FBI Wiretapping Audit Secrets Uncovered Via Ctrl+C

mytrip notes a story in Wired's Threat Level blog on the latest boneheaded government moves with redaction. (We've been discussing redaction follies here for years.) This time it's an FBI report (PDF) on implementing CALEA — you can select text from redacted areas, copy it, and paste into a text editor, as University of Pennsylvania professor Matt Blaze discovered. From Wired: "Once again, supposedly sensitive information blacked out from a government report turns out to be visible by computer experts armed with the Ctrl+C keys — and that information turns out to be not very sensitive after all... [Among] the tidbits considered too sensitive to be aired publicly: The FBI paid Verizon $2,500 apiece to upgrade 1,140 old telephone switches. Oddly the report didn't redact the total amount paid to the telecom — slightly more than $2.9 million dollars — but somehow the bad guys will win if they knew the number of switches and the cost paid."

Comments

How the fuck (you mods are morons)

[hassanchop]

Did that raging paranoia get modded to anything but "+5 take your fucking meds so you'll stop bothering us with tin foil hat bullshit"?

I don't know what's scarier, that OP actually believes that crap or that 5 other people agree with him.

Re:Too much UNIX for me

[StikyPad]

That's funny, CTRL-C works fine on my "Linux". Maybe you (and the GP) meant "I never leave the CLI", in which case we're all duly impressed, and stand in awe that you finish your work in a fraction of the time of us mousers. Hail master of the *sh && [vi/emacs/other archaic text editor you fanatically support].