Army Censor Makes Technical Error

[MountainLaurel]

Oops!

:rofl:

The Army made a pretty large technical error last weekend, one that should teach everyone what not to do when you want to keep information secret. America's military command in Iraq released a report in PDF format about the death of an Italian intelligence agent after supposedly censoring classified, sensitive information within it. However, the government censor is not a geek--he/she just drew black boxes over the classified text in the report before saving it as a PDF file.

The end product was a PDF file that still allowed readers to copy the content onto the clipboard and paste it into any word processing program--including the supposedly censored content. Since the censor's boxes did not actually remove any of the text, it was all still available underneath the black boxes.

The Army removed the document from the 'Net after learning of the issue, but other sites re-published it and its content, including names of soldiers involved in the incident, training information, and Iraq casualty figures since November.

For more information, see CNET.

http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2005May/gee20050505030339.htm

[MADem]

1. HA!!!! This has HAPPENED BEFORE!!!!

I was involved in doing "clean up" after the same goddamn thing happened, oh, six or seven years ago!!! It was a pretty sensitive case, too!!! The problem was SPECIFICALLY addressed in the AFTER ACTION REPORT, with corrective measures to prevent recurrence!

This proves my point--no one reads that shit, unless it contains "good shit!" And then, EVERYONE reads it!!!!!

I hear guitar music, and someone is singing ...when will they ever learn? When will they...ever...learn!

[pretzel4gore]

4. forgetting, is fundamental, to freeper-y...

it's the downside of being stupid

[w4rma]

2. This document was classified for political, rather than security reasons.

I'm glad that rather than a national security motivated censor, it was a politically motiviated black out that this mistake was made (and caught) on.

[Richard Steele]

3. Political reasons- EXACTLY RIGHT.

Like the fact that the military has counted
over FIFTEEN THOUSAND attacks on our troops
in the last 12 months,
NOT the 650 that CondiLiar Rice claimed....

That report ROCKED!
Here's the UNcensored pdf:
http://www.corriere.it/Media/Documenti/Unclassified.doc

[MountainLaurel]

5. Thanks for that link

I was going to look for it, but was caught up in gardening yesterday.