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It says that they have "731 pages of encrypted data" but nowhere does it say that they managed to decrypt the data, and read the plain text. It states that the

It says that they have "731 pages of encrypted data" but nowhere does it say that they managed to decrypt the data, and read the plain text. It states that they did not disclose what was in the "encrypted data" so... there's no indication or assurance that they've managed to access the plain text.

JustSomeNobody 8y ago
Why on earth would those fools print it all out?
- hurrrrrrrrrr 8y ago
  Hard copy for future reference, in case some sort of vulnerability becomes exploitable at a later date. Also, to provide a vague, yet seemingly impressive metric, true to form for federal government employees, because it seems official to the non-technical layman. If you were to declare a metric such as 900KB of encyphered base64, well, gee, that's like, almost nothing. But print it out, and non-expert jurors start thinking "Well, gee! 700 pages is longer than that Stephen King book that I just read!" And anyway, they wouldn't have to print it out, to obtain a quotable metric. All they'd have to do is paste it into an evidence template, and prep it in a printable format, like a DOCX file or a PDF. Then, they can subpoena for the metadata, and at least maybe infer a relationship between entities, even if they are denied awareness of the nature of the conversations etween them. Seriously, this is how government officials and lawyers tend to think.
davesque 8y ago
My reading of that was that they had 731 pages of texts, which were supposed to have been encrypted by WhatsApp or Signal, that were stored in plain text. That's what this article appears to suggest: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-15/prosecutors-reconstruct-shredded-cohen-documents-get-16-pages https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-15/prosecuto... From paragraph 2 in the article: > Investigators have restored 16 pages of documents found in Cohen’s shredder and recovered 731 pages of messages sent on encrypted platforms, including WhatsApp and Signal.

JustSomeNobody 8y ago

Why on earth would those fools print it all out?

hurrrrrrrrrr 8y ago
Hard copy for future reference, in case some sort of vulnerability becomes exploitable at a later date. Also, to provide a vague, yet seemingly impressive metric, true to form for federal government employees, because it seems official to the non-technical layman. If you were to declare a metric such as 900KB of encyphered base64, well, gee, that's like, almost nothing. But print it out, and non-expert jurors start thinking "Well, gee! 700 pages is longer than that Stephen King book that I just read!" And anyway, they wouldn't have to print it out, to obtain a quotable metric. All they'd have to do is paste it into an evidence template, and prep it in a printable format, like a DOCX file or a PDF. Then, they can subpoena for the metadata, and at least maybe infer a relationship between entities, even if they are denied awareness of the nature of the conversations etween them. Seriously, this is how government officials and lawyers tend to think.

davesque 8y ago

My reading of that was that they had 731 pages of texts, which were supposed to have been encrypted by WhatsApp or Signal, that were stored in plain text. That's what this article appears to suggest: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-15/prosecutors-reconstruct-shredded-cohen-documents-get-16-pages https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-15/prosecuto... From paragraph 2 in the article: > Investigators have restored 16 pages of documents found in Cohen’s shredder and recovered 731 pages of messages sent on encrypted platforms, including WhatsApp and Signal.