Some Epstein file redactions are being undone with hacks
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.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/23/epstein-unredacted-files-social-mediaOpen linkView original on lemmy.world
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.
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.
Hey we'll be alive!
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.
.... while simultaneously ruling that the information that was supposed to have been redacted can not be used because they say so.
But only this time for this ruling.
Or they'll blame anything incriminating on the person who undid the bad reduction, saying they also altered the info
"Hacks" lol
The ultimate hack: Ctrl+C Ctrl+V
Woah. Are you 4chan!?
The hacker?!?! 4chan the hacker?!?!?
Maybe they're even Anonymous!
I think they are!! I have no idea who it is, so they must be "anonymous"!
I know better than to try this and shutdown my computer. I'm not an idiot.
That's Win-X, u, u.
We got a hacker man here!
Don't make me hack you through time!
Infamous hacker known as Ctrl
With their side kick Alt.
https://usdictionary.com/definitions/hack/
See definitions 3 and 5 for reference, I believe the term fully fits.
Life hack: turn the doorknob to open a door
Your stupid facist regime hate this one life hack
What they don't want you to know.
...literally?
I mean... probably (ass pulling) 80% of actual computer hacking is that level of exploit. People be REAL stupid
You've cracked it, thanks!
"Doorhacker, I'm afraid there's another one. Can you help us once again, old friend?"
They call me the "Door Whisperer." Inward swinging? Outward swinging? Hell, sliding!? I do it all, as long as it's not locked.
It vaguely fits the original definition of computer hacking: poking around in code to improve an app or the system.
Also, Wiktionary is much better at nuanced meanings than mainstream dictionaries — continuing the tradition of the old Webster dictionary, which Wiktionary imported wholesale back in the day.
Hardly a strategy, very little effort.
Unauthorized copy paste
Lifehacker.
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.
¿Porque no dos?
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.
Or, this is what happens when people who work for the government really hate Donald Trump.
Malicious compliance
Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
Oh absolutely, weaponized incompetence. My wife's ex-husband is a master at that.
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.
why are there so many people in this thread that redact things often enough to have favorite workflows?
I work in government and Open Records requests are regular things, and I have to redact a bunch of stuff to protect people's privacy.
Thank you for your service
Hang in there
I redact, print, and then scan. Its the only way to be sure.
Export to PNG -> redact PNG.
Ain't nothing hiding behind those (0,0,0) pixels.
I do all my markup, attempt to flatten, then print the result to PDF, then open the result and export the text to validate.
they are all incompetent, i call it bottom of the barrel, no one complement wants to work there.
the technical term is Kakistocracy.
How is copying text from a PDF a hack?
I see 2 potential paths to this, possibly both:
Unknowledgeable individuals were tasked with redactions, and didn’t understand adding black bars over documents is closer to a sticky note than a marker.
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.
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.
Probably even simpler than that - the author thought "people hacking redacted government documents sounds like a juicy headline!".
I've seen people claim their account was hacked when somebody created a duplicate.
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.
It isn't, but MAGA is so collectively stupid that they think it is. They probably think turning on a computer is hacking.
Kind of like a life hack?
No, that'd be obvious, simple and wrong.
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
Someone shouldn’t have blabbed about it so quickly. There are more files to release, and now they will do a better job redacting them.
I was gonna say, "Never interrupt your enemy when they are making a mistake".
I’m sure lots of people figured it out and kept their trap shut.
Yes, it took a couple of days before this became a story. Anyone seriously looking into the files would have discovered that quickly.
Exactly
Ctrl+A and Ctrl+C is a hack now. Neat.
So long as you say “I’m in” after you hit Ctrl+V, it counts.
Ever show someone under 30 a keyboard shortcut? They act like you've performed magic.
Maybe for like, Ctrl+Tab or Ctrl+Shift+T but not for copy and paste man c'mon.
I swear it. I've taught five people in their 20s how to copy paste with the keyboard in the past few years.
They right click every time, I've seen it.
When the average level is so low, it is.
As few as you please on hackertyper
Probably for the inevitable DoJ cases against people disseminating those files.
I mean, "workaround" isn't as headline worthy hahaha.
Did they just change the back and foreground colours to black and call it a day?
I would like to think that it was on purpose. So whoever was working on that knew that someone could realize it. I don't know why I keep having faith in people.
It makes sense. They didn't flush the entirety of the FBI and we know Patel isn't doing all this himself, so I too believe that there are people just doing some good ol' malicious compliance. Apparently documents from previous administrations didn't have this issue so they could do it correctly, they just aren't.
Doubtful.
This happens ALL the time. Countless publicly released police reports, legal documents, and even (allegedly) classified documents all just use the black highlighter in Acrobat because "that is what I would do if this were a physical copy".
One of the first things you do when anyone gives you a "redacted" PDF is to just highlight the text. The next step up is to then check the layers of the PDF in case they added black rectangles to a scanned document (and a lot of OCR tools actually do that by default).
Same with seeing if you have the document history in a word file.
Never underestimate how computer illiterate the average person is. We shit on genz for not knowing what a directory structure is but... they ain't that far behind the curve. It is mostly just that VERY narrow subset of genx/millennial who grew up with "family computers" that picked up most of these skills.
But the average person isn't redacting important info left and right, is it?
Average people work in all layers of government, including records. It's not a crazy idea that someone lacking certain skills might end up with the task of redacting documents. Not all redactions are damning evidence of a crime - my own divorce decree (which are all public information) would have my kids' names redacted if some rando requested a copy of it.
Why wouldn't it be?
Presumably they are better at investigative work and shooting people. Unless they are specifically involved in "cyber crime" or "digital forensics" there is no reason to expect high levels of computer skills.
In an even competent world? The people who ARE experts at that would have been consulted to define the protocol everyone else follows. Yeah...
Kids are goof at using things they interact with. Blame smartphone OS Devs for not having file managers installed by default
Back in my day "programming" meant typing assembly opcodes into an assembler and having to know what registers your machine had
Then high level languages like C came along and everyone got lazy
Android has included a file manager for a very long time.
Absolutely.
People who work for the government usually like the idea of government.
It's a shockingly common source of data leaks. There are some versions with more subtlety, like actually redacting the text but a copy of it remains in the file for version tracking, as a separate layer, or things like that.
PDF is derived from printer control tools, and has a lot of features built in that add flexibility for office document purposes, but can be surprising for people not expecting it.
If you're working as a team to redact documents you might deliberately use something reversible so that the person checking your work can 1) see what you redacted 2) unredact if they think you shouldn't have.
Sometimes people also just don't know there's actual reaction tools built in.
The part that I'm more surprised by is that whatever process they have for releasing documents didn't involve passing it through a system of some sort that automatically fixed that sort of thing.
That is fucking hilarious, this government doesn't even know how to use a black highlighter correctly.
It's DIGITAL!
Stuffs hard...
People have been making these same mistakes for literally decades... How does the government not have a 1-click dedicated tool for this yet?
https://slate.com/technology/2016/06/house-democrats-improperly-redacted-documents-wrong-but-they-re-not-alone.html
You think this was a mistake? Certainly some staffers did this on purpose, my friend. Good for them.
There are no heros working on this, any breaks we get are for to incompetence.
I genuinely can't believe that there's still anybody left who's principled enough and isn't afraid of losing their job (or much, much worse) in retribution.
Because Elon probably dodged the people who knew their job
They do have such tools. The CIA uses it all the time for their declassifications. This was done on purpose.
literally saw this shit in a "complete beginner" CTF challenge years ago
I was sooo expecting this. They can’t/don’t do anything correctly.
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.
So what did the redacted sections say.. .. .. anyone 🩻
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.
Didn't see that in the article, is there a link you can share?
Different post on Lemmy referenced this document. https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%208/EFTA00025010.pdf
jesus fucking christ
OMFG…. This shit is beyond sickening. What is the chance this was faked?
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.
trump raped the pregnant teen til she gave birth.
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.
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.
K. And what does this have to do with Trump being a pedo?
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?
Bad, sure. The worst on earth? Bring the proof or expect us to disbelieve you.
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.
One was regarding Alan Dershowitz. Apparently he had sex with a minor then, while defending Epstein on a case, he negotiated immunity for himself.
https://bsky.app/profile/truthfuljai.bsky.social/post/3man6fffimc2e
Click the link? That's literally what the article is about...?
There's links?! WHERE
Read the article.
Totally unrelated, but it makes me happy they said "paste into a word processing file", and not M$ Word.
Is vim a word processing file?
One thing you can always count on with MAGAs is their virtuosic incompetence.
LOL, I think I called this weeks ago, not that it took very much foresight to assume massive, easily-avoidable fuck-ups from the admin that thought someone like "Big Balls" was going to be able to figure out decades of COBOL code....
You can literally just copy and paste the entire in redacted docs.
Keep it up us govt. it seems you are the best disseminating information against yourself.
Edit is to us
grok u fuked up bro
L33t h4x0r5 and their highlight removal scripts
LOL did they use black highlighter? Its so dumb you can't make this shit up.
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.
Voidzilla's most recent video has links in the description https://youtu.be/R7i9KdVTFR4
Carry on hackers!
I don’t see why it really matters. Unless it’s made official, they’ll just say it’s a lie and disregard it.
They can't if the DOJ is hosting the file containing incriminating meta data.
They already did.