5 ms·

> but smart AF. When Barr’s DOJ released a redacted version of the Mueller Report, they printed the whole thing, made their redactions with actual ink, and then

by eviks 10mo ago

> but smart AF. When Barr’s DOJ released a redacted version of the Mueller Report, they printed the whole thing, made their redactions with actual ink, and then re-scanned every page to generate a new PDF with absolutely no digital trace of the original PDF file. This is a dumb way of doing that, exactly what "stupid" people do when their are somewhat aware of the limits of their competence or only as smart as the tech they grew up with. Also, this type of redaction eliminates the possibility to change text length, which is a very common leak when especially for various names/official positions. And it doesn't eliminate the risk of non-redaction since you can't simply search&replace with machine precision, but have to do the manual conversion step to printed position

plantain 10mo ago
>exactly what "stupid" people do when their are somewhat aware of the limits of their competence Being aware of one's limitations is the strongest hallmark of intelligence I've come across...
- eviks 10mo ago
  So following that strange logic if a dumb person knows he's dumb, he's suddenly become intelligent? Or is that impossible by your peculiar definition of intelligence?
  - HKH2 10mo ago
    Yeah that sounds like wisdom, not intelligence.
    - awesome_dude 10mo ago
      Wisdom would be knowing not to try and exceed those limits Intelligence would be knowing they exist (I know that I cannot fly by flapping my arms, it took intelligence to deduce that, wisdom tells me not to try and jump from a height and flap my arms to fly. Further intelligence can be applied, deducing that there are artificial means by which I can attain flight)
  - awesome_dude 10mo ago
    Knowing your limits has to be a sign of intelligence. "Dumb" people (FTR the description actually refers to something rather than that which you think it does...) run around on the internet getting mad because they haven't thought things through...
    - fc417fc802 10mo ago
      It's an interesting question though. I know quite some "smart" people who lack self awareness to an almost fatal degree yet can outdo the vast majority of the population at solving logic puzzles. It tends to be a rather frustrating condition to deal with.
      - awesome_dude 10mo ago
        I think that you are conflating things. Knowing your limits is a sign of intelligence, but it's not the only one, and it's not a requirement. Meaning that not having that understanding doesn't exclude you from being intelligent.
- mapontosevenths 10mo ago
  I'm not so sure it's about knowing his own limitations, rather it's about building a reliable process and trusting that process more than either technology or people. Any process that relies on 100% accuracy from either people or technology will eventually fail. It's just a basic matter of statistics. However, there are processes that CAN, at least in theory, be 100% effective.
JumpCrisscross 10mo ago
> this type of redaction eliminates the possibility to change text length This is the only weakness of Barr's method. > it doesn't eliminate the risk of non-redaction since you can't simply search&replace with machine precision Anyong relying on automated tools to redact is doing so performatively. At the end of the day, you need people who understand the context to sit down and read through the documents and strike out anything that reveals–directly or indirectly, spelled correctly or incorrectly–too much.
- eviks 10mo ago
  > This is the only weakness of Barr's method. Of course it isn't, the other weakness you just dismiss is the higher risk of failed searches. People already fail with digital, it's even harder to do in print or translate digital to print (something a machine can do with 100% precision, now you've introduced a human error) > At the end of the day, you need people who understand the context Before the end of the day there is also the whole day, and if you have to waste the attention of such people on doing ink redactions instead of dedicating all of their time to focused reading, you're just adding mistakes for no benefit
  - herewulf 10mo ago
    Reading through material in context and actively removing the telling bits seems very focused to me. Furthermore, reading through long winded, dry legalese (or the like) and then occasionally marking it up seems like an excellent way to give the brain short breaks to continue on rather than to let the mind wander in a sea of text. I am for automating all the things but I can see pros and cons for both digital and manual approaches.
    - eviks 10mo ago
      The reading is focused, but that focus is wasted on menial work, which makes it easier to miss something more important > give the brain short breaks Set a timer if you feel that's of any use? Why does the break have to depend on the random frequency of terms to be redacted? What if there is nothing to redact for pages, why let the mind wander? > I am for automating But you're arguing against it. What's the pro of manually replacing all 1746 occurrences of "Trump" instead of spending 0.01% of that time with a digital search & replace and then spending the other 1% digitally searching for variants with typos and then spending the last 99% in focused reading trying to find that you've missed "the owner of Mar-a-Lago Club" reference or something more complicated (and then also replace that variant digitally rather than hoping you'd notice it every single time you wade through walls of legalese!)
fc417fc802 10mo ago
Not at all. It's a procedure that's very difficult to unintentionally screw up. Sometimes that's what you want. > you can't simply search&replace with machine precision Sure you can. Search and somehow mark the text (underline or similar) to make keywords hard to miss. Then proceed with the manual print, expunge, scan process.
- eviks 10mo ago
  You process doesn't make sense, why wouldn't you just black box redact right away and print and scan? What does underline then ink give you? But it's also not the process described in the blog > that's very difficult to unintentionally screw up. You've already screwed up by leaking length and risking errors in manual search&replace
  - JumpCrisscross 10mo ago
    > why wouldn't you just black box redact right away and print and scan? What does underline then ink give you? These are roughly equivalent. The point is having a hard copy in between the digital ones.
    - eviks 10mo ago
      Why would I settle for a rough equivalence? The point was about the chance of making mistakes in redaction, so sure, if you ignore the difference in the chance of making mistakes (which the underline process increases), everything becomes equivalent!
      - JumpCrisscross 10mo ago
        > Why would I settle for a rough equivalence? They're equivalent in security. The digital method is more convenient (albeit more error prone). What confers the security is the print-scan step. Whether one is redacting in between or before doesn't change much. You'd still want to do a tabula rasa and manual post-pass with both methods. > point was about the chance of making mistakes in redaction Best practice is humans redacting in multiple passes for good reason. It's less error prone than relying on a "smart" redactor, which is mostly corporate CYA kit.
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
WalterBright 10mo ago
> this type of redaction eliminates the possibility to change text length, which is a very common leak when especially for various names/official positions Increasing the size of the redaction box to include enough of the surrounding text to make that very difficult.
- Cpoll 10mo ago
  You'd need to increase it a lot, lest the surrounding text be inferred from context.
- eviks 10mo ago
  But that's a destructive operation! I mean, sure, you can make the whole paragraph/page blank, but presumably the goal is to share the report removing only the necessary minimum?
lelanthran 10mo ago
> This is a dumb way of doing that, exactly what "stupid" people do when their are somewhat aware of the limits of their competence or only as smart as the tech they grew up with. No, this is an example of someone understanding the limits of the people they delegate to, and putting in a process so that delegation to even a very dumb person still has successful outcomes. "Smart" people like to believe that knowing enough minutiae is enough to result in a successful outcome. Actual smart people know that the process is more important than the minutiae, and proceed accordingly.
- eviks 10mo ago
  > someone understanding the limits of the people they delegate to, and putting in a process so that delegation to even a very dumb person still has successful Oh, man, is he the only smart person in the whole department of >100k employees and an >x contractors??? What other fantasy do you need to believe in to excuse the flaws? Also, if he's so smart why didn't he, you know, hire someone smart for the job? > even a very dumb person still has successful Except it's easier to make mistakes following his process for both smart and dumb people, not be successful! > Actual smart people know that the process is more important So he's not actually smart according to your own definition because the process he has set up was bad, so he apparently did not know it was important to set it up better? > important than the minutiae Demanding only paper redactions is that minutiae.

by eviks 10mo ago

plantain 10mo ago

>exactly what "stupid" people do when their are somewhat aware of the limits of their competence Being aware of one's limitations is the strongest hallmark of intelligence I've come across...

eviks 10mo ago
So following that strange logic if a dumb person knows he's dumb, he's suddenly become intelligent? Or is that impossible by your peculiar definition of intelligence?
- HKH2 10mo ago
  Yeah that sounds like wisdom, not intelligence.
  - awesome_dude 10mo ago
    Wisdom would be knowing not to try and exceed those limits Intelligence would be knowing they exist (I know that I cannot fly by flapping my arms, it took intelligence to deduce that, wisdom tells me not to try and jump from a height and flap my arms to fly. Further intelligence can be applied, deducing that there are artificial means by which I can attain flight)
- awesome_dude 10mo ago
  Knowing your limits has to be a sign of intelligence. "Dumb" people (FTR the description actually refers to something rather than that which you think it does...) run around on the internet getting mad because they haven't thought things through...
  - fc417fc802 10mo ago
    It's an interesting question though. I know quite some "smart" people who lack self awareness to an almost fatal degree yet can outdo the vast majority of the population at solving logic puzzles. It tends to be a rather frustrating condition to deal with.
    - awesome_dude 10mo ago
      I think that you are conflating things. Knowing your limits is a sign of intelligence, but it's not the only one, and it's not a requirement. Meaning that not having that understanding doesn't exclude you from being intelligent.
mapontosevenths 10mo ago
I'm not so sure it's about knowing his own limitations, rather it's about building a reliable process and trusting that process more than either technology or people. Any process that relies on 100% accuracy from either people or technology will eventually fail. It's just a basic matter of statistics. However, there are processes that CAN, at least in theory, be 100% effective.

JumpCrisscross 10mo ago

> this type of redaction eliminates the possibility to change text length This is the only weakness of Barr's method. > it doesn't eliminate the risk of non-redaction since you can't simply search&replace with machine precision Anyong relying on automated tools to redact is doing so performatively. At the end of the day, you need people who understand the context to sit down and read through the documents and strike out anything that reveals–directly or indirectly, spelled correctly or incorrectly–too much.

eviks 10mo ago
> This is the only weakness of Barr's method. Of course it isn't, the other weakness you just dismiss is the higher risk of failed searches. People already fail with digital, it's even harder to do in print or translate digital to print (something a machine can do with 100% precision, now you've introduced a human error) > At the end of the day, you need people who understand the context Before the end of the day there is also the whole day, and if you have to waste the attention of such people on doing ink redactions instead of dedicating all of their time to focused reading, you're just adding mistakes for no benefit
- herewulf 10mo ago
  Reading through material in context and actively removing the telling bits seems very focused to me. Furthermore, reading through long winded, dry legalese (or the like) and then occasionally marking it up seems like an excellent way to give the brain short breaks to continue on rather than to let the mind wander in a sea of text. I am for automating all the things but I can see pros and cons for both digital and manual approaches.
  - eviks 10mo ago
    The reading is focused, but that focus is wasted on menial work, which makes it easier to miss something more important > give the brain short breaks Set a timer if you feel that's of any use? Why does the break have to depend on the random frequency of terms to be redacted? What if there is nothing to redact for pages, why let the mind wander? > I am for automating But you're arguing against it. What's the pro of manually replacing all 1746 occurrences of "Trump" instead of spending 0.01% of that time with a digital search & replace and then spending the other 1% digitally searching for variants with typos and then spending the last 99% in focused reading trying to find that you've missed "the owner of Mar-a-Lago Club" reference or something more complicated (and then also replace that variant digitally rather than hoping you'd notice it every single time you wade through walls of legalese!)

fc417fc802 10mo ago

Not at all. It's a procedure that's very difficult to unintentionally screw up. Sometimes that's what you want. > you can't simply search&replace with machine precision Sure you can. Search and somehow mark the text (underline or similar) to make keywords hard to miss. Then proceed with the manual print, expunge, scan process.

eviks 10mo ago
You process doesn't make sense, why wouldn't you just black box redact right away and print and scan? What does underline then ink give you? But it's also not the process described in the blog > that's very difficult to unintentionally screw up. You've already screwed up by leaking length and risking errors in manual search&replace
- JumpCrisscross 10mo ago
  > why wouldn't you just black box redact right away and print and scan? What does underline then ink give you? These are roughly equivalent. The point is having a hard copy in between the digital ones.
  - eviks 10mo ago
    Why would I settle for a rough equivalence? The point was about the chance of making mistakes in redaction, so sure, if you ignore the difference in the chance of making mistakes (which the underline process increases), everything becomes equivalent!
    - JumpCrisscross 10mo ago
      > Why would I settle for a rough equivalence? They're equivalent in security. The digital method is more convenient (albeit more error prone). What confers the security is the print-scan step. Whether one is redacting in between or before doesn't change much. You'd still want to do a tabula rasa and manual post-pass with both methods. > point was about the chance of making mistakes in redaction Best practice is humans redacting in multiple passes for good reason. It's less error prone than relying on a "smart" redactor, which is mostly corporate CYA kit.

deleted 10mo ago

[deleted]

WalterBright 10mo ago

> this type of redaction eliminates the possibility to change text length, which is a very common leak when especially for various names/official positions Increasing the size of the redaction box to include enough of the surrounding text to make that very difficult.

Cpoll 10mo ago
You'd need to increase it a lot, lest the surrounding text be inferred from context.
eviks 10mo ago
But that's a destructive operation! I mean, sure, you can make the whole paragraph/page blank, but presumably the goal is to share the report removing only the necessary minimum?

lelanthran 10mo ago

> This is a dumb way of doing that, exactly what "stupid" people do when their are somewhat aware of the limits of their competence or only as smart as the tech they grew up with. No, this is an example of someone understanding the limits of the people they delegate to, and putting in a process so that delegation to even a very dumb person still has successful outcomes. "Smart" people like to believe that knowing enough minutiae is enough to result in a successful outcome. Actual smart people know that the process is more important than the minutiae, and proceed accordingly.

eviks 10mo ago
> someone understanding the limits of the people they delegate to, and putting in a process so that delegation to even a very dumb person still has successful Oh, man, is he the only smart person in the whole department of >100k employees and an >x contractors??? What other fantasy do you need to believe in to excuse the flaws? Also, if he's so smart why didn't he, you know, hire someone smart for the job? > even a very dumb person still has successful Except it's easier to make mistakes following his process for both smart and dumb people, not be successful! > Actual smart people know that the process is more important So he's not actually smart according to your own definition because the process he has set up was bad, so he apparently did not know it was important to set it up better? > important than the minutiae Demanding only paper redactions is that minutiae.