FBI Wiretapping Audit Secrets Uncovered Via Ctrl+C 231
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."
No suprises (Score:3, Informative)
Implementation (Score:5, Informative)
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?
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.
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.
Re:Too much UNIX for me (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 looks like you're trying to redact a document! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Too much UNIX for me (Score:5, Informative)
Funny how history works, huh?
Re:Not everything is censorship. (Score:1, Informative)
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.
Re:Too much UNIX for me (Score:2, Informative)
The above explains the run that Home Depot had on tweezers and magnifying glasses.
Linux makes things even easier! (Score:2, Informative)
No need to even use the keyboard to copy/paste the data!
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.