapped teenage girl, raped repeatedly for months] changed you?" - Katie Couric to Elizabeth Smart
Historically, how far does it go before a collapse occures in a system such as the one it seems we have today? You mentioned Soviet Union, how about others such as the Roman Empire? Is this sort of thing really "new" or is this just a big chapter of history repeating itself?
Just curious what your view on that is, if any. Im also wondering your view on what practical steps can be taken to "save" the USA from going by way of Soviet Union.
In Jaguar, Preview shows every word of the Memory Hole version and blacked out lines galore in the original (using the link from the Memory Hole site), sometimes with yellow-highlighted periods at the end of sentences.
The yellow periods have spots that are yellow in nearly the same spot in the Memory Hole version, but are still readable.
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.
Interestingly, ie. fucking scarily, our voting system is being replaced by easily hackable electronic systems with no paper trail...
I for one welcome our new Diebold overlords!
Heh, I don't know if I'm really trying to be funny; frankly, I really fear for this country.
The question I have for myself is, have I become paranoid, or was I just naive before?
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Corporate America has been having classified internal discrimination audits for years. It's SOP for these to be done by attorneys and for the results to be company confidential. The idea is that the company has the oportunity to seek out and fix problems without worrying about that information that they gather being used against them later.
It is considered a good thing becaues it means that companies are more likely to take a pro-active aproach to solving their discriminatory problems ahead of time, instead of waiting for a lawsuite.
On the negative side are that the governing board does not necessarily take the advice they are given. They are just as prone to having blocking defense mechanisms as anyone else.
Without these audits, I'm not sure what tools there are for companies to identify and resolve gender/race discrimination problems before they are sued.
So, the same goes for the DOJ. Being lawyers, they did what lawyers do. However, they are a public institution, I'm not sure that such things should be kept private by public institutions, or that it helps us in the long run, even if lawsuites do result. I mean, suing the DOJ is like suing me, which I really don't need, but I do want a DOJ that is fairly and honorable in it's hiring and promoting practices.
Maybe caulk?
Yeah, if you listened to the demagogues on national and international tv talking about how americans were so oppressed by the new Gestapo, you'd wonder why these thigns keep coming out for public scrutiny. Perhaps, just perhaps, there is no Gestapo? Maybe the Constituion hasn't been burned in a secret Satanic ritual by John Ashcroft?
#-#
Ad Astra Per Aspera
A rough road leads to the stars
True only to an extent. Take Gray-out Davis for example. As soon as he proposed a hefty car tax, the sheeple got motivated to yank him out. As soon as he proposed drivers licenses for illegal immigrants, he was as good as gone.
You should acquint yourself with the concept of How-To: Boil a Frog.
And the prize goes to Malcontent for the following gem:
"Secondly they were humaniterian wars from the get go" (sic.)
parent is goatse.cx link
Just a few shootings to stir things up. Mass bombings won't do it...too easy to pin on a 'radical' or 'terrorist'. But a few assasinations, with explanations given, might get the message accross in a way even the gov't can't spin in their favor.
Blar.
i saw your fucking journal, terror boy.
CLITORIS CHOPPERS. Hi there you fucking Islamic career clerics, doctors of death, Waffen Schutzstaffel doctor Josef Mengele is a patron saint compared to you fucking ragheads. You suck. You aide and abet terror and death. You are partially responsible for the deaths of other fellow men. For this fratricide you shall pay dearly. Your soul is black with the stains of inaction, ineptitude and sympathies to those who walk the dark side. Your foul life is full of sins, not religious, just heinous, your karma is low, you don't confess, and you aren't in prison where you belong. You are your own dark, kept secret. I see through you, the worthless academic, the pseudo intellectual, the unproven unpublished un patented WASTE OF FUCKING FLESH. You are a drain on society, you are a member of the 1st world but pretend to not be. I hate you, you are a stained man.
Hi clitoris chopper, you islamists support clitoris carving. You are Islamic, and of course are a fucking animal. I hate you you pull-start camel jockey lover. Towelheads, Camel Jockies, Sand Niggers, Ackmids, Abeebs, Carpet Flyers, Dune Coons, Rag Heads, Sand Scratchers, Habeebs, Abba-Dabbas, Camel-Humpers, Demi-niggers, Fig-Gobblers, Hucka-luckas (hucka hlacka ghalcka ghugh), Lefties (If you steal, you lose the right hand so, since they are thieves...) Ocnods, Pull-Start-ables (imagine pull starting Ossama's dirty rag like a Briggs and Stratton), Roach-Ranchers (habibs cant kill roaches by a tenant of Is-slum), Sand Moolies.
Shut up all you dirty fucking Islamic pigfucking swinehundts and the pigs, the communist fuckin Islamic terrorist supporter.
Take your fucking Koran and cram it up your ass. The sooner the earth sees Islam leave it, the better off it will be. Your Koran is Goat Piss.
I hope if there is a God and a Hell, you have to drink the liquidy shit from a Pig's ass, and Jewish Rabbis defecate on you.
I hate the stupid ISLAM fucks who read into the trash they come up with. Saddam Hussein [who needs to take a dirt nap] is higher on my sanity list than fucking Muslim "clerics." In fact, I like Saddam more than most of the other Arab leaders because he is secular. We should fucking nuke the Saudis and Mecca and Medina and turn it into rubble, then tell Saddam to remove the heads of all the buttfucking "royalty" in the area.
I want to wipe my ass with Mohammad's shroud. I want to grind his body up into bone meal and fertilize my garden with it.
Our tortured dead scream out in HORROR, asking for vengeance:
Nuke their countries to hell.
Nuke them again.
Death to Islam.
I piss on Mecca. I wipe my ass with the Koran. I shit upon Mohammed. I wipe the cum for a freshly fucked pussy with Mohammed's shroud then throw it in the pig sty so it can mire in pig shit as it decomposes.
I doubt that, for the simple fact that everyone made the big stink about giant trailers, mobile weapons labs and missile stockpiles. These aren't
things that go in a pickup truck, they require tractor-trailers. Those Al-Samoud missiles are pretty big themselves. And like I said before, the
White House is silent on the WMD issue since the summer. I'm not going to consider the issue until they bring it up, and even then I'm still going to
be a little dubious. The fact that they aren't discussing WMDs anymore is a hint to me that they gave up trying to convince people.
Even given the immense resources of the US, I think it entirely possible to covertly move things within Iraq without the US knowing about it.
Particularly in the 14 months of the UN filibuster. They found foxbats buried in sand at Saddam Intl. Airport the US never knew about. Thats a
Mig-25, now if those can be hidden in the dirt/sand, anything can. And they got there from Russia without us knowing about it at some point during
the years with teh no-fly zone.
Simple. Iraq is very large. WMDs were supposedly in and near palaces, much of which was in Baghdad, near the center of Iraq. You can't exactly
have a tunnel that goes anywhere near Baghdad and then to Syria. That's like a tunnel from Manhattan to Cichago. It would be fantastically expensive,
tricky, and couldn't possibly be kept secret. Then you're assuming that Syria wouldn't mind activity under their land, and that nobody in either
government would leak any of this information to CIA moles. Even if you made the tunnels shorter, like closer to the boarder, you'd still have to get
weapons from Baghdad above ground to the tunnels. They're not something you can just hide in a minivan here either, they'd be huge and have military
escorting them, both for security and to make sure nobody looks inside. I'm not buying the idea that this happened. The inspectors, Iraqi scientists,
and captured Iraqi officials all say there wasn't WMD, and Bush so far has not called any of them liars.
Likely you wouldnt even need a tunnel to pull this off. There isnt a moat between Iraq and Syria. And it tends to be that its very easy to trailblaze
in that part of the world. I would think it possible to cover your tracks using a some mechanism after you drove over the land. (drag a rake, blow
diffusive wind from a machine downward, etc)
Like I said, he's distancing himself from it. I think its pretty shameless. He blamed the FBI for not preventing 9/11, the CIA for bad Iraq
intelligence, and the crew of the USS Abraham Lincoln for hanging up that "Mission Accomplished" banner when he admitted that the White House printed
it and brought it onto the carrier for them. I don't like what I see here.
Maybe he doesnt have to answer to you until election day. how about that? Have a problem with the system there buddy?
I'm not blaming anything. I'm just saying it's perfectly possible that these transfers took place and were missed.
But why did President Bush stop saying "WMDs will be found soon"? He's spun the issue onto "freedom of Iraqis" now and is totally ignoring the issue.
Before the war, he made accusation after accusation about Saddam, why isn't he making accusations against Syria if there was even an inkling that a
WMD move may be afoot? I mean, the current administration so far has insulted every Arab government while turning a blind eye to Israel, why did they
quiet down about Syria? Israel is innocent compared to the arab scum and the state sponsored terrorists. You know, Israel breaks a lot of deals,
after a bunch of civillians are murdered by arabs. You focus on the dealbreaking. i focus on the murders. i got a lot more respect for revenge
killing that terrorism. You dont seem to remember, Saddam admitted to possessing WMD. The UN knew it. The US knew it. Even Bill Clinton an
Anyway, seems to me that if there were any WMD that were moved to Syra WE'D HAVE A TON OF FUCKING PHOTOS OF THE MILES OF TRUCK CONVEYS IT WOULD TAKE TO MOVE THE TENS OF THOURSAND OF POUNDS OF CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS THE BUSHIES SAID HE HAD!!!!
Except, there aren't any photos. I mean this administration would certain trot them out to quite all the critics and stuff if they had them, right? So repeat after me, THE WMD WERE DESTROYED JUST AFTER THE FIRST GULF WAR LIKE THE UN INSPECTORS SAID THEY WERE.
Well, that pretty much clears that up. Oh, and Bush and company a bunch fucking traitors.
Debunking the "59 Deceits"
So did you like my journal?
I doubt the plausibility of that idea, I mean, a bunch of zambonis out there wouldn't be inconspicuous. Besides, there are roads in Iraq. Not to pick on you personally, but the average American thinks that Iraq is all tents and desert and camels. The average Iraqi doesn't see camels unless they go rural, and almost all the cars there are cars without off-road capability, so sticking to pavement is a must.
No need to get testy on me. He is an elected official and still has to answer to Americans. I'm not going to let him go and screw things up until election, things have gotten way worse under him, terrorism-wise and foreign relations-wise, not to mention the economy.Plus, Bush didn't bring up WMDs much in his latest press conference last week. He could have said that it's easy for a border hundreds of miles long could have had weapons sneak into Syria since it may or may not have been patrolled well (I think it was, if you listen to generals talk about what they caught), and people would have believed him. The democrats aren't faulting Bush too much for not catching Bin Laden, because they probably couldn't do a much better job.
I'm not an Arab, so I'll ignore the flamebait. State-run media, regardless of where it is, has no credibility with me. I'm even leery with BBC sometimes. Why are you trashing Muslims? What leader are you ripping on? Whichever one, he's not my leader. I'm not going to bother ranting incoherently about your hatred of all Muslims, you suffer from the flaw of availibility heuristics. (look it up)
Mufti met with Adolph Hitler? Well, Godwin's law aside, you also had priests and Vatican emissaries who met with Hitler, what's your point? Does that somehow invalidate the religion?
Mr100percent. His fantasy, to have participated in the raping of PFC J. Lynch. He masturbates to the fact that her M-16 jammed, and she blacked out, leaving her supple anal whole open for rape.
He takes his Palestine/PLO/Arafat supplied AK-47 with the double long al-queda curved clip that Ussama likes to show off, and he shoots chunks of chum off her arm, leaving powder burns but doing only superficial damage.
With opressed women singing by Lynch's bedside, only becuse Mr100Percent beats her, supresses her, and chops her clitoris off, Arab and Muslim women all secretly want Americans to not only win, but to kill all the Muslim and Arab men, ending over 1400 years of rape, agression and opression towards women and all non-believers.
Like bravo two zero said, they would make love to dogs if it were dignified, because they are twice as intelligent.
Face it. You are an apologist for a Satanic cult. You are trying to raise the anti-christ. We will watch, fight and never give up. We will never surrender.