More PDF Blackout Follies

georgewilliamherbert writes "The latest installment of "As the PDF Blackouts Turn" hit today, with a U.S. government apparently releasing a redacted version of their court filing in the Balco grand jury leak case which merely stuck a black line over the text, which remains available in the document. As with prior documents, entering text cut/paste mode in a normal PDF browser such as Acrobat allows a reader to access the concealed text. Previous incidents include an AT&T filing in the NSA case." This works with Xpdf and KPDF, too; for KPDF, use the selection tool (under the Tools menu) around the redacted section, copy to clipboard, then paste into the text-manipulator of your choice.

Comments

History repeats itself

[alshithead]

Perhaps after another dozen or so incidents they'll decide a little training is appropriate for the folks who are doing the redacting.

Re:History repeats itself

[cavtroop]

No, more than likely they will just pass a new law, stating that "Copying and pasting of blacked out (redacted) lines is a felony" or somesuch...

Re:History repeats itself

[richg74]

This is in principle a good idea. However, the implementation may suffer from a fundamental problem.

My grandfather used to say that there is one irreducible requirement for training a dog: you have to be smarter than the dog.

Re:History repeats itself

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that's called the DMCA

Re:History repeats itself

[squiggleslash]

Alternatively, perhaps the technology is at fault. If the same mistake is made over, and over, and over again, many user interface experts would start investigating whether it's the UI, not the user that's at fault. The argument is that the mistake is being made because the correct solution is not intuitively obvious.

I'd be curious to know what tool the users are using to black out the text. Are they just exporting from Word but, before exporting, "blocking it out" in Word? If so, how? Are they putting black blocks over text, or setting attributes of the relevent text? If these are the wrong techniques, what can be done to make the right techniques obvious (and the wrongness of these techniques equally obvious)?

I've designed enough crappy UIs in the past and justified them with "It's user error! All they have to do is hit the OK or CANCEL buttons, of course it's not going to work if they close the window instead!" and other such stuff that, with hindsight, was utterly wrong and elitist of me, to know that technically skilled people are not the best judge of intuitiveness. The fact is, I'm a programmer. You're probably technically minded too. The average user isn't. We can't avoid making assumptions about what the user thinks works that are, on occasion, completely, 180 degrees, wrong. What we can do is own up to them and try to determine how to steer the user in the right direction.

which?

[Anonymous Coward]

with a U.S. government apparently releasing a redacted version of their court filing

Which U.S. government?

Even more shocking

[$RANDOMLUSER]

What's this in TFA about Barry Bonds and steroids? I had no idea.

Re:People...learn...?

[jimktrains]

"Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so." - Douglas Adams

Hush! Hush!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are we publicizing this flaw? We have a US Government in power that increasingly wants to peer into the lives of innocent citizens, while becoming less transparent itself in order to cover up deceit, fraud, abuse, and just plain bumbling incompetence. If these Keystone Kops want to believe that they are criminal masterminds, let them, but don't help them actually cover stuff up!

This frightens me!!!!!

[waif69]

Having worked for the gov't and knowing that some documents that I have signed and worked on should be redacted, this scares the crap out of me. It's not that I did anything that was illegal or "evil" as google would put it, I just don't want the "bad guys" (terrorists, etc.) knowing my name is attached to anything that resulted in their cohorts arrested or killed on the battlefield (also includes CONUS since 9/11).

Normal average government workers should NOT be redacting, the people who redact should be those who know that if they screw-up, they may be screwing themselves or good friends in the process. Have people do it(redact) who have something to lose.

Just my 2 cents.

We have to act!

[Waffle Iron]

Clearly, these information leaks are a major security threat that is aided and abetted by these renegade PDF viewers. I'm encouraging my representatives in Congress to introduce a "Digital Millennium Redaction Act" that will prohibit the manufacture, sale, discussion or hyperlinks to any PDF viewers which enable the illicit extraction of redacted data from PDF documents. Such viewers are little more than the preferred tools for information thieves, hiding in the guise of "productivity applications". It's despicable.

This law would instruct the FCC to create a program to certify approved PDF viewers; such viewers must make it impossible for users to steal the redacted data in a file, along with technical measures to prevent tampering with the viewers by hackers. Certified viewers will be made available to the public by software companies on a list of government-approved PDF vendors. After it becomes illegal to own a non-certified pirate PDF viewer, these dangerous information leaks will thankfully become a thing of the past.

Re:A redacted document? Say it ain't so!

[The Only Druid]

"Redacted" is a legal term of art (i.e. it has a special meaning in the legal context).

For lawyers/courts/etc., redacted (Per Black's Legal Dictionary) means:

n), n. 1. The careful editing of a document, esp. to remove confidential references or offensive material. (Cases: Criminal Law 663; Federal Civil Procedure 2011; Trial 39. C.J.S. Criminal Law 1210-1211; Trial 148-153.) 2. A revised or edited document. -- redactional, adj. -- redact, vb.>

The lesson here is this: if you see a word used in a legal context (or any professional context) and it sounds entirely wrong...ask yourself first whether it might have a special meaning before complaining.

Re:Maybe

[Mirlas]

Maybe we need to go back to good-old fashioned text files.
It was good enough back in the days of wood-burning computers;
it should be good enough now.

Re:Maybe

[HumanisticJones]

Indeed it does seem I have allowed my mind to wander while writing a post. Anyone want to try out my new book, "Not Hitting Preview First: Making an Ass of Yourself in a Public Forum"?

Common problem with today's UIs

[Namlak]

The industry at large (Microsoft being a big offender) has been trying to get us to a this magical place where everything is system and location independent and this is where we end up:

1) FTP sites in Windows Explorer look like regular Windows folders. People expect them to work like regular folders. I had a field sales force try to "share" an Excel spreadsheet expecting the others to get a "Read Only" copy just like would happen on a local network share. Overwriting madness ensued. You can't blame them, there was no indication that it would work differently. Asking them to understand FTP is like accounting expecting me to fully understand the accounting rules behind my IT purchases.

2) A manager where I used to work had an Excel spreadsheet with payroll data for the entire company. He wanted to send each department their subset of the data. So he filtered his spreadsheet and sent the filtered lists to each department not knowing that he was sending each department the whole list under teh covers. Luckily, the file was 30MB and choked in the mail server and I was able to bail him out of that huge mistake. But you really can't blame him - he saw something on the screen and sent "it". There should be an indication of underlying data. BTW, doing a cut and paste special made each file about 25k or so.

Same thing with this PDF error. If your file shows certain information, it should contain that information only or indicate (or warn) otherwise.

By "simplifying" everything, nobody knows what's really going on. A couple times per week I have to explain some type of issue to some user about how "It's really more complicated than that, see Windows (or an app) hides this from you." User roll eyes as their simple task has become obscurely complicated - all in the name of making things "easier" to understand, ironically.

If something works different, it should be displayed different - that at least gives the user a chance to question what they are doing.

MS Word Redaction Tool

[blackstripe]

Assuming the original document was in Word format, I'm surprised they didn't use Microsoft's freely available redaction add-in.

Re:Maybe

[OldManAndTheC]

It was good enough back in the days of wood-burning computers

Oh man, that brings back some memories! Late nights cranking out code on my Bunyan 2500 - that puppy went through three cords of oak a week, and it kept the place warm to boot. And we didn't need any of that fancy book learnin' to make it work either; if you were a good hand at whittling, you could be a programmer. Never had a lick of trouble with the Bunyan, except for the occasional splinter. Oh sure, you had to keep some kindling around to get her started, but once she got goin' she could do anything - add, multiply, and of course, branch.

Internet? Pfft. We modulated the smoke exhaust by opening and closing the flue - you could see it for miles, unless it was raining, or windy. Hell, we had peer to peer networks back before most of you guys were even a swimmer in your dad's testicals.

There's still a few Bunyans around, if you know where to look. Auditors like them, since they're so good at logging, and keeping a paper trail. I think the Vatican still has one, though they only fire it up when they elect a new Pope. Ah, the good old days...