Given the sheer ineptitude of this administration, this was likely stupidity.
When I worked for DOD, I worked on a FOIA request and was trained on using the declassification software. The software worked by highlighting the appropriate text and then “flattened” the highlight so you couldn’t do this.
The software was REQUIRED to be used because it would also perform the validation.
These people probably used regular Adobe acrobat. Because they are that dumb. And they don’t know about proper FOIA procedures.
It might be likely that DOGE thought it was frivilous government spending the license for that software, because it’s the government and they’d use licensed software, so axed it out.
hell, taking a picture of the screen with a phone would have been better. this is literally the only way to have fucked this up that i can come up with. like maybe if they used too thin of a sharpie on physical paper, but even that probably would have blocked parts of the text.
that said, i can see the average technologically inept person making this mistake. if it wasn’t on purpose, it would have to be someone that didn’t grow up with computers. either someone trump’s age, or someone who grew up with only smart phones. Iwould bet the latter knowing trump and his cheapness. this can’t have been done by an existing professional in the system, they’re too experienced normally. I know this is a lot of assumptions, but i bet it would have had to be a young intern from trump’s camp. and i do bet that over intentional malice towards trump. anyone that did this on purpose would be smart enough to see far enough ahead to predict themselves get arrested or killed as soon as people figured it out. also, hanlon’s razor.
i think i actually made almost this exact mistake once. difference is mine was for an assignment in high school 20 years ago and the consequence was getting snickered at by my peers. it’s a genuinely easy thing to overlook if you’re not used to using tools in a word editor or most other software. it’s also entirely unsurprising that trump’s camp would botch a project. he doesn’t pay people and is a menace to his employees. no one compitent wants to work for him unless they’re true believers.
so yeah, jumping to conclusions about this being intentional is conspiracy nut thinking. if someone’s reasoning includes bits like “it just makes too much sense” and “think about how much they have to gain/lose” they’re just jumping to conclusions without evidence. remember that correlation does not imply causation. just because something happened near a powerful person that affects the world or that person significantly doesn’t mean there’s a conspiracy. just because the motive for an action exists or makes sense that doesn’t mean it happened. i have a motive to want to kill Trump, but if he dies while I’m near d.c. that doesn’t make me a suspect. 90% of the people near d.c. at any given moment have motive to kill trump.
Given the sheer ineptitude of this administration, this was likely stupidity.
When I worked for DOD, I worked on a FOIA request and was trained on using the declassification software. The software worked by highlighting the appropriate text and then “flattened” the highlight so you couldn’t do this.
The software was REQUIRED to be used because it would also perform the validation.
These people probably used regular Adobe acrobat. Because they are that dumb. And they don’t know about proper FOIA procedures.
Because they are stupid.
30 minutes before releasing the Epstein files:
“Grok, how do I redact a PDF?”
It might be likely that DOGE thought it was frivilous government spending the license for that software, because it’s the government and they’d use licensed software, so axed it out.
I heard some print it out and then scan it.
hell, taking a picture of the screen with a phone would have been better. this is literally the only way to have fucked this up that i can come up with. like maybe if they used too thin of a sharpie on physical paper, but even that probably would have blocked parts of the text.
that said, i can see the average technologically inept person making this mistake. if it wasn’t on purpose, it would have to be someone that didn’t grow up with computers. either someone trump’s age, or someone who grew up with only smart phones. Iwould bet the latter knowing trump and his cheapness. this can’t have been done by an existing professional in the system, they’re too experienced normally. I know this is a lot of assumptions, but i bet it would have had to be a young intern from trump’s camp. and i do bet that over intentional malice towards trump. anyone that did this on purpose would be smart enough to see far enough ahead to predict themselves get arrested or killed as soon as people figured it out. also, hanlon’s razor.
i think i actually made almost this exact mistake once. difference is mine was for an assignment in high school 20 years ago and the consequence was getting snickered at by my peers. it’s a genuinely easy thing to overlook if you’re not used to using tools in a word editor or most other software. it’s also entirely unsurprising that trump’s camp would botch a project. he doesn’t pay people and is a menace to his employees. no one compitent wants to work for him unless they’re true believers.
so yeah, jumping to conclusions about this being intentional is conspiracy nut thinking. if someone’s reasoning includes bits like “it just makes too much sense” and “think about how much they have to gain/lose” they’re just jumping to conclusions without evidence. remember that correlation does not imply causation. just because something happened near a powerful person that affects the world or that person significantly doesn’t mean there’s a conspiracy. just because the motive for an action exists or makes sense that doesn’t mean it happened. i have a motive to want to kill Trump, but if he dies while I’m near d.c. that doesn’t make me a suspect. 90% of the people near d.c. at any given moment have motive to kill trump.