Judge Orders U.S. to Release Aaron Swartz’s Secret Service File

[HoochTHX]

A federal judge in Washington, D.C. on Friday ordered the government to promptly start releasing thousands of pages of Secret Service documents about the late activist and coder Aaron Swartz, following months of roadblocks and delays

[phaus]

This might be a good thing, but since the government has the option to release 100% redacted documents, the Secret Service hasn't really been ordered to release anything other than a stack of black pieces of paper. If they release more than that, it's because they either want to, or don't care.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/page/department-justice-black...

[joering2]

Maybe they can, BUT they won't.

You see, as The President of The United States of America pledged: if he gets elected, he will create the most transparent administration in the history of the USA!

So long story short, they will not redact anything.

[argumentum]

Nonetheless, we'll get to see how much is redacted and therefore how much they want to hide. That's valuable information in and of itself.

[gngeal]

the Secret Service hasn't really been ordered to release anything other than a stack of black pieces of paper.

Wouldn't that de facto qualify as a contempt of court?

[pedromorgan]

aahh.. politicians and marketing machines settings the agenda.. sam's place same time and a steady stresm..

Maybe we get real and make it all Open Source.. and two sides.. Hell.. maybe we can KickStart a 200 millions cable submarine project ? ??

[D9u]

...files located outside the agency’s headquarters that contain several thousand additional pages...

Several thousand pages? For one person who is obviously not a terrorist?

This is the sort of thing that the US government would point out in other nations as being unacceptable while I was growing up...

Now we're the bad guys.

[tome]

> This is the sort of thing that the US government would point out in other nations as being unacceptable while I was growing up...

This seems unlikely to be a recent phenomenon, what with McCarthyism and all.

[pivnicek]

It's been corrupted since the Kennedy assassination.

[Widdershin]

Maybe they printed out an an image encoded as text? For storage?

[rayiner]

Probably from the PACER incident.

[unimpressive]

I've wondered this for a while, and a web search was not forthcoming, so I'll ask here:

How do you properly redact a physical paper document? I would imagine that black sharpie doesn't cut it.

[pudquick]

Where I work, the physical document is first scanned into an electronic form (multipage formats like TIFF or PDF, usually). The electronic document is then imported into a proprietary redaction program (there's quite a few on the market, most copier/scanner vendors have an offering).

It then assists with the initial redaction by performing OCR on the content, allowing you to quickly search for sensitive information. The software provides built-in tools for blacking out sensitive sections of the document - some even provide configurable overlays/stamps on the blackouts for why that section was redacted.

Then one or more humans manually go over the documents to make sure that nothing was missed. When they are happy with the results, the document is finalized into a TIFF or PDF document with the pages flattened into single image objects (so you can't just delete the black boxes - they are now part of the embedded image).

The original documents do not need to be harmed in any way, they just need to be able to be scanned to start the process.

Conversion to an image format helps to ensure that if the source was an electronic document that sensitive original source metadata or proprietary document format binary blobs don't inadvertently leak redacted information. If a physical copy is required, you just print it.

[_delirium]

The UK National Archives suggest a few different methods on pp. 13-14 of this PDF: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/information-man...

[peterkelly]

First, you █████████ ███ █████. Then, after █████ ████ █████ ████ the █████, you can either ████ █████ █████ ████ ██ ███████ ███, or ████ █████ ██████ ████ █ ███'█ ████ ██.

[trapexit]

With a razor blade and a photocopier.

[nwh]

At one point some documents were "redacted" and released. Turned out you could just remove the black boxes in the PDF and see the text underneath.

[opminion]

I would guess that it's not worth the effort, due to the risk of a physical process failing (lose painter's tape, need to make a copy for cutting, etc).

In modern practice, scan, bitmap paint 100% black, print?

[pluies_public]

Black sharpie then photocopy?

Edit: actually, just put a black filter over the sensitive parts while photocopying. That way you don't damage the original and you can send the photocopy over.

[bmelton]

I think the redactions are actually done using a narrow painter's tape, then a photocopy of the originals. The painter's tape won't stick to the paper, but shows up as black on the photocopy.

[lettergram]

They need time to figure out if warrants were actually obtained prior to gathering the information, verses just grabbing all the information via their blanket surveillance.

[mrt0mat0]

why is everyone under the impression that they don't already have these in a digital format? I mean.... Utah people. i think they have the storage space. you think they're going to store all this data on americans in a digital format, but when it comes to fbi profiles, they store them in a filing cabinet?

[13b9f227ecf0]

I love the picture. What a political agitator. He was a good little left wing agitator and was fatally shocked to learn that when you're not serving the agenda you can get bit.

[PavlovsCat]

On the other hand, serving it WILL get you bit. It takes out a chunk of your personality right away, and then there is the agenda itself, which is an omnivore.

You know, given the choice.. even being a face that is trampled on by a boot, forever, is better than becoming a boot, forever.

[beedogs]

You seem sort of pathetically proud of what happened to him.