This screams malicious compliance to me. A lot of the staffers who would actually be doing this work are not elected officials doing this kind of work for the first time, and there would absolutely be strong guidelines on how to properly redact something.

I'm opting for malice. Lemmy acting like they're smarter, yet not realizing this isn't Trumps cabinet members personally editing this shit.

For me, it looks like a fake-it-for-the-boss obfuscation. It looks black but is technically readable. Is your boss tech-savvy?

Seems that not everyone in the administration is fine with hiding the details to the public. Thanks guys.

Are you under the impression that Trump's idiot cabinet members personally edited these docs?

Fr. Can't wait for nothing to finally happen.

Doesn't matter - there will still be black highlighted portions in the latter releases; yes, this timeline is THAT stupid.

As another person commented, we can hope it's intentional defiance.

Nice to meet you, Shirley.

They haven't figured it out, and don't call me Shirley ;)

You think this was a mistake? LOL. No.

I assumed it had been fixed by now

Can't fix stupid.

They will take anything they can to convince themselves it's not real. A podcast I listen to with MAGA parents are now saying Trump is only in them because he was an informant and caught Epstein despite about 1000 cases to the contrary.

Well, their propaganda machines certainly won't stop trying with every trick in the book.

Fox news reporting (if it can even be called that) on the Epstein files is that the DOJ released new documents, with a disclaimer about trump being mentioned. That what the documents suggest about him is false, and if it were true it would've been weaponized already.

Shhhhh

Yes. Because that idiot Patel personally redacted these docs.

Don't give them any ideas...

I haven’t tried this, but this is what I’ve read:

You can highlight the redacted text, copy it, and paste the text into another document (like Word, WordPad, Notepad, etc.).

Another method I saw mentioned on Facebook:

“The backgrounds are transparent. Pull them into photoshop and throw a layer of white between the text and the black background and you have your text.”

If anything is unclear, please ask. Even if I can’t answer it, maybe someone else can.

It looks like the maintainers of the project have updated their project and page. It's much simpler now.

Installation:

pip install pdfplumber pymupdf

Usage:

python redact_extract.py example.pdf

You’re asking on Lemmy?

1. Install gentoo

Here's step-by-step instructions for the tool that the OP of the reddit thread open sourced. It creates a side-by-side pdf of the redacted and unredacted version at the end.

No root access is required at any point.

1. Download and extract the files of https://github.com/leedrake5/unredact?tab=readme-ov-file

2. Create a python virtual environment, but make sure the destination folder doesn't already exist (~/.env) here.

python3 -m venv ~/.env

1. activate the environment

source ~/.env/bin/activate
You should now see (.env) before your prompt.

1. Now install the python dependencies.

pip install pdfplumber pymupdf
You're all set up.

1. While still having your virtual environment active, indicated by the (.env) before your pompt, navigate to the downloaded github project, where the 'redact_extract.py' file is located.

2. Copy whatever pdf document you want to try to unredact to the same location.

3. execute the script

python redact_extract.py taco_crimes.pdf

The script should now have created a file for you in the current location with the redacted and unredacted version side by side.

To leave the virtual environment:

deactivate

To enter it again:

source ~/.env/bin/activate

To delete everything cleanly, just delete the virtual environment (~/.env in this case)

---

The project linked in evacide's Mastodon toot is even simpler to install. Create and activate a virtual environment like before, but at a different location (.env1 instead of .env, for example).

Then install the tool from pip in the virtual environment:

pip install x-ray

The tool is now installed and can be executed with a pdf file like so:

xray /path/to/your/file.pdf

https://github.com/freelawproject/x-ray

(sorry for the bad formatting. after posting, I can't preview anymore to figure out how to fix it.)

You don't need the lame script. Just select the obscured text in a document like the one they linked to & copy & paste or have the voice reader read it back.

The onion is just tomorrow's news at this point

I went to the link, highlighted the black highlighted part, and copied the text out of it. This confirms directly at the source material on the government website that it is true.

Go here: https://www.justice.gov/multimedia/Court%20Records/Matter%20of%20the%20Estate%20of%20Jeffrey%20E.%20Epstein,%20Deceased,%20No.%20ST-21-RV-00005%20(V.I.%20Super.%20Ct.%202021)/2022.03.17-1%20Exhibit%201.pdf

Scroll down to the redacted part and highlight it, there you go

Sauce?

You can literally see for yourself: open the document they linked to, select text, copy & paste or instruct the voice reader to read it to you.

It's true, I've looked at the evidence (nonexistent) and it backs this claim 100%