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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...

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.
phaus
It would have the potential to be valuable in the future, if nefarious acts came to light via some other method, because it would potentially show that possibly illegal actions were taken to hide the information. However, if nothing actionable is ever discovered about this case, then the redacted documents would be completely worthless. Only time will tell.
jlgreco
I wonder if it would be legal for them to throw on a few extra all-black pages as "padding".

Not worth it obviously, but it would be an amusing hack.

phaus
Like a couple pages of redacted "This page intentionally left blank"?
jlgreco
Yeah, exactly! You'd have to redact the blankness of course, otherwise people would know what it was.. ;)
phillmv
I predict his file will be incredibly boring/banal stuff, with the odd wild conjecture. The blacked out parts will consist entirely of things embarrassing to the agents who compiled it.
benatkin
Either way, they get to collect IP addresses of those who try to view it.
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.

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gwern
I can't tell whether you're being completely clueless or hilariously sarcastic & witty.
ChuckMcM
I'm betting on the latter, and like gin & tonic with a spritz of bitters.
medde
Whatever they do about one case doesn't tell you much
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raverbashing
Or maybe black ink is out, boxcutter redacting is in

Talk about releasing very transparent documents.

rayiner
To be fair, the bar for "most transparent administration in the history of the U.S.A." is not a high one.
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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 ? ??

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?

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.

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.

jlgreco
You also have to mess with the contrast levels or set it to "black and white" instead of grayscale. The default grayscale settings on photocopiers tend to leave the copies still somewhat legible (I probably wasn't using the "proper" sort of marker, one of those heavy duty aluminum-can permanent ones.)
trapexit
With a razor blade and a photocopier.
unimpressive
So you cut out the parts you don't want seen and then put a sheet of black underneath?
nether
Or no sheet underneath at all.
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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.
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?

mpyne
In the very few documents I've had to redact (PII, not tyranny :P) I actually used white boxes instead of black to waste less toner, but yeah it's the same idea.
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.
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.

ben1040
>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).

And if you fail to do that, you get this (original link is gone, but here's the discussion, and the gist is the TSA released "redacted documents" where you could just select over the blacked out areas and ctrl-C to recover the text).

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=980465

peterkelly
First, you █████████ ███ █████. Then, after █████ ████ █████ ████ the █████, you can either ████ █████ █████ ████ ██ ███████ ███, or ████ █████ ██████ ████ █ ███'█ ████ ██.
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.
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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.
beedogs
You seem sort of pathetically proud of what happened to him.
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.

jacquesm
You probably got downvoted due to reading comprehension issues. Fixed it as much as I could :)
PavlovsCat
Thanks :) Moral high ground is usually a lame "argument", but in response to physical high ground it's good enough I guess, and why not jump to the general case right away, especially at the bottom of a thread ^^ There are (so many) games that really are won by not playing them, Schadenfreude is self-injury, and what people mistake with power is often just a web of desires and fears. So in conclusion, may all beings come to know themselves and achieve enlightenment, and find a pair shoes they really like.
w_t_payne
I'll take the ones with the hob-nails on the bottom.
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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.
rayiner
Probably from the PACER incident.
Widdershin
Maybe they printed out an an image encoded as text? For storage?
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?