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Judge Orders U.S. to Release Aaron Swartz’s Secret Service File
A federal judge in Washington, D.C. on Friday ordered the government to promptly start releasing thousands of pages of Secret Service documents about the late activist and coder Aaron Swartz, following months of roadblocks and delays
- phaus 13y agoThis 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-mark-aclu-19152996 http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/page/department-justice-black...
- argumentum 13y agoNonetheless, 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 13y agoIt 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 13y agoI 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.
- phillmv 13y agoI 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 13y agoEither way, they get to collect IP addresses of those who try to view it.
- popee 13y agoMetadata :-)
- joering2 13y agoMaybe 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.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- gwern 13y agoI can't tell whether you're being completely clueless or hilariously sarcastic & witty.
- pvnick 13y agoTangentially related: https://twitter.com/fisa_court https://twitter.com/fisa_court
- medde 13y agoWhatever they do about one case doesn't tell you much
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- raverbashing 13y agoOr maybe black ink is out, boxcutter redacting is in Talk about releasing very transparent documents.
- rayiner 13y ago
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- pedromorgan 13y agoaahh.. 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 13y agothe 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 13y agoI'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 13y agoBlack 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 13y agoYou 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 13y agoWith a razor blade and a photocopier.
- unimpressive 13y agoSo you cut out the parts you don't want seen and then put a sheet of black underneath?
- nether 13y agoOr no sheet underneath at all.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- _delirium 13y agoThe UK National Archives suggest a few different methods on pp. 13-14 of this PDF: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/information-management/redaction_toolkit.pdf http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/information-man...
- lettergram 13y agoThey 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.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- 13b9f227ecf0 13y agoI 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 13y agoYou seem sort of pathetically proud of what happened to him.
- PavlovsCat 13y agoOn 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 13y agoYou probably got downvoted due to reading comprehension issues. Fixed it as much as I could :)
- PavlovsCat 13y agoThanks :) 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 13y agoI'll take the ones with the hob-nails on the bottom.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- D9u 13y ago...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 13y ago> 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 13y agoIt's been corrupted since the Kennedy assassination.
- rayiner 13y agoProbably from the PACER incident.
- Widdershin 13y agoMaybe they printed out an an image encoded as text? For storage?
- mrt0mat0 13y agowhy 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?