Behind the Redactions

The New York Times reports researchers in Europe used cryptography techniques to decipher redacted government documents. Illuminating blacked-out words (no-reg link via CNet)

By realigning the document, it was possible to use another program Whelan had written to determine that it had been formatted in the Arial font. Next, they found the number of pixels that had been blacked out in the sentence: "An Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) operative told an xxxxxxxx service at the same time that Bin Ladin was planning to exploit the operative's access to the U.S. to mount a terrorist strike." They then used a computer to determine the pixel length of words in the dictionary when written in the Arial font.

Unfortunately, we'll need this technique more and more against our close-lipped government. The ACLU had to wait weeks merely to release a heavily redacted complaint challenging use of National Security Letters to obtain unidentified data from an unidentified ISP. The Washington Post, channeling the Onion, headlined its coverage of the suit Patriot Act Suppresses News Of Challenge to Patriot Act.

Not What I Wanted to See in HD

I've been building a MythTV box around the pcHDTV card for Linux. More details on that project as it comes together, but I stopped work tonight after seeing, in high definition, photos of the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. It's disturbing, but not surprising, that the Bush administration didn't take note of the abuses until photos appeared on 60 Minutes. The pictures don't look any better in high-res, but it's important that the public be able to see them and reach informed understanding of U.S. involvement in Iraq. Now let's put leaders in office with the resolution to clean up what these images reflect.

Update: Here's the report (PDF) (text) the Office of Senate Security doesn't want staffers to read. (Via Lawmeme).