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FBI Wiretapping Audit Secrets Uncovered Via Ctrl+C
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue May 20, 2008 07:11 AM
from the c'mon-guys-it's-not-even-obscure dept.
from the c'mon-guys-it's-not-even-obscure dept.
mytrip notes a story in Wired's Threat Level blog on the latest boneheaded government moves with redaction. (We've been discussing redaction follies here for years.) This time it's an FBI report (PDF) on implementing CALEA — you can select text from redacted areas, copy it, and paste into a text editor, as University of Pennsylvania professor Matt Blaze discovered. From Wired: "Once again, supposedly sensitive information blacked out from a government report turns out to be visible by computer experts armed with the Ctrl+C keys — and that information turns out to be not very sensitive after all... [Among] the tidbits considered too sensitive to be aired publicly: The FBI paid Verizon $2,500 apiece to upgrade 1,140 old telephone switches. Oddly the report didn't redact the total amount paid to the telecom — slightly more than $2.9 million dollars — but somehow the bad guys will win if they knew the number of switches and the cost paid."
Related Stories
[+]
Your Rights Online: Memory Hole Un-Redacts Redacted DOJ Memo 453 comments
DrDNA writes "After a Freedom of Information Act request, the US Justice Department released a study on workplace diversity. However, nearly half of the memo was blacked-out. In what was apparently an incredible goof, it was posted in a PDF format called Image+Text. The folks at The Memory Hole simply removed the image, revealing the redacted text. The redacted text was highly critical of the DOJ's diversity efforts, as the New York Times reports." Folks, if you're going to be sneaky, at least do enough research to make sure you're really being sneaky.
[+]
IT: More PDF Blackout Follies 309 comments
georgewilliamherbert writes "The latest installment of "As the PDF Blackouts Turn" hit today, with a U.S. government apparently releasing a redacted version of their court filing in the Balco grand jury leak case
which merely stuck a black line over the text, which remains available in the document. As with prior documents, entering text cut/paste mode in a normal PDF browser such as Acrobat allows a reader to access the concealed text. Previous incidents include an AT&T filing in the NSA case." This works with Xpdf and KPDF, too; for KPDF, use the selection tool (under the Tools menu) around the redacted section, copy to clipboard, then paste into the text-manipulator of your choice.
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Let me guess... (Score:4, Funny)
<FONT
style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: black">Top Secret!</FONT>
Re:Let me guess... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Let me guess... (Score:5, Funny)
I wanted it to be realistic
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Sheesh (Score:2)
Your government dollars at work!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Is there a way to satisfy you? Jeesh...
Too much UNIX for me (Score:5, Funny)
The headline and summary made took a minute for me to grasp, I just couldn't understand how you could get data out of something by halting execution.
Then my brain woke up and I realized they were thinking of the Windows command Ctrl+C which copies the marked text..
/Mikael
Re:Too much UNIX for me (Score:5, Funny)
Right. Me too. I don't use windows, so I think Ctrl+C == SIGINT.
I saw a similar thing on another article here where they had Ctrl+Z in the article, and that took me a minute to figure out as well. I thought, WTF does suspending a task have to do with anything??? I then had to figure out that Ctrl+Z is the undo command in windows.
Parent
Re:Too much UNIX for me (Score:5, Funny)
Welcome To FBI Info Booth.
Please press:
1 to open contact form
2 to learn about the organization
3 to get the latest news
4 to access the current most wanted list
5 to access other FBI resources
Your choice: _ [ctrl+C]
Terminated.
root@booth975.fbi.gov# cat
Parent
Re:Too much UNIX for me (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, they still do "different" things in a terminal, but they're by no means "Windows commands" any more.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
those guys were just involved in a dick-measuring "biggest nerd" contest.
Re:Too much UNIX for me (Score:4, Interesting)
I think my problem is that for regular *nix I don't use KDE or Gnome and thus I'm still using what I'm used to (mark + middle click to paste) from when I started using X11, and for macs I find myself either drag'n'dropping or using cmd+c which has become differentiated from ctrl+c in my mind (as I use ctrl+c to shut down processes, not copy data).
/Mikael
Parent
Re:Too much UNIX for me (Score:5, Informative)
Funny how history works, huh?
Parent
Re:Too much UNIX for me (Score:5, Informative)
No, they're not. The Wikipedia article even lists the correct keys that actually were in the CUA. They were the ever-so-intuitive:
Copy: Ctrl-Ins
Cut: Shift-Del
Paste: Shift-Ins
Undo: Alt-Backspace
These were the CUA shortcuts. The new Ctrl-Z/X/C/V shortcut set was stolen off the Mac, because unlike the CUA set, it makes sense. Unlike the CUA, it's always Control-Something. X and C make perfect sense for Cut and Copy. Z and V make less sense unless you think of them as little icons, in which case the Z is a Zig-Zag backwards and the V is a down-arrow pasting into the document. Ultimately, though, they're used because they're next to each other on the keyboard. All your common edit actions in a nice little row.
If you want a non-Wikipedia source, you can try this page [ratherco.com]. The CUA keys still work in most Windows applications, it's just that the Mac keys also work since they don't overlap. Alt-F4 remains as probably the most-used CUA shortcut.
Parent
Re:Too much UNIX for me (Score:4, Informative)
It's actually really useful to have two paste buffers in certain issues - ctrl-v to paste one, middle to paste the other.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Now get off my lawn!
Copy & Paste Reveals FBI Wiretapping Audit Sec (Score:5, Informative)
"Wiretapping": verb. The FBI is wiretapping something. "is" omitted as in many headlines.
"Audit": verb. The FBI's act of wiretapping is auditing something (Huh?)
"Secrets": verb. The Audit of the FBI's wiretapping is leaking something. Wait isn't "secrete" writting with an extra "e"?
"Uncovered": verb, passive. By now I'm sort doubtful I got it right in the fourth attempt.
"Via Ctrl+C": By what?
It took me reading the link in the original post to figure they meant a key press and not a screen name or a publication I wasn't familiar with, also helped me sort the four verbs into some semblance of legal grammar.
How about: "Copy & Paste Reveals FBI Wiretapping Audit Secrets"?
Remember school: Passive is bad for you.
Parent
Re:Copy & Paste Reveals FBI Wiretapping Audit (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_User_Access [wikipedia.org]
and it's actually originating from IBM. Personally I'm *glad* that Linux desktop environments are also pretty much implementing the standard - I *like* being able to always hit F1 for help, Shift+F12 for save etc. I've even seen CUA bindings setup for Emacs but cannot find a link right now..
It's easy... (Score:5, Interesting)
By randomly blacking out stuff, you will never know if there is vital information hiding underneath the black text. And you will become more and more accepting of documents that have barely any text at all.
The purpose is, of course, to allow more and more freedom to the agencies doing the blacking out. And less and less to you.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
---TOP SECRET--- "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt moll
No suprises (Score:3, Informative)
Secrets Kept to avoid Embarrassment (Score:5, Insightful)
Not really (Score:3, Interesting)
The one big embarrassment out of that, is that it shows that they had total access to the network, and yet 9/11 occurred. So, does that mean that this was not being used for terrorism, or does this indicate that we did know and ignored what was to
Entertaining to whom? (Score:2, Insightful)
Besides, we shouldn't be reporting on this stuff-- our only defense against this government anymore is its own monumental stupidity.
Implementation (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Of course, why do you think they work for the government?
Who's responsible..? (Score:5, Insightful)
What confuses me is that, and I might be too generous in my assumption, I assume that there's an IT professional somewhere that looks over these released files prior to their release? I know that common sense is entirely too uncommon these days, but if I were to release a digital file (whether to an individual or the public) I'd make sure that someone from the IT department looked it over before release.
Otherwise it's like having a flu vaccine released by managers that went nowhere near an immunologist or virologist.
Still, I'm sure that, sometime soon, MS will remove the Ctrl+C combination. For national security, of course.
Re:Who's responsible..? (Score:5, Insightful)
Apparently you have never worked for a government department.
Otherwise it's like having a flu vaccine released by managers that went nowhere near an immunologist or virologist.
or in the pharmaceutical industry.
Parent
Re:Who's responsible..? (Score:5, Funny)
Apparently you have never worked for a government department.
Otherwise it's like having a flu vaccine released by managers that went nowhere near an immunologist or virologist.
or in the pharmaceutical industry.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Well, it was an IT guy, but no-one calls him a professional.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Not everything is censorship. (Score:5, Informative)
But hey, they made their point about evil government masterminds being wholly incompetent, so what does logic matter?
LOL! (Score:4, Insightful)
The FBI is trying to trick me into thinking they're all stupid so they can find out where I've got the 500 acre marijuana farm with its fiftten thousand tons of marijuana in the barn, 500 beautiful hookers and the casino downstairs, where you can buy white lightning and moonshine.
Meanwhile, Osama's still loose.
Attention FBI: Look, dumbasses, print the damned thing out, black out the parts that embarrass the President and your Director with a magic marker and scan it to a TIF file (that's a graphics format, guys. Pay attention!) and "print" THAT to PDF.
But you already know that, you're trying to find my pot gambling hooker farm!
Re:LOL! (Score:4, Funny)
The official method is:
1 - Print the document.
2 - Cut the private parts away with a cutter.
3 - If you've not castrated yourself, you should have a paper with holes. Put it in a wooden table.
4 - Make a photo of said table.
5 - Load the photo in a power point.
6 - publish the ppt file.
Parent
The New Math (Score:2, Interesting)
The mosaic effect (Score:3, Insightful)
But there is something called the mosaic effect. The short of it is that you have two (or more) documents. None of them by themselves are sensitive, but as a group, they become sensitive because they give you a complete picture. It's quite possible that this redacted info gives that picture.
In addition, gov't entities regularly leave out the specifics like the number of switches because they do not want to demonstrate the scope of their operations. Not for any malicious reasons, but for what they perceive as a security risk. It might be a false risk, but it's not malicious.
Follow the evil overlord tips (Score:5, Insightful)
It looks like you're trying to redact a document! (Score:5, Informative)
How much!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's more likely that the total number is large and people go "ok must be a lot" but at 2.5k usd per switch people would go "how fucking much!!!" - that's what they may want to avoid
Jaj
this just goes to show (Score:5, Insightful)
Now watch how they react to it. Do they straighten up their censorship policies? of course not. They'll simply make the abuse harder to discover.
Be happy its still number of switches (Score:4, Interesting)
The use of public or released data to see what police forces are doing is interesting.
In India you have to count the number of dead.
"The records show that Durgiyana Mandir ground was one of three cremation sites in Amritsar
illegally used by the police.
It takes about 300kg of wood to burn a single body and each wood purchase is written in a register.
The police subverted the system, by burning more than one body on each pyre.
http://news.sbs.com.au/dateline/india__who_killed_the_sikhs_130052 [sbs.com.au] [sbs.com.au]
You idiots... (Score:3, Funny)
according to TFA... (Score:3, Interesting)
The naivete! (Score:5, Interesting)
No conspiracy. No corruption. No deeper meaning than a guideline that requires sticking your neck out and making a case if you want to violate it.
Makes sense, actually, as most intelligence gathering is probably not about sentences like, "John Doe is our super-secret mole in the office of the director", but rather "the phone system has 1100 switches for all of North America, and is taken down every 2 weeks at 1 am for maintenance."
And this leaves me wondering if those who are laughing or outraged at the attempted redaction (as opposed to the incompetence in implementing it) are also the same people who insist that they must have military-grade encryption and anonymous re-routing, using spread-spectrum wireless transmissions to public access facilities, in order to protect their private emails to grandmother. Sigh.
this actually makes some sense... (Score:3, Insightful)
"Sorry to bust your bubble"or"The Mundane Answer" (Score:3, Insightful)
Most companies include this as a standard clause in their master service agreements so that Joe's Barber shop isn't upset that Big Government Office is getting a different (presumably better) price for exactly the same service.
Why the cost per switch would be redacted (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, now, if they ever need to do more switches, I am betting every vendor will be holding out for the highest publicized price (or their own private price, if it's higher still). So, yeah, sometimes disseminating what you think is non-critical information will in fact cost us more in the long run. Revealing it may not make "the bad guys win" but it can definitely make the taxpayer lose.
Just my unredacted $0.02.