4 ms·

I'm guessing the other unnamed country is Afghanistan. It's a major drug producer which would justify DEA's involvement but also has general terrorism/national

I'm guessing the other unnamed country is Afghanistan. It's a major drug producer which would justify DEA's involvement but also has general terrorism/national security concerns for the NSA's own interest. The word length also is a good match for the blacked-out area.

JoshTriplett 12y ago
> The word length also is a good match for the blacked-out area. That kind of thing makes it astonishing that government agencies still consider blacking-out a sensible mechanism.
- justinpombrio 12y ago
  Well, it's still pretty effective when they black out 3/4 of a document, which we sometimes see. And even in this case, though we might know the country, we can't quote the source on it.
- serf 12y ago
  a lot of it isn't about making the knowledge hard to obtain, but rather to provide a blanket of deniability.
- cantrevealname 12y ago
  In this case, I think it is the news agency that is doing the redacting, not the government. The article says, "one other country, which The Intercept is not naming in response to specific, credible concerns that doing so could lead to increased violence".
elwin 12y ago
That's likely. The Intercept also cited fears of "increased violence", which implies the country is already undergoing some amount of violence.
cantrevealname 12y ago
The unknown country is blacked out in two locations. Carefully measuring the length of "Bahamas" vs. the redacted word, I found that the missing word is 1.28x longer than "Bahamas" in one case and 1.29x longer in the other. (Note that the correct way to do this is not to measure the black box, but to measure the gap and subtract off an estimate for leading and/or trailing whitespace.) Then putting the list of 206 sovereign states from Wikipedia in Times Roman (which seems to match the font used), and finding countries that are 1.28 to 1.29 times longer than "Bahamas", I get the following list of countries: Bangladesh Cape Verde Kazakhstan Kyrgyzstan Madagascar Montenegro San Marino Somaliland Afghanistan El Salvador Ivory Coast Philippines Saint Lucia Switzerland Transnistria Looking over that list, I'd say that Afghanistan, El Salvador, and Ivory Coast, are likely candidates because of US geopolitical interest and likely cooperation of the country with the American DEA. For example, although the US might be very interested in Bangladesh and Kazakhstan, I think it's unlikely that those countries would permit the DEA to tap their phone or cellular network even for drug interdiction. We can also rule out the Philippines because it was already separately mentioned when talking about the redacted country: "targeted communications in the Caribbean, Mexico, Kenya, the Philippines, and the unnamed country."
- logn 12y ago
  You can strike all two-word countries from that list because the word was long enough to wrap and it had a good amount of space on the prior line. Switzerland would be another interesting one, given the amount of financial activity there but I'm not sure what business DEA would have to make it a priority.
  - cantrevealname 12y ago
    > You can strike all two-word countries from that list because the word was long enough to wrap What an excellent observation. So, yes, looking at this image: https://prod01-cdn00.cdn.firstlook.org/wp-uploads/sites/1/2014/05/3.jpg https://prod01-cdn00.cdn.firstlook.org/wp-uploads/sites/1/20... it does look like El Salvador and Ivory Coast would have been split on two lines (unless their word processor somehow avoids separating such phrases). We are left with Afghanistan as the most likely candidate, agreeing with the original guess.

JoshTriplett 12y ago

> The word length also is a good match for the blacked-out area. That kind of thing makes it astonishing that government agencies still consider blacking-out a sensible mechanism.

justinpombrio 12y ago
Well, it's still pretty effective when they black out 3/4 of a document, which we sometimes see. And even in this case, though we might know the country, we can't quote the source on it.
serf 12y ago
a lot of it isn't about making the knowledge hard to obtain, but rather to provide a blanket of deniability.
cantrevealname 12y ago
In this case, I think it is the news agency that is doing the redacting, not the government. The article says, "one other country, which The Intercept is not naming in response to specific, credible concerns that doing so could lead to increased violence".

elwin 12y ago

That's likely. The Intercept also cited fears of "increased violence", which implies the country is already undergoing some amount of violence.

cantrevealname 12y ago

The unknown country is blacked out in two locations. Carefully measuring the length of "Bahamas" vs. the redacted word, I found that the missing word is 1.28x longer than "Bahamas" in one case and 1.29x longer in the other. (Note that the correct way to do this is not to measure the black box, but to measure the gap and subtract off an estimate for leading and/or trailing whitespace.) Then putting the list of 206 sovereign states from Wikipedia in Times Roman (which seems to match the font used), and finding countries that are 1.28 to 1.29 times longer than "Bahamas", I get the following list of countries: Bangladesh Cape Verde Kazakhstan Kyrgyzstan Madagascar Montenegro San Marino Somaliland Afghanistan El Salvador Ivory Coast Philippines Saint Lucia Switzerland Transnistria Looking over that list, I'd say that Afghanistan, El Salvador, and Ivory Coast, are likely candidates because of US geopolitical interest and likely cooperation of the country with the American DEA. For example, although the US might be very interested in Bangladesh and Kazakhstan, I think it's unlikely that those countries would permit the DEA to tap their phone or cellular network even for drug interdiction. We can also rule out the Philippines because it was already separately mentioned when talking about the redacted country: "targeted communications in the Caribbean, Mexico, Kenya, the Philippines, and the unnamed country."

logn 12y ago
You can strike all two-word countries from that list because the word was long enough to wrap and it had a good amount of space on the prior line. Switzerland would be another interesting one, given the amount of financial activity there but I'm not sure what business DEA would have to make it a priority.
- cantrevealname 12y ago
  > You can strike all two-word countries from that list because the word was long enough to wrap What an excellent observation. So, yes, looking at this image: https://prod01-cdn00.cdn.firstlook.org/wp-uploads/sites/1/2014/05/3.jpg https://prod01-cdn00.cdn.firstlook.org/wp-uploads/sites/1/20... it does look like El Salvador and Ivory Coast would have been split on two lines (unless their word processor somehow avoids separating such phrases). We are left with Afghanistan as the most likely candidate, agreeing with the original guess.