

The FBI Arbitrarily Covers Up Evidence of Misconduct - there
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/12/fbi-arbitrarily-covers-evidence-misconduct

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jws
I think I might have to changed "arbitrarily covers up evidence of misconduct"
to "inconsistently redacts documents".

They show a handful of instances, from thousands of documents, where different
copies of the the same source document have been redacted at different times,
probably by different people. Unsurprisingly, the results are different. In
one of the four examples, I think the conclusion that there was an improper
search is redacted.

The rules must by byzantine. I notice that the specific department of the
government is redacted. That might be to protect the innocent. But other bits
redacted are just bizarre. e.g. They redacted a version number in front of a
policy name. They left the policy, but covered which version it was. ???

I have not met any, but I expect redactors are either grunts trained in global
guidelines but without specific knowledge of what they are reading, or they
are the people familiar with the material and are irritated to be taken away
from their actual work. Either way there will be variable work. Secrets will
be missed. Non-secrets will be redacted. I predict they err to the latter.

The FOIA requests are allowing out evidence that documents improper searches
and information gathering. So, to that extent they are working.

Did the EFF make their entire corpus available so people can see how well? I
didn't see a link in the article.

[1] Also note, the EFF isn't scouring documents to uncover unlawful
information gathering, these are summaries of internal government self
investigations.

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wooster
Surprise?

An internal FBI FOIA tracker could solve this problem, but the project to
develop it would probably cost $3 billion and take 5 years.

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Mithrandir
Damn, you beat me to the punch: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1985661>

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sukuriant
You know, with enough requests for the document, given their inconsistent
redacting practices, you could probably reproduce the whole manuscript.

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sophacles
In most of the cases, many of the same bits were redacted, mostly names, key
details, etc. Some of the over-redaction probably comes from differing levels
of "redactor paranoia" and "redactor laziness".

Paranoia: I know the whole text, and I don't see how someone wouldn't be able
to deduce this without redacting more text.

laziness: I know there is some key bet in this chunk, ill just redact a few
sentences instead of actually analyze.

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jancona
They told me if I voted for McCain the government would become ever more
secretive and unaccountable...

~~~
billswift
It's a bipartisan project. It's been getting worse pretty steadily since
Eisenhower, with occasional bright spots like FOIA in the seventies.

