4 ms·

The FBI Arbitrarily Covers Up Evidence of Misconduct

28 points by there 16y ago

Mithrandir 16y ago
Damn, you beat me to the punch: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1985661 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1985661
jancona 16y ago
They told me if I voted for McCain the government would become ever more secretive and unaccountable...
- billswift 16y ago
  It's a bipartisan project. It's been getting worse pretty steadily since Eisenhower, with occasional bright spots like FOIA in the seventies.
sukuriant 16y ago
You know, with enough requests for the document, given their inconsistent redacting practices, you could probably reproduce the whole manuscript.
- sophacles 16y ago
  In most of the cases, many of the same bits were redacted, mostly names, key details, etc. Some of the over-redaction probably comes from differing levels of "redactor paranoia" and "redactor laziness". Paranoia: I know the whole text, and I don't see how someone wouldn't be able to deduce this without redacting more text. laziness: I know there is some key bet in this chunk, ill just redact a few sentences instead of actually analyze.
wooster 16y ago
Surprise? An internal FBI FOIA tracker could solve this problem, but the project to develop it would probably cost $3 billion and take 5 years.
jws 16y ago
I think I might have to changed "arbitrarily covers up evidence of misconduct" to "inconsistently redacts documents". They show a handful of instances, from thousands of documents, where different copies of the the same source document have been redacted at different times, probably by different people. Unsurprisingly, the results are different. In one of the four examples, I think the conclusion that there was an improper search is redacted. The rules must by byzantine. I notice that the specific department of the government is redacted. That might be to protect the innocent. But other bits redacted are just bizarre. e.g. They redacted a version number in front of a policy name. They left the policy, but covered which version it was. ??? I have not met any, but I expect redactors are either grunts trained in global guidelines but without specific knowledge of what they are reading, or they are the people familiar with the material and are irritated to be taken away from their actual work. Either way there will be variable work. Secrets will be missed. Non-secrets will be redacted. I predict they err to the latter. The FOIA requests are allowing out evidence that documents improper searches and information gathering. So, to that extent they are working. Did the EFF make their entire corpus available so people can see how well? I didn't see a link in the article. [1] Also note, the EFF isn't scouring documents to uncover unlawful information gathering, these are summaries of internal government self investigations.

28 points by there 16y ago

Mithrandir 16y ago

Damn, you beat me to the punch: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1985661 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1985661

jancona 16y ago

They told me if I voted for McCain the government would become ever more secretive and unaccountable...

billswift 16y ago
It's a bipartisan project. It's been getting worse pretty steadily since Eisenhower, with occasional bright spots like FOIA in the seventies.

sukuriant 16y ago

You know, with enough requests for the document, given their inconsistent redacting practices, you could probably reproduce the whole manuscript.

sophacles 16y ago
In most of the cases, many of the same bits were redacted, mostly names, key details, etc. Some of the over-redaction probably comes from differing levels of "redactor paranoia" and "redactor laziness". Paranoia: I know the whole text, and I don't see how someone wouldn't be able to deduce this without redacting more text. laziness: I know there is some key bet in this chunk, ill just redact a few sentences instead of actually analyze.

wooster 16y ago

Surprise? An internal FBI FOIA tracker could solve this problem, but the project to develop it would probably cost $3 billion and take 5 years.

jws 16y ago

I think I might have to changed "arbitrarily covers up evidence of misconduct" to "inconsistently redacts documents". They show a handful of instances, from thousands of documents, where different copies of the the same source document have been redacted at different times, probably by different people. Unsurprisingly, the results are different. In one of the four examples, I think the conclusion that there was an improper search is redacted. The rules must by byzantine. I notice that the specific department of the government is redacted. That might be to protect the innocent. But other bits redacted are just bizarre. e.g. They redacted a version number in front of a policy name. They left the policy, but covered which version it was. ??? I have not met any, but I expect redactors are either grunts trained in global guidelines but without specific knowledge of what they are reading, or they are the people familiar with the material and are irritated to be taken away from their actual work. Either way there will be variable work. Secrets will be missed. Non-secrets will be redacted. I predict they err to the latter. The FOIA requests are allowing out evidence that documents improper searches and information gathering. So, to that extent they are working. Did the EFF make their entire corpus available so people can see how well? I didn't see a link in the article. [1] Also note, the EFF isn't scouring documents to uncover unlawful information gathering, these are summaries of internal government self investigations.