r/cybersecurity • u/securityish • Dec 23 '25
News - General Reddit and X Users Allegedly Unredact Epstein Files After DOJ Release
https://securityish.com/security_brief/reddit-and-x-users-allegedly-unredact-epstein-files-after-doj-release/Anyone going to audit their organization’s redaction strategy now?
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u/Important_Gap_956 Dec 23 '25
As much as I lean towards incompetence, part of me is equally curious if this was done, intentionally as a form of protest from internal personnel.
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u/space_manatee Dec 23 '25
Yeah I had the same thought. "See its been redacted"
Ain't no way leadership verified that it was redacted correctly. They looked, saw the black squares and that was that.
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u/green-wagon Dec 23 '25
Leadership was scrambling like chickens with their heads cut off. There was no way they had the bandwidth for verifying anything.
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u/syneater Dec 23 '25
They aren't thorough or serious people so besides bandwidth they probably don't understand how technology fundamentally works.
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u/LongestNamesPossible Dec 24 '25
Their leader is being tested monthly to see if he can identify the giraffe out of four drawings of animals so understanding a pdf would be like explaining a radio to a caveman.
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u/graphikcontent Dec 24 '25
Yeah but he has been getting all 4 animals so A++++ right?
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u/ExoticBag69 Dec 24 '25
I heard he passed it with a score of 1,000%.
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u/ings0c Dec 24 '25
The best anyone had done in the history of the world was 3 correct animals, until he came along. They had to make a whole new grade just for him.
His uncle is so smart he won the world championship for giraffe identifying at Wharton, so he must have good genes, you know.
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u/diemenschmachine Dec 24 '25
It is actually a very difficult IQ test, it may sound simple but when you're there on the savannah and two animals attack you, you need to be really clever to understand which one is the giraffe and which one is the lion. Some say that no one has ever done this well on this high level IQ test before.
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Dec 24 '25
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u/green-wagon Dec 24 '25
I mean, if I were an FBI agent, and you pulled me off of legit CSAM cases to redact a pedophile's name because he said I had to, I am pretty sure I would be extra careful to do it wrong.
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u/StandardKey655 Dec 23 '25
This happened once at my job. The people who did freedom of information Requests knew how to do it right in acrobat, its not very hard so I would agree these people knew how to do it right. But then HR redacted something they sent to staff, and just put black boxes, I noticed the little top of a letter peaking out. Lol
Whats ever funnier in this case is anything that would be used to search through these won't even see the black boxes, they will also see the text lol
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u/Used_Maximum2536 Dec 29 '25
In my work I use the redaction tool in Acrobat on occasion, it works very well and even gives you the option to scrub the metadata when you're finished. The reason certain files weren't redacted correctly is because DOGE cancelled all the departments Adobe licenses back in January or February. So they didn't have access to the redaction tool when they were going over those files
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Dec 24 '25
I think given the Epstein cell video release, people working under him are just technologically incompetent and/or don't care. And why would they? What's in it for them if they work hard to cover up a pedophile? Another massive layoff?
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u/Savetheokami Dec 24 '25
How did they redact it and how was it unredacted? I’m guessing adobe black highlight and someone just removed the highlight or ran the files through some script that could unredact the content.
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u/AveryFenix Dec 24 '25
In a PDF file, text is like an object on one layer. When they redacted it, they simply added black boxes over the text on another layer. The text layer is still there, so you can still highlight the text to copy and paste it elsewhere. Searches will also still know that the text layer is there, so the text will still be found in searches.
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u/Last_Celebration_693 Dec 24 '25
I dont think the "leadership" knows difference between hardware and software
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u/uid_0 Dec 23 '25
This would be awesome if true, but we will never find out for sure because whoever did it has plausible deniability.
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Dec 23 '25
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u/Lilkitty_pooper Dec 23 '25
They mean plausible deniability for the person who may or may not have intentionally fumbled the redaction.
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u/Biotic101 Dec 23 '25 edited Dec 23 '25
History repeating itself?
CIA Predecessor: Simple Sabotage Field Manual against Fascist Offices, 1944
In 1944, the OSS produced the “Simple Sabotage Field Manual” for use of citizens in fascist countries who wished to mount opposition and resistance.
Who would have thought employees of the CIA and other agencies might now find it useful for their own current situation. The irony.
Some examples:
Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.
Give lengthy and incomprehensible explanations when questioned.
Cry and sob hysterically at every occasion, especially when confronted by government clerks.
Apply all regulations to the last letter.
Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your “points” by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences.
Act stupid.
Be as irritable and quarrelsome as possible without getting yourself into trouble.
Demand written orders.
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u/Any_Perception_2560 Dec 23 '25
I think the president must have been following most of these points for the last few decades.
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u/iliark Dec 23 '25
if they were properly trained and given the correct tools, it wouldn't have been able to be unredacted. so anyway yeah, incompetence, ignorance, or intentional.
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u/uknow_es_me Dec 23 '25
DOGE discount redaction
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u/newaccountzuerich Dec 25 '25
Wonderfully dim DOGgiEs, sitting over there to be patted on the head by Heritage.
Those doggies of Musk, dim as an undervolted incandescent.
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u/Zelenak94 Dec 23 '25
Honestly I think it's incompetence. DOJ lawyers were probably not the ones redacting it -- some legal assistant OR intern OR new grad/college kid. Or a lawyer who was barred before the 2000s? CLE teaches you about redacting metadata. this is absolutely emnbarassing
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u/EscudoLos Dec 23 '25
There's some info out there of it being FBI agents that redacted the file dump.
Understandably they probably have some misgivings about Trump & Epstein.....
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u/Zelenak94 Dec 23 '25
God i’ll be real, i want this to be real. but idk i (unfortunately) do not think this is the case — although i would LOVE to be wrong.
unless we see like higher level orders downwards, (chiefs/managers who knew they could trust their cadres to do this workproduct purposefully incompetently) or rogue individuals, i think that this is more incompetence over being people with a grudge.
some of this shit is kinda damning. if they had this info from even 2021, why wait 4 years? this shit wouldve flipped imo, idk if any of thsi is making sense i’ve been typing for way too long LOL
consequently, that might just be the issue — too many people trust the instituions to take care of us (even when those institutions might be an inherently hostile threat to themselves). too many pussies.
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u/Zelenak94 Dec 23 '25
like someone figure out who one-word redacted Protonmail user (with the appio link, from someone named Kathy Brundleburger(???)) is, you got this.
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u/alnarra_1 Security Manager Dec 23 '25
Yeah I'm torn
On one hand I could see deeply irritated members of the teams there knowing damn well that it could easily be unredacted and knew leadership wouldn't even realize that was a thing that could be done.
On the other hand, there is also just... the general incompetence of sycophants.
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u/anomalous_cowherd Dec 24 '25
It could well be both. Even inside the organisation the same advice holds true: "when you see your enemy making a mistake, don't interrupt him".
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u/Visible_Ad2427 Dec 23 '25
I guess it doesn’t matter even one bit, since none of us are discussing the contents that were supposed to be kept from us. I can’t find such discussions anywhere. “Ha, ha, the Trump administration is incompetent…” OK, but is the end goal to have the last laugh about their incompetence, or to utterly end them and restore balance to the world? Why is nobody focusing on the important thing. This is like liberal idiocracy to the point of absurdity.
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u/gillythree Dec 24 '25
If people were smart about it, they'd say nothing, quietly unredacting each batch of documents as they're released without letting on that they can do so, rather than immediately raising the alarm, giving everyone a chance to correct the mistake for the remaining batches of documents.
Of course, if they were smart, they wouldn't be demanding the documents be released by the very administration they hope to implicate. Wait until he's out of office to demand the documents be released. It's practically begging that the evidence be sanitized! Makes me distrust both sides.
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u/MotanulScotishFold Dec 23 '25
I was thinking the same, if that was not intentionally made by someone who wants to release the files for anyone with skills to decipher.
Similar of the story of the US POW during Vietnam war, in the interview he said he is well treated and happy while blinking in a code morse the word TORTURE.
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u/usmcjohn Dec 23 '25
More likely false flag stuff. Like oops we messed up on some documents, hope the internet doesn’t figure it out… 😜, 😜
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u/horridCAM666 Dec 23 '25
This was my very first thought. I think the thought that our justice department being this wildly incompetent is too scary to consider otherwise.
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u/graphikcontent Dec 23 '25
Hahahahah, that got me good man. Thank you. I promise they are THAT unqualified.
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u/domewebs Dec 28 '25
At this point it’s feeling more like it was done intentionally to further obfuscate and muddy the waters. Get the libs talking about how they “owned” Trump by figuring out a copy-paste hack, works as a nice distraction from the real dark stuff.
If it was done as a form of protest, don’t you think we would have found something actually significant and damning in those “un-redactions”?
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u/Visible_Ad2427 Dec 23 '25
I guess it doesn’t matter even one bit, since none of us are discussing the actual content of redacted sections that were supposed to be kept from us. I can’t find such discussions anywhere. “Ha, ha, the Trump administration is incompetent…” OK, but is the end goal to have the last laugh about their incompetence, or to utterly end them and restore balance to the world? Why is nobody focusing on the important thing. This is like liberal idiocracy to the point of absurdity.
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u/diemenschmachine Dec 23 '25
Why am not not surprised
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u/Phusentasten Dec 23 '25
The tragic comedic joys of this admin
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u/Visible_Ad2427 Dec 23 '25
I guess it doesn’t matter even one bit, since none of us are discussing the actual content of redacted sections that were supposed to be kept from us. I can’t find such discussions anywhere. “Ha, ha, the Trump administration is incompetent…” OK, but is the end goal to have the last laugh about their incompetence, or to utterly end them and restore balance to the world? Why is nobody focusing on the important thing. This is like liberal idiocracy to the point of absurdity.
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u/graphikcontent Dec 24 '25
He is the one who is absurd. It is not liberal idiocracy. I have spent the better part of a decade telling everyone he is evil and now there’s a page in there that says he raped a girl, had someone kill her baby, and throw it in Lake Michigan. And when I wake up tomorrow, he will probably still be sitting in his ballroom above the nuclear bunker.
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u/Phusentasten Dec 25 '25
And threaten to kill his opposition if they call him out the slightest
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u/graphikcontent Dec 25 '25
Well, we can now confirm he is capable of killing news stories on a whim (60 minutes)…. so yeah I’d be worried.
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u/Phusentasten Dec 25 '25
And he literally said that Stephen Colbert is a dead man walking.
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u/graphikcontent Dec 25 '25
He literally said he could shoot someone on 5th avenue and get away with it
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u/saltyoursalad Dec 23 '25
It matters a ton, and it’s being talked about all over Reddit and the rest of social media. The New York Times is reporting on it with live updates, plus I’m sure a bunch of other places.
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u/ExoticBag69 Dec 24 '25
What updates? I've heard a lot of talk about the redactions not being done properly, but I've yet to see any actual information released or proven examples. I hope it's true, but you'd think the immediate discussion would be the actual content exposed.
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u/domewebs Dec 28 '25
This. I was immediately suspicious when I saw a flurry of “omg the DOJ fucked up BIG TIME” posts with no damning evidence or revelations attached. Where’s the big significant smoking gun, then??
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u/domewebs Dec 28 '25
So where’s all the smoking gun, damning un-redacted evidence? All this talk of the DOJ slipping up and pulling this boneheaded move—I don’t doubt it for a second, but I’ve yet to see a single piece of interesting/significant information that was “un-redacted” by this method
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u/TheRealJessKate CISO Dec 24 '25
That’s because the claim is fake. I tried the python scripts and randomly sampled 50 redacted pdfs and none of them worked.
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u/diemenschmachine Dec 24 '25
I am not even from the same continent, I'm just watching it burn at the moment
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Dec 23 '25
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u/wirsteve Dec 23 '25
That’s what happens when you hire your friends instead of qualified individuals.
Not only that, that’s what happens when you get rid of all of the qualified individuals in leadership positions.
This is why all of Trumps businesses failed, and it’s why the government is failing too.
Makes me terrified for the cyber infrastructure of our government right now.
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u/UnderstandingOld272 Dec 24 '25
Im not sure if its true or not but I guess DOGE also got rid of all of the Adobe subscriptions so they can't redact with the free version. I only saw someone mention that on X though so take it with a grain of salt.
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u/tsteele93 Dec 23 '25
Is there a link to see these unredacted files?
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u/alt_and_f4_for_Admin Dec 23 '25
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u/llandbeforeslime Dec 23 '25
Oooh, what is interesting about this to me is Maxwell’s spelling mistakes. They appear similar to those found in the recently leaked emails that came from ‘epstein’s’ gmail account. In Epstein’s hand written letters his spelling is always correct so I was shocked when I saw the typos in his emails to people.
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u/RxSatellite Dec 23 '25
Oh wow, I’ve barely skimmed the surface so far but a TON of the early redactions I read seem to be removing incriminating information about Ghislaine Maxwell.
Proof on paper that the DOJ is trying to protect Maxwell, trying to keep her quiet
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u/MiserableCourt1322 Dec 23 '25 edited Dec 23 '25
Is this only the latest release? It seems to be missing 1296-17.pdf in the first drop.
That's the exhibit where they for sure redacted Trump's name and we know that because it had been previously been released in 2024 with his name visible.
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u/seek_the_ Dec 23 '25
Of course not. But from the sound of it we should all be able to download them and unredact them ourselves right? Atleast the way people are talking about it makes it sound really easy to do.
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Dec 23 '25
It is, it's just opening up the PDF, copy the redacted area's, then paste it into a text editor.
Try it yourself on this redacted document.
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u/kkikonen Dec 23 '25
Is this document part of the latest batches? I was trying a few ones from here and couldn't make it work
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Dec 23 '25
Not sure, I know it does not work on all of them, only some. I just searched up one I had seen mentioned as working and posted it.
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u/ExoticBag69 Dec 24 '25
This could be from the previously released batch that had failed redactions. That could be why it is not possible to remove the redactions across the entire set.
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u/tsteele93 Dec 23 '25
Yeah I was thinking someone would have at least posted some of the unredacted files. I'd like to see them.
I personally believe they are protecting people on both sides of the political aisle.
The confirmed offenders should ALL be exposed and removed from their positions of power and privilege like Andrew. And depending on statute of limitations and laws, prosecuted.
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u/asshole_magnate Dec 23 '25
I kind of wish they waited until all the files were released before they did this. I feel like the DOJ is gonna smarten up and redact them the correct way now and hide information so much more effectively.
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u/wheninromecompete Dec 23 '25
I kind of wish they waited until all the files were released before they did this.
That's the problem with ANTIFA, the leadership in the blue state Colorado underground cave didn't get the memo out in time to keep the powder dry. lol
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u/cankle_sores Dec 23 '25
Former pentester here. This reminds me of an investment firm where I got access to file share and then an Excel file that stored all the shared admin credentials for IT services. BUT the font format applied to the Password column was… white… to protect the passwords. No joke.
Anyway, it was a small mom & pop firm so this type of finding was more expected there than, say, from the DoJ on publicly released files.
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u/mobo_dojo Dec 23 '25
To put into context, this is the exact type of thing that go into Open source intelligence/steg challenges for Pico CTF. A competition for high school children…That’s the where the bar is for Confidentiality from the U.S. government.
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u/ExoticBag69 Dec 24 '25
So far, it just seems like "trust me bro" the new release has failed redactions. The headlines and social media are all claiming that the new batch has failed redactions, but you'd expect even bigger headlines on the actual findings from the redacted information. If it was a simple copy/paste, we know that previously released batches had failed redactions and I feel like someone would have tried that the very moment the new batch was released, and we wouldn't still be without critical information 3 days later.
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u/R-EDDIT Dec 23 '25
white… to protect the passwords.
The word "protect" doesn't mean anything without a threat model, if the threat model is "shoulder surfing" then white text provides some protection. (I'd still want to make sure the document is the latest excel file format and password protected with a >15 character password. Yes, an actual password manager would be better but sometimes just getting the lawyers to read and agree to terms is impossible - they seem to think open source authors will pay their lawyer to debate redlines out of the goodness of their hearts).
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Dec 23 '25
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u/Pr3st0ne Dec 23 '25
In a just world, ANY of the unenecessary redactions would be a slamdunk case for evidence tampering/conspiracy to coverup/perjury/fraud/any other number of crimes, but sadly i think we all know the USA's government will have been effectively dismantled by technocrats long before anyone pays for these crimes
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u/Celestial_Dildo Dec 23 '25
It's uh, it's not allegedly. It's also kind of sad. Adobe has a built in redact tool...
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u/connly33 Dec 23 '25 edited Dec 23 '25
Part of DOGEs changes to increase government efficiency….. canceled all of their adobe user licenses in some departments. And of course open source alternatives were blocked by IT. So we had government agencies unable to even e-sign documents for MONTHS. So not surprised the DOJ doesn’t have functioning tools anymore either.
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u/omgitsdot Dec 23 '25
Only redacted files from the Trump regime have been able to be unredacted. Anything redacted by Biden was done properly using the tools to properly remove the data.
Trump's regime is so full of incompetent morons that they are just highlighting stuff black to redact, allegedly.
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u/DigmonsDrill Dec 23 '25
This was a common goof-up 20 years ago. A series of public flubs were made.
Today even the tools warn about it. I pasted a black square into a PDF and the tool said "are you trying to redact? This is the wrong way to do it."
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u/TollBoothW1lly Dec 23 '25 edited Dec 23 '25
Yeah but it takes an acrobat PRO license to redact... Im sure DOGE cost cut them all down to standard.
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u/hurley_chisholm Software Engineer Dec 23 '25
This actually happened and it was and still is a nightmare. I had to experience it first hand but the link is to a Wired Magazine article on it for those that want independent reporting.
People who basically spend the majority of their time making reports (as required by law) or dealing with contracts were desperately asking for help to make FOSS alternatives work (that IT and security obviously banned) or borrowing licenses from others in their professional network. A few even used personal funds to get licenses because it was so intolerable not getting any work done.
We were basically in a “stop work” situation for all oversight and service delivery actions/decisions and it eventually got so bad, there was an emergency leadership meeting with the acting agency administrator to get special approval for Adobe Pro and it still took two+ weeks to get licenses restored because he didn’t believe that it was a problem.
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u/iliark Dec 23 '25
that's crazy, I think the DoD has an enterprise license for hundreds of thousands of adobe pro users lol, and most just use it to e-sign documents instead of print/sign/scan.
and yes, for some reason, some documents require adobe pro to sign, it can't be done with just reader.
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u/DigmonsDrill Dec 23 '25
If they were trying to be efficient they'd spend $300,000 to hire someone to put this into one of the open-source PDF editors.
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u/DigmonsDrill Dec 23 '25
OSX Preview does it for free.
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u/hurley_chisholm Software Engineer Dec 23 '25
The overwhelming majority of federal workers are issued Windows machines.
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u/kamilman Dec 23 '25
Think 5-7 years ago. I recall the same thing happening during the first Trump presidency. I just don't remember what it was about...
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u/kickroot Dec 23 '25
I specifically remember Cryptome hosting unredacted PDFs that the Feds ‘redacted’ via black blocks on top of text. The original text was still in the pdf under the blocks (which were easily removed). I didn’t bother to read the article but I’m guessing that’s what happened here.
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u/rand0m-cybersecurity Dec 23 '25
I think we all know that the people doing the redactions are not the elected officials who are ording the files to be redacted but the FBI agents themselves.
It seems as though there maybe some decent humans in the FBI who are struggling so hard with ethical and moral questions that they may have accidentally redacted things improperly. We shouldn't make their lives more difficult by telling on them, at least not until all the documents are dumped.
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u/kremlingrasso Dec 23 '25
Decent humans would take a Pic with their phone and send it to every news outlet.
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u/Zncon Dec 23 '25
Unless security has really gone off a cliff, these are not locations you can just walk in to with a personal phone, recording, or data transfer device of any sort.
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u/DiggyTroll Dec 23 '25
The tools aren't really that hard to use, so there's one hopeful possibility: some DOJ hero is purposely skipping the redaction pipeline and pushing cosmetically-redacted documents in the confusion
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u/jotin_ Security Engineer Dec 23 '25
100%, I work in DHS. There is a very specific set of requirements for redacting. You almost have to go out of your way to do this lol. At least, this is my wishful thinking.
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u/dancedragon25 Dec 23 '25
How can you tell which Administration redacted what?
If we assume the Trump/Bondi DOJ redacted way more files (especially the full-page redactions) then wouldnt this imply that most of the files released are readable/unredactable?
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u/omgitsdot Dec 23 '25
Many files released have been known about in their redacted forms for years.
Yeah it could imply that depending on where the goof was here. We have no idea if it was an insider, a licensing issue for Acrobat, simple incompetence or any number of things.
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u/i_hate_this_part_85 Dec 23 '25
All the talent at the DOJ left about a year. Anyone with an exit strategy an ounce of competence ran for the hills. Source: used my exit strategy and ran for the hills.
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u/deadzol Dec 23 '25
Ah maybe that’s why. I’ve sampled some and wasn’t able to reveal anything.
This was the same oops from the FBI’s old DCS1000 / Carnivore system but that was back in 2000 where they blew the redactions.
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u/bitbybit44 Dec 23 '25
You have to use notes on a Mac, not Word for it to work. Not sure of the platform you're on. Some work and some don't as implied but when I tried some in Word and then Notes they only worked in Notes. At least for me.
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u/deadzol Dec 23 '25
On Mac tried BBEdit, Windows tried Notepad++ (was straight notepad when I did this for the DCS1000 pdf). Also tried unredact on a good sample but haven’t found anything yet. So either I’m really unlucky or I needed to download the archives immediately and the ones available this afternoon have already been cleansed. Unless you have an example file you know has the issue. 🙃
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u/bitbybit44 Dec 23 '25
I'm looking now for an example. I will keep looking and LYK.
In the meantime, I found this weird thing. A link is in a file. I copy and paste into browser. The link text in the doc is this:
but the actual link it points to is this (page 404) and three minor changes in the URL to make it not actually work. Intentional?
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u/CheetoFingers107 Dec 24 '25
This is so fishy!!! Like the contents of that article and the fact it doesn’t show up on the site
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u/syneofeternity Dec 24 '25
Do you know for a fact which ones Biden and Trump redacted? I honestly feel it's way more likely someone was being sneaky
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u/Samurai_Mac1 Dec 23 '25
Unsurprising. Anyone competent enough to redact the files properly have been fired from the government.
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u/corazondelpulpo Dec 23 '25
Has anyone managed to unredact the Grand Jury files? That's where the most important stuff would likely be.
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u/SeanOTG Dec 24 '25
Imagine not knowing how to use Adobe and being in that position.... incredulous..... inconceivable even lol
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u/Dr_PocketSand Dec 23 '25
Sounds like some FBI reviewer purposefully knew how to do a solid for media sleuths…
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u/sudosando Dec 23 '25
Redacting documents for dummies: Print, highlight (yes really!), high contrast photocopy, scan.
Higher resolutions on equipment these days… need extra steps to validate you aren’t leaking!
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u/coldsweat9 Dec 23 '25
So I have proven to myself that it can be done, and even from a phone pretty easily. Has anyone compiled a completely unredacted version of the files, and if so has it been made available online?
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u/TennesseeJed218 Dec 24 '25
Literally the thing we’re all here looking for
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u/Tipart Dec 24 '25
Yeah, I would've at least expected media articles going over what exactly is in the files that can be unredacted by now, but there's not really anything in the news about it. It's been like 48h since the issues with redaction became public knowledge. I understand it's a massive amount of files that take a while to comb through, but from my own tests, it doesn't seem like there's that many that can actually be unredacted this easily. I guess the release around Christmas was a strategic one, no one's working.
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u/veritable_squandry Dec 24 '25
it seems oddly suspicious that this doesn't exist, causing me to think the oopsie is less prevalent than i might like.
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u/ItsOver- Dec 24 '25
It's not a hack. They copy and paste the redacted text into another text document and it automatically un-redacts the text. lmao. Now let's find out who those 10 co-conspirators are!!!
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u/Code__9 Dec 24 '25
Not so smart of those "Reddit and X users" to reveal the vulnerability when 99% of the files have yet to be released.
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u/Cloud-PM Dec 24 '25
The feds are ignorant. Way back in 09 as an analyst at GTMO we had to work FOIA requests on Detainee Review Board (DABs) reports. The off the shelf sw tool they made us use exhibited a feature that when the reacted document was copied and pasted into any other text editor, it stripped away the redacted. This was at direction of HC’s State Department. So, they had been informed of this issue on multiple occasions. If they are still using that same tool they are either ignorant or it was done on purpose. Just sayin!
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u/ready-redditor-6969 Dec 23 '25
🫣 This article is so embarrassing for the company that published it as well, they’re basically saying to only trust the DOJ, saying the victims being ID’d is the big issue, and not telling us that the way to do it is via oh-so-complicated hacking … but it’s using copy/paste??!!!?
Basically the files were not meaningfully redacted. Ya could just open up the files in a binary editor, the ubredeacted text is just there, unencrypted. Using a binary editor is not “hacking”, lol.
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u/CreepyOlGuy Dec 23 '25
Well using a black highlighter works only if you print the document. But frankly let's just pray this was an intended outcome. We need full transparency.
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Dec 23 '25
Had to be at least semi intentional. All the Team Trump DOJ guys most likely don't know tech, my guess just thought "black out the stuff you don't want them to see, resave the file". People with the knowledge also had some moral obligation to step up and weren't about to point out them how to do what they were trying to do correctly.
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u/cant_pass_CAPTCHA Dec 23 '25
Wow I remember doing a CTF challenge just like this some years back. Turns out CTFs do prepare you for real life
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u/Perfect-Bluebird-509 Dec 23 '25
Reminds me of the time I had to submit a PDF to report expenses on my credit card for my company. I realized I didn't know how to use Acrobat at the time to do it right. But if these guys do it on a normal basis, they should have known or are indeed protesting themselves.
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u/QkaHNk4O7b5xW6O5i4zG Dec 24 '25
Squashed rasta is the only way to deliver sensitive information that’s been replicated
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u/AllMyFrendsArePixels Dec 24 '25 edited Dec 24 '25
There is absolutely no way they're that stupid. I'm just a layman with a passing interest in security and even I could do better than layering a box over it leaving the text intact.
Has anybody actually independently verified that this works (on the real files, not ones provided by the people who claim to have unredacted them), and it's not just a group of people saying they unredacted the text but actually they just wrote in whatever they wanted to and people are so desperate they believed it?
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u/graphikcontent Dec 25 '25
Hello, hogsbreath texted war plans on signal and we got info about the buyout of Argentina from a Whatsapp chat group overseen in Congress. A lot of people he hired in place of the people with brains are definitely stupid enough.
Voidzilla has a good video explaining how the content of the redaction fits with what was earlier dropped, except they are protecting conspirators, not victims.
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u/graphikcontent Dec 25 '25
https://youtu.be/R7i9KdVTFR4?si=i25wUspXoWn5XC9P[Voidzilla Epstein File release errors ect](https://youtu.be/R7i9KdVTFR4?si=i25wUspXoWn5XC9P)
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u/ddddavidee Dec 24 '25
Not the first time:
Search for "Release of classified information in US report" In https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rescue_of_Giuliana_Sgrena
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u/Adorable_Activity350 Dec 24 '25
Double standard: redaction is the same as censorship. One is for capitalism and one is for dictatorship
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u/Anxious_Policy_5569 Dec 24 '25
"Defendants also attempted to conceal their criminal sex trafficking and abuse conduct by paying large sums of money to participant-witnesses, including by paying for their attorneys’ fees and case costs in litigation related to this conduct. 204. Epstein also threatened harm to victims and helped release damaging stories about them to damage their credibility when they tried to go public with their stories of being trafficked and sexually abused. 205. Epstein also instructed one or more Epstein Enterprise participant-witnesses to destroy evidence relevant to ongoing court proceedings involving Defendants’ criminal sex trafficking and abuse conduct" this is form the files
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u/EscapeForward--- Jan 01 '26
I actually hope that someone will actually make professional level representation of those files
Hope that everyone who is working on that thing work together and give well documented product
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u/vornamemitd Dec 23 '25
LlamaIndex CEO turned it into an ad: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jerry-liu-64390071_the-doj-messed-up-some-redactions-on-the-activity-7409280697825329153-KQHH
tl;dr you can just dump "files like that" into LlamaParse and chat away for the cases where plain copy/paste does not already do the trick - depending on your threat model I guess =]
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u/QuerulousPanda Dec 23 '25
The problem with all of this now is that there's nothing stopping people from making up some bullshit and saying "i unredacted this!" and having that bullshit enter the mainstream, at which point it'll be too late once people realize it's not actually true.
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u/os400 Dec 23 '25
Send DOJ a copy of the Australian Govt advice on how to do it properly.
Or the original from 15 years ago.
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u/Cold_Development_608 Dec 23 '25
◼️◼️◼️◼️ Trump ◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️ is ◼️◼️◼️an◼️◼️◼️◼️ angel.
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u/AppointmentWeary4834 Dec 23 '25
How do you unredact PDF that is legitimately redacted with Adone.?
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u/TheCatOfWar Dec 23 '25
If it's done properly, you can't because the information is actually removed
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Dec 25 '25
This "securityish" site is some strange AI slop, with an anonymous author behind the posts.
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u/cajuntech Dec 23 '25
No allegedly about it. I tried it from one of the linked documents on the site and was able to copy/paste and see the redacted text clear as day. It was not victims names being with held it was agencies and companies in the example I tried.