I've seen the TikToks, Reddit posts, and GitHub repos claiming we can "unredact" the new Epstein files. Before everyone celebrates, we need to look at the technical reality. This isn't a victory for transparency; it’s likely a wild goose chase.
My thoughts on this:
The "hack" has a hard limit. It isn't anything new to even intermediate scripters. In fact, you often don't even need a script. People are revealing text just by using select all, copy, and paste. It is so simple that any high schooler could figure it out. I don't believe that even as incompetent as the DOJ can be, this wasn't by choice.
The scripts circulating right now only work on these layered PDFs where someone lazily drew a black rectangle object over a text object. It's a fair start and I commend the effort, but I just don't see it being revolutionary nor do I think it will reveal much. If you download the recent files from the DOJ, many are flattened images. You can’t highlight the text. There are no "layers" to peel back. The black box is just black pixels burned into the page. No script or copy-paste can "unredact" that without magic.
The "Selective Incompetence" Theory. We know the DOJ has the capability to completely scrub data.
Exhibit A: The Trump/Epstein photo wasn't just redacted; it was deleted entirely from the server and then re-uploaded.
Exhibit B: The files I reviewed are properly flattened images. I didn't bother to go through many as I assumed pretty quickly it would be a waste of my time.
If they were truly incompetent, every file would be a lazy, hackable mess. But they aren't. They successfully secured the high-risk files (like the photos). Photos can be interpreted, text less so.
The Verdict. The fact that some files are hackable while others are bulletproof suggests a curated release. The "unredactable" files likely contain boring procedural text or known info - bait to distract us and generate "GOTCHA!" headlines. I hypothesize that the "unredactable" text likely won't contain much about victims (as it would violate the Transparency Act) nor anything actually incriminating about Trump.
This is weaponized incompetence. We aren't seeing a data leak; we are seeing a controlled release of noise to hide the signal. Just giving us something to chew on during the holiday season while congress is out of session.
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What we’re seeing the result of 1000 newly hired quickly trained loyalists doing this work. I have no idea how any of this works so I have to ask the question., is it necessary to use the method that blacks out the data on the images? Could the same method that was used on the text that is being unreacted have been used on the pictures? Is the copy and paste on redacting working on all of the text that was released? While I appreciate the word of caution about getting too excited here, i’m hesitant to give them the credit of coming up with the idea of intentionally releasing it in a method that could easily be unreacted. I’m gonna need a little more before I put this to anything more intelligent then someone in the redacting pool saying something like, “we did it this much easier way when I was in middle school” and everybody just going with it.
There is a difference between a PDF containing actual text data and a PDF that is just an image of text.
When you put a black box over a text PDF, you are just drawing a shape over code. The text data is still underneath and a computer can read it instantly. When you put a black box over an image (like a photo or a flattened scan), you are changing the pixels to black. The original information is destroyed.
The 'hack' people are celebrating only works on the first type. The fact that the DOJ released the photos and high-risk documents as the second type (secure images) proves they know the difference. They only used the 'middle school method' on the low-risk text files.
It could also be incompetence.
More than one individual involved, and no set process on how to redact or what to redact.
Or it could be someone's internal 'jab' at the administration.
I was responsible at my last job to redact files at my last job, but there was no set process... I made my own, which was to only provide printed, then copied, files of redacted materials. But I worked with a different population where someone would be in trouble for exposing identified information, if only because it would not be relevant to their request. This is, obviously, a different matter.
If you have 100,000 files and 1,000 agents, that is only 100 files per person.
Spread that over 21 work days and each agent only had to finish 5 files a day, that means they had almost 2 hours to redact a single document.
In that time, they could have put a black box over the text, printed the page, and rescanned it. That process permanently flattens the file and takes about 10 minutes. They had 2 hours per document.
Is that accurate, that 100,000 files were released? How can you guess the number of staff involved, let alone their work structure to determine available time?
Your first two sentences contains so many assumptions the rest of your post is irrelevant.
The Agent Count: It was widely reported by outlets like TIME and Bloomberg that roughly 1,000 FBI agents were assigned to review these documents.
The File Count: DOJ Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche explicitly stated on Fox News that the release involved 'several hundred thousand' pages.
No, they were not ALL released, but they should and could have been. We got merely a fraction of what we should have.
Work structure: Maybe I should have included lunch breaks. Sorry.
It's malicious compliance from the guys who got through the loyalty purges. That's what I think.
Just feed all these files into a project folder and use ai to scrape the data. Could find additional attempts or even find information in the meta data.
Well, sort of. We don't really need AI to scrape the data. Traditional methods are still the gold standard for that. AI isn't great at strict data extraction yet.
You would use standard scripts to build the database first, and then possibly use AI to look for connections within that data. Expecting an AI to ingest raw files and generate a perfect database without commercial-grade infrastructure is asking for a mess
Just saying we now have expanded our tool kit. Man I hope people downloaded everything the first day. We can then monitor changes as well.
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I’ve said over and over — this is all strategic. They aren’t playing 4 D chess but this isn’t checkers, either. Weaponization of tools, easy outs, incompetence…yes.
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
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Yes. This is why I’ve paid absolutely no attention to these released files. If anyone thinks for one second they’re actually going to release any actual information, (even with amateur sleuths “unredacting it,” I’ve got a bridge to sell them.