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Comment by sneak | Hacker News Reader

The codenames of some of the collection codenames were redacted: FAIRVIEW and BLARNEY were visible, STORMBREW and OAKSTAR were not.

What's really quite interesting is that they're typeset differently on the redacted/unredacted slides.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/prism-...

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/20...

EDIT: Also, as the WaPo article points out, the map is different too...

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Exactly, one or both of these slides has been edited. I doubt that someone went back to the NSA to get "the latest version" that makes me wonder who did the editing and what was their motivation? Did the guardian change the map to make it more relevant to the "global nature" of their coverage? Did someone change it for WaPo to make it seem more credible? And the redacting part, who redacted it and why? Neither slide would have been released as part of a FOIA request it seems, so why the redactions? To make it look more "confidential" ? (there have been suggestions that redactions add 'authenticity' to purported documents from governments). Frankly it raises a lot more questions than it answers.

I would guess WaPo edited the map. For the Guardian's version of slide it seems easy to guess that those are the names of secret programs use to tap fiber-optic cables in certain regions. NSA wanted 2 names of those programs to remain secret. (i have some theory why..). WaPo published the names but edited the map not to give precise locations of those programs. Just my theory ofc.

I think the OO.o/MS Office explanation is perfectly reasonable and applicable in this case. Even I suggested that was what the difference was when PRISM was first leaked, and I've not exactly been on Greenwald's side throughout all of this.

I could be wrong, but I think we are looking at screencaps of documents which have been captured on different screen sizes, where there was word wrapping occuring. I dont see evidence of editing.

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