Un-redacted text from released documents began circulating on social media on Monday evening

Un-redacted text from released documents began circulating on social media on Monday evening

People examining documents released by the Department of Justice in the Jeffrey Epstein case discovered that some of the file redaction can be undone with Photoshop techniques, or by simply highlighting text to paste into a word processing file.

Un-redacted text from these documents began circulating through social media on Monday evening. An exhibit in a civil case in the Virgin Islands against Darren K Indyke and Richard D Kahn, two executors of Epstein’s estate, contains redacted allegations explaining how Epstein and his associates had facilitated the sexual abuse of children. The exhibit was part of the second amended complaint in the state case against Indyke and Kahn.

  • DSN9@lemmy.ml
    262·
    1 day ago

    So what did the redacted sections say… … … anyone 🩻

    • TryingSomethingNew@sopuli.xyz
      62·
      1 day ago

      One of the documents talked about how Trump and Epstein were involved in the rape of a 14 year old and the murder of her baby so… yes.

      • jj4211@lemmy.world
        2·
        23 hours ago

        Though that one had the most critical information unredacted. Certainly worth highlighting that particular document regardless, but technically not an answer to the question about redactions.

          • Rhoeri@lemmy.worldEnglish
            21·
            1 day ago

            OMFG…. This shit is beyond sickening. What is the chance this was faked?

            • jj4211@lemmy.world
              4·
              22 hours ago

              Well, the document is real, so the question would shift to of it could be a false allegation. I suppose for each document we can’t know, so all we can do is keep in mind that any one document could possibly be a false allegation. If someone can connect this to other documents, that could help. Particularly connecting it to the claimed direct agent contact or followups.

              On the one hand, it seems believable, Trump is a trash human known specifically for creepy regard for sexiness of underage girls. So undeniable that the reality of the Epstein release induced some die hard maga to pivot to a “technically not a pedophile if they started their period” bullshit. Openly ogling his own teenage daughter, peeping on underage beauty pageants, and after a casual interaction with a young girl the very first words out of his mouth were about when he could start dating her…

              On the other I suppose we have to acknowledge that this was a tip submitted to the FBI website at the height of his re election campaign right when the death of Epstein and his Trump connection were national news, and all the stuff about trump was already common knowledge. Out of the hundreds of millions of invested parties, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out some submitted bogus tips to a website, either not caring about risks or not taking the risks of false information over a web form seriously.

      • DSN9@lemmy.ml
        1048·
        1 day ago

        These are witness statements with evidence?

        They used Russian propaganda techniques to deal with this, polarization, gas lighting, every trick in the book. Now the lines are so blurred, nobody knows what to believe, which is the true stated goal and accomplishment.

        If you’re American- realize that you live in the most heavily propagandized nation on the planet earth. Yes, worse than Russia, China and North Korea.

        It’s just the end results, achievements, goals are not aligned with what we might traditionally perceive as the end goals of propaganda. This includes corporate and government sponsored forms.

          • DSN9@lemmy.ml
            78·
            1 day ago

            He’s managed so far to have a pretty damning pile of evidence against him, to openly use the presidential office for personal financial gain (like billions, openly) to no avail. Even going as far as openly discussing no elections in 28’. It is playbook Russian propaganda tactics.

            Which agency will physically remove the guy from the White House in 28’? If he captures that agency it’s game over for democracy in the USA?

        • fodor@lemmy.zip
          22·
          1 day ago

          Bad, sure. The worst on earth? Bring the proof or expect us to disbelieve you.

          • DSN9@lemmy.ml
            2·
            12 hours ago

            Corporate propaganda pushes 10,000 ads on the typical american per day.

            This leads to the most psychologically optimized persuasion (see propaganda) on the Earth- except it’s not just commerical but includes privately funded algorithmic political, but overt and subtle.

            Much of American culture is advertising, branding and political posturing.

    • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.worldEnglish
      13·
      2 days ago

      Same. This is the same admin that had people claiming they were going to rewrite decades of code in “months”.

      I’m sure some dumbass told them AI was up to the task.

  • Rhoeri@lemmy.worldEnglish
    47·
    1 day ago

    I don’t see why it really matters. Unless it’s made official, they’ll just say it’s a lie and disregard it.

  • Brkdncr@lemmy.world
    112·
    2 days ago

    This is what happens when you pull in people that don’t normally do records management. They redact using black highlighter instead of the redaction tool.

    • DagwoodIII@piefed.socialEnglish
      981·
      2 days ago

      Or, this is what happens when people who work for the government really hate Donald Trump.

      Malicious compliance

      • Lka1988@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        32·
        2 days ago

        Hanlon’s Razor: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”

        • kelpie_is_trying@lemmy.world
          39·
          1 day ago

          It’s a good general rule, but taking this as gospel makes it very easy for the malicious to pass off their cruelty as stupidity.

          If your goal is to reduce general stress, take it as it is and leave it there. If your goal is to distinguish what exactly is actually going on, then this is a tool worth keeping around, but it’s not going to do the job on it’s own.

    • 🍉 Albert 🍉@lemmy.world
      11·
      2 days ago

      they are all incompetent, i call it bottom of the barrel, no one complement wants to work there.

      the technical term is Kakistocracy.

    • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
      41·
      2 days ago

      You have to be more careful than many people expect think with the redaction tool. Sometimes it’s text being redacted. Sometimes it’s a graphic. Sometimes it’s both on top of each other.

      That’s why my final step in redacting documents for Open Records (I do a LOT of it) is to flatten the PDF.

      But the real bitch is protected docs. Some docs keep the redaction tool from working (e.g. docs with digital signatures). Sometimes I actually have to print a doc out and re-scan it to get the redactions to stick.

  • ceenote@lemmy.world
    265·
    2 days ago

    Don’t underestimate how important this particular screw up is: It means that there’s now publicly available proof that they redacted information in a manner that violates the law, and that it can enter the conversation while the Epstein files still have the public attention, rather than months or years later.

    • EmpathicVagrant@lemmy.world
      421·
      1 day ago

      We’re founding a committee to oversee discussions about how to consider moving forward with this. Action will be taken at a faster rate than usual compared to usual congressional processes. This legislative action is expected to take place in 2047 once deliberations are complete.

    • tym@lemmy.world
      1·
      14 hours ago

      They redacted info about epstein’s lawyer (who now works for kegsbreth via private sector according to a lemmy sleuth in the thread about this the other day) that would lead to a RICO case in a sane world.

    • jballs@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      371·
      1 day ago

      Can’t wait for the Supreme Court to decide in 10 years that releasing a document with ineffective redactions means the document was not technically redacted, so no laws were violated.

      • smeenz@lemmy.nz
        161·
        1 day ago

        … while simultaneously ruling that the information that was supposed to have been redacted can not be used because they say so.

  • nonentity@sh.itjust.works
    1041·
    2 days ago

    How is copying text from a PDF a hack?

    I see 2 potential paths to this, possibly both:

    1. Unknowledgeable individuals were tasked with redactions, and didn’t understand adding black bars over documents is closer to a sticky note than a marker.

    2. Knowledgeable individuals taught others to ‘redact’ in this manner to sabotage the effort, and those who signed off on the release didn’t look any further than the rendered result, if they even did that.

    • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
      8·
      1 day ago

      How is copying text from a PDF a hack?

      It isn’t, but MAGA is so collectively stupid that they think it is. They probably think turning on a computer is hacking.

    • apftwb@lemmy.world
      31·
      1 day ago

      Adding to theory 2, I bet there was very little record keeping regarding which agent was redacting which document. The point of a coverup is that you try to reduce accountability. Even if only Trump loyalist FBI agents were selected for the censorship job, I doubt they all could remain loyalists after reading the Epstein files.

    • El_Scapacabra@lemmy.zip
      311·
      1 day ago

      It’s like people saying their facebook got hacked when in reality, they logged in on a public computer and didn’t log out. Or their password is their kid’s name or some shit.

      • kieron115@startrek.websiteEnglish
        8·
        1 day ago

        Probably even simpler than that - the author thought “people hacking redacted government documents sounds like a juicy headline!”.

    • oyenyaaow@lemmy.zipEnglish
      42·
      1 day ago

      it’s a document with concealed information and that information is unconcealed through a method not originally intended for revealing information. that’s a hack. you copy things you can see, but here you copy to see if there are things unseen. that’s not the original purpose of ctrl+c ctrl+v

  • gedaliyah@lemmy.worldM
    1213·
    2 days ago

    I choose to believe that this was done deliberately by disgruntled FBI agents.

    It was probably just incompetence, but let me believe what I want.

  • Breezy@lemmy.world
    4·
    1 day ago

    So i downloaded a few of the files from the gov site and they’re just pictures no text. Where would i get the other ones.