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Comment by vincengomes | Hacker News Reader

"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake" - Napoleon Bonaparte

Let all the files get released first.

Then show your hacks.

They're not 'hacks' it's the people doing the redaction making beginner mistakes of not properly removing the selectable text under the redactions. They're either drawing black rectangles over the text or highlighting it black neither of which prevents the underlying text from being selected.

Keeping that secret would require sponaneous silence from everyone looking at these docs which is just not possible.

Yes but don't tell them they're doing it wrong.

Impossible which is the point of the last sentence. Spontaneous secrecy when some people are discovering the bad redactions while publicly streaming is impossible.

Misdirection 101

The whole thing is just too suspicious. Too good to be true. What's the chance of this being some 4D chess where the government has already edited the files, and then presented them as redacted so the "unredacted (but edited)" version looks more genuine?

> What's the chance of this being some 4D chess where the government has already edited the files, and then presented them as redacted so the "unredacted (but edited)" version looks more genuine?

With how they have pushed out any career public servants who were good at their jobs in favor of sycophants and loyalists, I'm not sure government organizations are still capable of playing 4D chess, if they ever were.

Please share your redacting tricks as loudly as you can, but only the ones that allow retrieving the original text. I'd love Google and the AIs to spout bad censoring tricks as much as possible.

There's enough people who would do it for the clout and don't really care what is in the documents one way or the other.

Also don’t assume the mistake wasn’t intentional.

This was my initial reaction to this news. I mean think about it

The Trump team knows that nobody is gonna buy whatever they put out as being the full story. Isn't this just the perfect way to make people feel like they got something they weren't supposed to see? They can increase trust in the output without having to increase trust in the source of it

And as far as I've heard there hasn't been anything "unredacted" that's been of any consequence. It all just feels a little too perfect.

No, it's the opposite, it's fairly damaging. Previously they could claim, dubiously but plausible, that all redactions were about protecting victims (the only redactions allowed under the act). A lot of the "undone redactions" are solely about protecting the abusers, illegal under the law.

Whether breaking a law actually matters anymore is another question though, as crime is legal now.

Crime may go unpunished by this is why statues of limitations exist. The window on some crimes stays open for a very long time.

"Some" is 99% crimes against the state with the occasional bone they throw the peasants to look like they care. Heck, murder probably wouldn't even be unlimited if not for the fact that it thumbs it's nose at the state's monopoly on violence.

That's seems like some rather bleak hyperbole. If the goal of a conversation is to seek some improvement above the status quo then this is a solid impasse.

The problems we face can't be accurately assessed let alone solved if we are limited to thinking and reasoning about the government (and large institutions generally) the way we are taught to by our grade school civics class.

> as crime is legal now

If they do it, it's not a crime.

It's the same government that invited a journalist to a signal discussion about ongoing military strike in Yemen.

Maybe that was just a ploy to get us to underestimate them.

consider Hanlon's Razor

As others have mentioned, the administration is staffed and run by loyalists, whose primary skills are flattery and obedience.

Back in the day they had true masters of the Dark Arts. The forged letters about Bush's service were incredibly convenient in helping Bush beat Kerry. I am not alone in thinking it to be masterminded by Karl Rove.

This is probably one of those events where everyone on the inside has their own story that won't fit into a neat overarching narrative of how the files are handled because they only gets to feel part of the elefant each.

That was my thought. Just happen to leak some info for people you are interested in hurting but claim it was an accident.

And in terms of no big news in “unredacted”, it’s likely names that don’t mean anything to the average voter but damaging material for K Street.

"Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence."

Exactly my thoughts as well.

Too late. The data has been touched far too many times. The chain of custody and any accountability will never happen.

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