alt Hacker News"There are major differences between the Trump 1.0 and 2.0 administrations. In the Trump 1.0 administration, many of the most important officials were very competent men. One example would be then-Attorney General William Barr. Barr is contemptible, yes, but smart AF. When Barr’s DOJ released a redacted version of the Mueller Report, they printed the whole thing, made their redactions with actual ink, and then re-scanned every page to generate a new PDF with absolutely no digital trace of the original PDF file. There are ways to properly redact a PDF digitally, but going analog is foolproof.
The Trump 2.0 administration, in contrast, is staffed top to bottom with fools."
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/12/23/trump-doj-pdf-r...
Replies
It's not fool proof:
https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/28/23777298/sony-ftc-microso...
It's like Russian spies being caught in the Netherlands with taxi receipts showing they took a taxi from their Moscow HQ to the airport: corrupt organizations attract/can only hire incompetent people...
https://www.vice.com/en/article/russian-spies-chemical-weapo...
Anyone remember how the Trump I regime had staff who couldn't figure out the lighting in the White House, or mistitled Australia's Prime Minister as President?
The bigger difference from my perspective is that they have competent people doing the strategy this time. The last Trump administration failed to use the obvious levers available to accomplish fascism, while this one has been wildly successful on that end. In a few years they will have realigned the whole power dynamic in the country, and unfortunately more and more competent people will choose to work for them in order to receive the benefits of doing so.
I would just do the digital version of that: add 100% black bars then screenshot page by page and probably increase the contrast too.
> William Barr. Barr is contemptible, yes, but smart AF
You mean the guy who covered up for Epstein's 'suicide' and expected us morons to believe it?
> but smart AF. When Barr’s DOJ released a redacted version of the Mueller Report, they printed the whole thing, made their redactions with actual ink, and then re-scanned every page to generate a new PDF with absolutely no digital trace of the original PDF file.
This is a dumb way of doing that, exactly what "stupid" people do when their are somewhat aware of the limits of their competence or only as smart as the tech they grew up with. Also, this type of redaction eliminates the possibility to change text length, which is a very common leak when especially for various names/official positions. And it doesn't eliminate the risk of non-redaction since you can't simply search&replace with machine precision, but have to do the manual conversion step to printed position
> made their redactions with actual ink, and then re-scanned every page
That's not very competent.
> going analog is foolproof
Absolutely not. There are many way's to f this up. Just the smallest variation in places that have been inked twice will reveal the clear text.