The Ridiculous Redactions The DOJ Required To Try To Hide The Details Of Its Google Gag Order
from the come-on dept
We already wrote a long and detailed post about the DOJ gagging Google for over four years, preventing it from telling Jacob Appelbaum about the government's §2703(d) Order for his Gmail info (a §2703(d) order is like a subpoena, but with less privacy protections -- which is why the government is a fan). The gag was finally allowed to be lifted on April 1st of this year, despite most of the key moments happening in the early months of 2011. However, as part of the agreement to finally unseal this document, the DOJ apparently required parts of it to be redacted. Perhaps that's understandable, but some of the redactions are so ridiculous as to be laughable -- starting mainly with trying to make sure that every judge and every DOJ employee in the documents is hidden away. Throughout the document, you see examples like this:
And, really, what sort of court system do we have when the judges get to have their names redacted:
- WikiLeaks demands Google and Facebook unseal US subpoenas
- Twitter, Wikileaks and the Broken Market for Consumer Privacy
And this even extends to the exhibits of publicly available web pages, which the DOJ still needed redacted. This has to be my favorite:
They even want Wikipedia redacted. I wish I were joking.
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Filed Under: doj, gag order, jacob appelbaum, redactions, wikileaks
Companies: google, wikileaks
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Corruption...
Hopefully just like slavery the people will get wise and try to turn back the evil... boy do things look bleak!
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Re: Corruption...
Our system has been corrupt for so long its own ethics enforcers don't see the corruption anymore.
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Re:
At least the Redact-o-bot appears to have a little intelligence. (Very little, I admit, but still more than the DMCA takedowns.)
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Excuse me while I bang my head on the desk...
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Re: Excuse me while I bang my head on the desk...
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Re: Excuse me while I bang my head on the desk...
That is because the people of the states that hold their bar cards have not bothered to start the process of getting rid of the licences by bar grieving them.
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Lets just face it...
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Re: Lets just face it...
They just really think you're better off not knowing about the gory details. You're safer that way. They might confuse you into believing impure thoughts.
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Re: Lets just face it...
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WHEN are you going to catch on that's deliberately done to shift the focus?
Masnick falls for it every time. He's a redaction magnet. I bet prints these and pins on wall of his cubicle, looks at them and just LAUGHS thinking how smart he is for noticing.
Then there's the meta-shifting of running DRECK like this instead of substance.
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Re: WHEN are you going to catch on that's deliberately done to shift the focus?
Please do tell!
(I had a hard time figuring out what you're talking about because of the broken Chinglish you're using.)
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Response to: Corporal Oblivious
You didn't read the article posted just prior to this one, did you?
Most people can see the ridiculousness of the unnecessary redactions AND the importance of the overall issue all at the same time.
Nuances, still not for everybody.
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Perhaps there should be a law that publicly available knowledge cannot be redacted? :P
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What I'm placing my bet on...
"Come on now, it's just a standard government algorithm that was tweaked a little too hard to the "REDACT" side. We'll do better next time. Promise."
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Re: What I'm placing my bet on...
I think someone said, "Judge, we want all names of people redacted. We want the target's name redacted. From everything we unseal."
And when you start with a set of strict rules, and apply them strictly, this is the sort of result you get.
That is, I don't think there was ANY oversight of the redactions, just mechanical process ...carried out by human beings who care about keeping their jobs redacting documents.
I can't blame them, I'm unemployed myself at the moment. But I don't think that is the sort of job I'd be able to keep. Insubordination, don't ya know.
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OCR
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Welcome to the Star Chamber
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Springtime For Tyranny In The Once Was Republic
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PUBLIC COURTS = TERRORISTS WIN!
We had public courts when we didn't have existential threats from Terrorists! Everything changed on 9/11! Now, we have to protect our shreds of decency and the safety of honorable public servants like AUSA and Judges with Anonymity! To claim anything else is to say that we're not at War with Terror! and the AUMF says that we are at war, so stick that in your pipes and smoke it! The people across the land raise up their voices in a terrible cry for a full measure of American Justice to be handed down upon the thrice-cursed Terrorists! We don't care about the cost, the LIberty Tree must be watered with the money of free men! Just protect us from the Terrorists! First Al Queida, now ISIS/ISIL/pack of winos! Saints preserve us! Hide the girls and pass the ammunition! PATRIOT Act is called that for a REASON people, and it's not freedom!
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Yossarian, is that you?
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OMG
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Not redacted
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This country has gone to hell in a hand basket!
I blame it all on the secret legal system which holds itself in contempt of public records and shirks all accountability by spraying black ink everywhere like a scared octopus.
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Re:
Nice analogy - since the NSA has chosen the comic book evil empire banner of Hydra as their own logo. And it is always the greatest cowards - and those afraid of mass retaliation by their victims - who seek the pipe-dream of total, absolute security.
However, the NSA and their ilk would more likely see it as:
"Like a sacred octopus"
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truth and fiction
they do stuff all the time like that...that is after all why sci fi was allowed to proliferate...it distracts a huge swath of population and by time anyone realized what the heck...its been too late by 2 - 3 decades....
the only route of the usa citizens is sorry to say it revolution and its not quite there yet , wait 20 years and see how bad things really get.
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Barnum was an optimist. There's millions of suckers born every second.
True. But soon we'll have private courts, and that will also be for a reason. A different reason.
Of course, nobody will ever figure that reason out because the fascist owned TV and News media will continue to repeat the same headlines day and night as always...
"Trust us. Everything is fine. Don't worry. Nothing to see here. Go back to work."
And we all know that the media never lies... and that "The government is just good people, who have our best interests at heart, trying to do a hard job, under difficult circumstances."
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by way of Mandated Arbitration Agreements snuck into TOSes and EULAs
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Re: by way of Mandated Arbitration Agreements snuck into TOSes and EULAs
A couple of them yes.
There's the secret court that does the Vaccination Settlement Pay-offs for Big Pharma, to the parents of dead and disabled children, and the FISA Courts that rubber stamps the illegal shenanigans of the Surveillance Industry into legality, and the Torture Courts that cancel the civil rights of those listed for Extraordinary Rendition, and.... well, most of the other "Private Courts" are still pretty secret.
Oh wait! Did you mean that our Standard Court System is no longer answering to the public, but now answers to private interests...
Well that's just conspiracy-nutter talk. :)
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Re: Re: by way of Mandated Arbitration Agreements snuck into TOSes and EULAs
Yeah, I'm sure the SCOTUS are all entirely dispassionately and objectively just interpreting the law as written by Congress.
Chuckle. Yeah, and when one of them retires, there's a huge hullabaloo over who (as in, which party) gets to choose their sucessor. What's up with that? :-O
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Re: Re: Re: by way of Mandated Arbitration Agreements snuck into TOSes and EULAs
Not really sure, but given the class of folks involved, I'd guess it has something to do with higher grade cocaine, younger bimbos and a brand new yacht.
Just a guess mind you.
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The class of folks involved
Not sure whether they cannot or choose to not.
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Re: The class of folks involved
The dissenters drew short straws.
The non-dissenters drew long straws.
My sympathies go out to all the gay couples who want to be married - because this is a Hot Debate Issue, and will be used by politicians as a convenient platform for as long as they can keep it a Hot Issue and that means constantly allowing and then disallowing the law to perform such marriages.
Marijuana decriminalization is now the same kind of Hot Issue that will bandied about eternally so politicians never have to actually discuss really important issues.
There are so many of these Hot Issues that never get resolved on purpose.
There should be an English Word that describes these phony Hot Issues that politicians prevent from being solved simply so they can use them as public performance platforms.
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There should be an English Word that describes these phony Hot Issues
From the active noun demagogue.
It's Greek. They were known and frowned upon in ancient Athens.
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Re: There should be an English Word that describes these phony Hot Issues
Demagogue: (in ancient times) a leader of the people.
Perhaps I'm misreading this, but it appears to me that the act of gaining power through arousing the "crowd's" emotions, prejudices and fears, over a Hot Topic you intend to do nothing about, or "demagoguery" is actually just the standard process performed as a regular function by all Politicians or "Demagogues", as they were apparently known in ancient times.
In simpler terms, the word for gaining power through arousing the crowd's prejudices, emotions and fears, is:
"Politics"
Thank you. That was highly enlightening. :)
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"Despot" and "tyrant"
We just had so many despots and tyrants who were oppressive and abusive of their power that they ceased to mean the benevolent and wise sort of absolute ruler.
And execution was a euphemism. Executing an order that regarded a person.
I suspect that whenever a requisition regarding an individual had to be formalized into an order, it was never a good thing.
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Re: "Despot" and "tyrant"
Both enlightening and entertaining! :)
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Re: Re: "Despot" and "tyrant"
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Redactio ad Reductio
At least we can see/research what they blacked out this time.
When they black out official information (government eyes only) we can only guess.
If your FOIA request gives you a dozen black pages, they could fill 99% of the pages with nursery rhymes and "quack, quack and a cow says moo" with on sentence of "We make the rules. Ben Dover" and we can be none the wiser for all their shenanigans.
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