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Off-topic: I haven't downloaded many legal PDFs lately, but whatever legal software was used to make this one seems to obfuscate the text? The PDF seems like a

by danso 6y ago

Off-topic: I haven't downloaded many legal PDFs lately, but whatever legal software was used to make this one seems to obfuscate the text? The PDF seems like a normal text PDF (as opposed to scanned images), and you can highlight lines of text, but copy-pasting it results in gibberish; find-text-in-document is likewise borked. Using `pdftotext' generates a mostly empty file, though Google Docs conversion manages to extract and preserve the text. I bring this up because the document has several URLs which are non-clickable and non-copy-pastable. I know PDFs can be encoded in away in that the visual layout of the content is completely different to the underlying data, this was just the first time I've seen such obfuscation. edit: here's a normally-behaving copy of the PDF from one of the SF local news stations: https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/15116056/2020/05/Tesla-Incorporated-v.-County-of-Alameda-5-9-20.pdf https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/1... Assuming the TV station has uploaded the PDF straight from the source (Tesla's lawyers, or the county court system), then maybe the site wholemars.com re-processed its copy of the PDF? In any case, the text/data obfuscation is pretty interesting and I sure hope it doesn't become a standard practice! (I don't blame the OP for posting the wholemars.com link; that was the first I saw of the lawsuit too, at least on Twitter)

Operyl 6y ago
I have to wonder if there's any rules that would be violated by crap like this in the courts. It's 100% to prevent other lawyers from copy-pasting things, and that's absurd since it's defeated by OCR. It's extremely not accessible to the blind as a result.
- netsharc 6y ago
  It also makes it invisible to search engines. Google "Tesla COVID-19 lawsuit" and this PDF will not show up...
  - Operyl 6y ago
    The curious thing is not _everything_ is obscured. Namely, `Attorneys for Plaintiff Tesla, Inc. ` isn't. Either is `Identifying Critical Infrastructure During Covid-19` So eventually this is probably going to get indexed by Google. EDIT: It is already! https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Identifying+Critical+Infrastructure+During+Covid-19%22+%22tesla%22&oq=%22Identifying+Critical+Infrastructure+During+Covid-19%22+%22tesla%22 https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Identifying+Critical+Infr... EDIT 2: Why the downvotes already? I was pointing out that not all text is obfuscated in the text, namely COVID and Tesla are not. So it _is_ going to get indexed to some extent, it seems. If you want to downvote me, at least give me the courtesy to reply to your reasoning for it! EDIT 3: You can check it yourself. Open the PDF, ctrl+f tesla, the only sentence unobscured shows up. ctrl+f for Covid-19, only one unobfuscated occurrence..
    - danso 6y ago
      What Google is indexing appears to be the original and normally behaving PDF (before processing by wholemars.com):https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/15116056/2020/05/Tesla-Incorporated-v.-County-of-Alameda-5-9-20.pdf https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/1... (the submitted link for this thread should probably be changed to the sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com hosted version of the PDF) But yes, I do agree that not all the text in the wholemars.com version was obfuscated. Seems like the metatext and boilerplate stuff was left as is in this processed version.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
dawnerd 6y ago
They're overlaying text that's transparent. It appears you can highlight but you're just highlighting the invisible text. Loaded it up in acrobat and if you add any text styles its pretty obvious then whats happening. At least, that's my working theory. Edit: If you open in google docs it's fine, just formatted wrong.
anoncareer0212 6y ago
wholemars.com is run by a Tesla superfan, Omar Qazi, who was banned from Twitter for harassing a legal non-profit and doxxing the non-profits founder in a bizarre attempt to "prove" Musk's Neuralink could give his autistic brother an implant to fix his autism. (???) as an ex-Twitter employee with a Tesla, it's sad to be on all sides of the debate, see how long it took Twitter to pay attention, and then to watch Twitter let him evade the ban and use Third Row Tesla as a fig leaf. Do we deserve credibility with the public on this issue? :/
bonestamp2 6y ago
I opened it in Adobe Acrobat Pro and the regular text selection tool had the same obfuscated result. However, when I used the text edit tool, I was able to select the text and copy/paste it elsewhere and the text remained intact. I'm on the fence about whether the obfuscation is intentional, or if the legal software that was used to format and generate the line numbers is just bad at encoding PDFs. Edit: I looked at the metadata for the two files and the borked one was generated with PDFium, the same open source PDF library that google and many others use. The normal one was created with Acrobat Distiller and signed by iText and mentions a license to the Administrative Office of the United States Courts. The metadata could have been altered, but a first glance suggests the working one is the original.

by danso 6y ago

Operyl 6y ago

I have to wonder if there's any rules that would be violated by crap like this in the courts. It's 100% to prevent other lawyers from copy-pasting things, and that's absurd since it's defeated by OCR. It's extremely not accessible to the blind as a result.

netsharc 6y ago
It also makes it invisible to search engines. Google "Tesla COVID-19 lawsuit" and this PDF will not show up...
- Operyl 6y ago
  The curious thing is not _everything_ is obscured. Namely, `Attorneys for Plaintiff Tesla, Inc. ` isn't. Either is `Identifying Critical Infrastructure During Covid-19` So eventually this is probably going to get indexed by Google. EDIT: It is already! https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Identifying+Critical+Infrastructure+During+Covid-19%22+%22tesla%22&oq=%22Identifying+Critical+Infrastructure+During+Covid-19%22+%22tesla%22 https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Identifying+Critical+Infr... EDIT 2: Why the downvotes already? I was pointing out that not all text is obfuscated in the text, namely COVID and Tesla are not. So it _is_ going to get indexed to some extent, it seems. If you want to downvote me, at least give me the courtesy to reply to your reasoning for it! EDIT 3: You can check it yourself. Open the PDF, ctrl+f tesla, the only sentence unobscured shows up. ctrl+f for Covid-19, only one unobfuscated occurrence..
  - danso 6y ago
    What Google is indexing appears to be the original and normally behaving PDF (before processing by wholemars.com):https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/15116056/2020/05/Tesla-Incorporated-v.-County-of-Alameda-5-9-20.pdf https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/1... (the submitted link for this thread should probably be changed to the sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com hosted version of the PDF) But yes, I do agree that not all the text in the wholemars.com version was obfuscated. Seems like the metatext and boilerplate stuff was left as is in this processed version.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

dawnerd 6y ago

They're overlaying text that's transparent. It appears you can highlight but you're just highlighting the invisible text. Loaded it up in acrobat and if you add any text styles its pretty obvious then whats happening. At least, that's my working theory. Edit: If you open in google docs it's fine, just formatted wrong.

anoncareer0212 6y ago

wholemars.com is run by a Tesla superfan, Omar Qazi, who was banned from Twitter for harassing a legal non-profit and doxxing the non-profits founder in a bizarre attempt to "prove" Musk's Neuralink could give his autistic brother an implant to fix his autism. (???) as an ex-Twitter employee with a Tesla, it's sad to be on all sides of the debate, see how long it took Twitter to pay attention, and then to watch Twitter let him evade the ban and use Third Row Tesla as a fig leaf. Do we deserve credibility with the public on this issue? :/

bonestamp2 6y ago

I opened it in Adobe Acrobat Pro and the regular text selection tool had the same obfuscated result. However, when I used the text edit tool, I was able to select the text and copy/paste it elsewhere and the text remained intact. I'm on the fence about whether the obfuscation is intentional, or if the legal software that was used to format and generate the line numbers is just bad at encoding PDFs. Edit: I looked at the metadata for the two files and the borked one was generated with PDFium, the same open source PDF library that google and many others use. The normal one was created with Acrobat Distiller and signed by iText and mentions a license to the Administrative Office of the United States Courts. The metadata could have been altered, but a first glance suggests the working one is the original.