[HN Gopher] What we can deduce from a leaked PDF
___________________________________________________________________
What we can deduce from a leaked PDF
Author : winkywooster
Score : 142 points
Date : 2022-05-04 18:48 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (matthewbutterick.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (matthewbutterick.com)
| nbbbshmbdy wrote:
| aerovistae wrote:
| > This website is the worst subreddit
|
| Then stop visiting the site
| teslabox wrote:
| I don't post on reddit much, but I've gotten more off-channel
| messages asking for details about my quip in a post about how my
| friend realized her period was 2 weeks late, and how she got her
| period to come back. Then she went to Planned Parenthood for a
| free blood test. She was told she'd had a miscarriage, and _don
| 't do that again._
|
| The essential oil of the plant that Nirvana sang about is highly
| toxic. The tea is relatively safe. My friend used a 3-prong
| approach to inducing her period, not just the tea.
|
| This tweet makes the case that the leaker was probably Justice
| Bryer's clerk:
| https://twitter.com/willchamberlain/status/15216859689396305...
| [deleted]
| ModernMech wrote:
| > This tweet makes the case
|
| Please stop sharing nonsense like this, because those people
| _will_ get death threats as a result of their LinkedIn profile
| being shared in this context. The tweet isn 't "making a case";
| it's wild speculation about someone he just looked up on
| LinkedIn. The whole "case" being made here is that this
| particular clerk is passionate about abortion rights, and she
| has some second degree connection to the Politico journalist
| who published the leaked documents. That's _it_. That is the
| flimsiest case I 've ever heard in my life. That's a high
| school gossip level evidence right there.
| buerkle wrote:
| You would hope a lawyer would know better than to name names
| with absolutely zero evidence other than speculation. Hopefully
| this will not lead to her harassment, but based on history, I
| wouldn't be surprised if she's already received threats.
| dvt wrote:
| Absolutely insane thread. And any speculation is extremely
| premature and dangerous at this point. But, hey, whatever gets
| you that "social engagement," right? Can't believe Mr.
| Chamberlain is a lawyer; I'd fire him on the spot.
|
| I am a bit surprised that Justice Bryer's clerk is allowed to
| have a LinkedIn, though. An old classmate of mine clerked for a
| justice in the Supreme Court of California, and they had to
| disable all their social media by policy.
| tmaly wrote:
| >should court deliberations be confidential? Or should justices
| be required to post drafts of opinions to the judicial equivalent
| of GitHub?
|
| I think they should. The court has been granted extreme power to
| decide the nuances of our rights.
| [deleted]
| vmception wrote:
| On rewatching L's deductive reasoning on Death Note, it is
| interesting that the viewer sees 100% of the investigation and
| assumptions on Light while we never see any of L's other
| investigations, despite L repeatedly mentioning outloud and in
| his own head that Light's probability of being the culprit was
| less than 5%.
|
| In this case, I think this author ruled out the clerks and other
| parties too quickly. It is interesting insight to consider that
| there is a lack of consensus amongst the majority opinion
| justices and a leak could be to move them back towards the draft,
| but it has to consider all people with access.
| ribosometronome wrote:
| In speaking with a biologically female friend, she commented
| how she knows many men who are upset by the draft, always vote
| on the "right" side of issues, etc., but none cried with her
| hearing about this draft. The author's being a straight, white
| male could potentially also lead him into dismissing justices
| or clerks too quickly.
|
| >Justices understand that they don't always end up in the
| majority. Clerks rely on these jobs as a calling card for the
| rest of their careers. To be exposed as a leaker would amount
| to setting that future career on fire. It's not worth the risk.
|
| To Matthew Broderick, certainly, this risk isn't worth it. To a
| woman or minority who is genuinely afraid of the consequences
| for either themselves or can immediately put themselves in the
| shoes of those who it could harm? I don't know. Maybe it is
| worth it if they think that public outcry could sway a justice,
| particularly one who has previously and recently talked about
| it being settled precedent even if it may come at the cost of
| her career.
| [deleted]
| suzzer99 wrote:
| On the flip side - many are speculating a conservative
| justice (edit: or staffer) leaked it in an attempt to
| effectively cement the decision in place before it could be
| watered down.
| blockwriter wrote:
| Any justice that would be the target of the proposed
| influence campaign knows that the process of deliberation
| is not decided in the first draft. Moreover, none of the
| justices would need to explain their apparent vacillation
| to the public. None of their power is derived from public
| opinion, so they are not incentivized to align themselves
| with public opinion or public pressure. Is leaking this
| actually likely to influence a ruling in the more
| conservative direction?
| Kranar wrote:
| That would be career suicide for a justice and almost
| certainly result in impeachment. Furthermore there's almost
| no reason for any justice to do such a thing.
| adamsmith143 wrote:
| >That would be career suicide for a justice and almost
| certainly result in impeachment
|
| This seems naive. If Trump can make it past 2
| impeachments I have no faith that a Justice would be
| impeached also not at all clear that this is even
| impeachable.
| Kranar wrote:
| >not at all clear that this is even impeachable.
|
| What is your understanding of what an impeachment is?
| ziddoap wrote:
| > _almost certainly result in impeachment._
|
| That is awfully optimistic, considering the track record
| of impeachment in general , and the fact that only one
| justice has ever faced impeachment and it was over 200
| years ago. Not to mention, leaks (as pointed out by the
| author of this post) are not new, nor are draft opinions
| protected by any sort of law or classification that would
| warrant impeachment (that I am aware of, happy to be
| corrected on this point).
|
| > _Furthermore there 's almost no reason for any justice
| to do such a thing._
|
| Some plausible reasoning has been posited here and
| elsewhere.
| Kranar wrote:
| You are coming to the wrong conclusion. The fact that
| almost no Justice has faced impeachment is precisely why
| it's unlikely a Justice leaked this document. Also
| impeachment does not require any statute to be broken, an
| officer of the United States can be impeached for any
| conduct deemed incompatible with the duties of their
| respective office. Surreptitiously leaking a draft
| opinion would almost certainly count as conduct
| unbefitting a Supreme Court Justice, after all if it
| weren't there'd be no need to be secretive about it.
| ziddoap wrote:
| > _The fact that almost no Justice has faced impeachment
| is precisely why it 's unlikely a Justice leaked this
| document._
|
| My conclusion wasn't that a Justice leaked the document.
| My conclusion was that is optimistic to think they would
| be successfully impeached if it ends up being a Justice.
| What you've written has not convinced me otherwise.
|
| Surely in the previous 200 years, some Justice has done
| something of similar unbecoming-ness, and yet a
| successful impeachment of a Justice has never happened.
| Kranar wrote:
| >Surely in the previous 200 years, some Justice has done
| something of similar unbecoming-ness.
|
| If something is surely true, then you can surely point to
| an example of it.
| ziddoap wrote:
| Hah. I am nowhere near invested enough in this
| conversation to sift through 200+ years of uninteresting
| history because of a snarky request.
|
| If it makes you happy, I can edit the word "surely" to
| "moderately probable"?
| Kranar wrote:
| If you need to sift through 200 years of history to find
| an example of something you are certain is true, then you
| should reconsider the standard by which you distinguish
| truths from pure speculation. You are welcome to
| speculate that one of the 115 Supreme Court Justices
| engaged in behavior that would compromise the trust of
| the institution they serve, but you should not be so
| certain of it without being able to present some kind of
| evidence.
|
| Furthermore your use of the term "successfully impeached"
| suggests that you don't understand the meaning of the
| term, which is fine since it's actually a commonly
| misunderstood legal term that most people confuse with
| conviction, but it's a further indication that your
| speculation on this matter is poorly informed. There is
| no such thing as a successful impeachment anymore than
| there is a successful trial, they are both processes
| rather than outcomes.
| pmyteh wrote:
| Potter Stewart leaked large amounts of inside knowledge
| to Bob Woodward for the book 'The Brethren' (which is
| excellent BTW) though it didn't come out until his death.
| Abe Fortas eventually resigned under a cloud of
| partisanship and questionable financial decisions, but
| was not impeached. I'm sure there are others.
|
| The honest truth is, though, that impeachment simply
| isn't going to happen. If a conservative leaked,
| essentially no Republican will vote to convict, and if a
| liberal essentially no Democrat. Impeachment is
| fundamentally a political process, the issue is partisan,
| and neither side has a sufficient supermajority. The
| facts are irrelevant, even if you think a leak is
| impeachable (which I don't, FWIW).
| spa3thyb wrote:
| > none cried with her
|
| I'm not understanding - these men aren't as upset as
| biological women are?
| ribosometronome wrote:
| More that lots of men who are upset still won't experience
| it with the same emotional resonance that many women are.
| Not because women are more emotional or men aren't
| empathetic but just that the fear lives closer to the
| surface for those who can really see themselves in the
| shoes of someone this decision will hurt. Dismissing clerks
| because they fear risking their career makes sense unless
| that clerk fears more for the lives of people they
| know/people like them.
| whymauri wrote:
| I think that's pretty much what the comment is saying,
| yeah. Doesn't seem like a controversial POV that being a
| man _could_ bias expectations when considering who leaked
| the memo (because the emotional investment is different). I
| know the GP uses language people here don 't like, but it's
| not an unreasonable point to make when the core issue
| primarily impacts women.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| Nice to see a Death Note fan.
| jtc331 wrote:
| > In 2018, Bloomberg Businessweek published a story called "The
| Big Hack" that was vigorously denied by Apple and Amazon. Based
| on these denials, certain tech bloggers became convinced that the
| story was false. The fact that neither Apple nor Amazon sued
| Bloomberg for defamation--despite being extremely rich, finicky,
| and litigious--made nary a dent.
|
| No, people concluded that because there were so many holes in the
| Bloomberg reporting that didn't make any sense conceptually.
| gwern wrote:
| And because the people sourced for the story disagreed with it,
| and all the tech & security experts disagreed (as well as
| bloggers), and the journalists in question never followed up
| this incredible bombshell with all of the additional bombshells
| it should've lead right to as further implants were discovered,
| and neither did anyone else ever follow it up, and IIRC, didn't
| some of the journalists quietly leave Bloomberg later? Really,
| quite a lot of things. While against all this, the absence of a
| lawsuit says _very_ little, given how horrible the PR from
| suing is and how pointless it is suing the very rich Bloomberg
| corporation in an American jurisdiction for nebulous damages.
|
| Butterick is being silly here.
| threepio wrote:
| > the journalists in question never followed up this
| incredible bombshell
|
| They did publish more stories on the topic, which are
| collected here:
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/2018-the-big-hack
|
| > IIRC, didn't some of the journalists quietly leave
| Bloomberg later?
|
| AFAIK the authors of The Big Hack, Jordan Robertson and
| Michael Riley, are still employed by Bloomberg. Riley was
| even promoted about a year later:
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/09/17/bloomberg.
| ..
|
| > how horrible the PR from suing is and how pointless it is
| suing the very rich Bloomberg corporation in an American
| jurisdiction for nebulous damages
|
| Based on what? This past year, for instance, Dominion Voting
| Systems sued Fox News and certain individuals for defamation
| and claimed billions in damages
| upofadown wrote:
| That and that there wasn't anything actually defamatory in the
| article against either of those entities. It was just a claim
| that a particular technology existed and that it was used
| maliciously.
| macinjosh wrote:
| I think the author is spot on when he said the leaker is probably
| a non-professional close to someone who has legitimate access to
| these documents. Maybe a soon to be ex-spouse or a politically
| passionate young family member. WFH would have meant a lot of
| potential for unauthorized access.
| res0nat0r wrote:
| If I was leaking something of this magnitude I would be
| *extremely* paranoid, and frankly require that Politico cannot
| publish the PDF itself, but must retype the entire document in-
| full and display it on their website. (Let's hope there aren't
| different versions of the document floating around with slightly
| altered sentences to track down a leaked version).
|
| Reality Winner was caught partly by The Intercept's poor opsec,
| and investigators reviewing the microdots on the PDF scan.
|
| https://blog.erratasec.com/2017/06/how-intercept-outed-reali...
| chasd00 wrote:
| The pdf was probably left on a bar table and a reporter from
| Politico happened to find it before the waiter cleared the table.
| That's about as probably as anything else...
| rayiner wrote:
| > Therefore, I don't think the source is someone who works at the
| Supreme Court, like a justice or a clerk. Justices understand
| that they don't always end up in the majority. Clerks rely on
| these jobs as a calling card for the rest of their careers.
|
| I think people underestimate how ideological the legal profession
| has become. On an increasing number of social issues, liberal
| lawyers (which is 90% of them) believe that their position is not
| only correct, but above debate and above the political and legal
| process. They begrudgingly accept that economic issues are
| subject to political debate, but moral issues are their exclusive
| domain, and politics and law are merely vehicles for imposing the
| moral views of highly educated professionals on the unwashed
| masses.
|
| It doesn't matter that _Roe_ is so bad that numerous prominent
| liberal legal scholars are unable to defend its reasoning:
| https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/honest-pro-choicers-admit....
| It must be the law of the land forever because it's proponents
| are _right_ and it's opponents are "on the wrong side of
| history." The arc of history bends towards justice, after all,
| and no institutional norm can override the march of progress.
|
| A breach of trust like this is obviously a serious offense in a
| profession where keeping people's confidences is fundamental to
| the job. But nonetheless there's plenty of corporate law firms
| where these leakers will be feted, not condemned.
| xenadu02 wrote:
| > liberal lawyers (which is 90% of them)
|
| What is the basis for this claim?
|
| > believe that their position is not only correct but above
| debate and above the political and legal process
|
| You seem to be accusing everyone who disagrees with you of
| malice and abandonment of all principles - more or less evil. I
| would counter that this kind of argument is only ever made in
| bad faith in an attempt to demonize those who don't agree with
| you.
|
| > politics and law are merely vehicles for imposing the moral
| views of highly educated professionals on the unwashed masses.
|
| And one could likewise say that much of conservative thought is
| an attempt to force people to adhere to certain religious
| values using state coercion. But that would just be an opinion,
| not a fact.
|
| What is fact is that many (possibly most?) conservative
| policies and doctrines do not enjoy majority support in the
| United States, yet are being rammed down our throats regardless
| because those policies are a) supported by those in power and
| b) convenient wedge issues or rallying cries for a small
| minority of the voting base - a minority that happens to be
| highly motivated.
|
| Even the current composition of the court was a blatant power
| grab to deny Obama's constitutional right to appoint a justice
| with a made-up rule that it was "too close" to an election.
| Then immediately discarding that so-called rule when Trump was
| in the same position. In that sense the current conservative
| majority is illegitimate. Regardless of how you think any
| specific SCOTUS decision should go I hope you'd agree that a
| court that the majority of Americans believe to be
| illegitimately stacked is not a good thing for the stability of
| our separation of powers.
|
| For that matter the overall tilt toward conservatives in House
| representation thanks to gerrymandering along with over-
| representation of conservative thought in the Senate due to the
| 2-senators-per-state rule undermines the legitimacy of Congress
| and the entire government. You can only get away with
| preventing the majority from being able to enact any
| significant policies for so long before a representative
| government collapses. Granted that might take tens or hundreds
| of years but in the long term it erodes the very foundation of
| our society. I find that very concerning personally but some
| people would rather win at any cost (witness Trump's recent
| loss and the fact that some conservatives attempted to
| sacrifice free & fair elections for a single win of a single
| presidential term. How cheaply they were willing to sell out!)
| avs733 wrote:
| > the bad news for those who contend that the recent leak of a
| draft Supreme Court opinion is "unthinkable" or, in the words of
| Chief Justice Roberts, a "singular and egregious breach"--the
| horse is long out of the barn.
|
| I mean...people know that. The lie is the point. The distraction
| is by intention the point of making the false claim.
| philjohn wrote:
| My money is on Ginny Thomas, seeing the tides shifting and not
| supporting this, decided to put it out.
|
| That news agencies and commentators on the right IMMEDIATELY
| communicated in Lockstep about "this leak is an egregious affront
| to the court" points to that.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > My money is on Ginny Thomas, seeing the tides shifting and
| not supporting this, decided to put it out.
|
| My money is on "no one knows a damn thing," and everyone who
| says otherwise is just pointing fingers at their partisan hate-
| objects.
| buerkle wrote:
| I don't think the right communicating in lockstep about the
| leak instead of the contents of the leak points to any person
| in particular. If nothing else, the right is extremely good at
| keeping their stories in lockstep. In any case, when the
| majority of Americans support upholding roe v wade, it's in the
| right's best interest to keep the story on the leak.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| I would push against using how quickly commentators commentate
| as an example of a leaker allied with a certain side. Tweeting
| takes seconds. A group chat can decide what to do in minutes.
| It likely takes less than an hour to have an emergency press
| release ready to go and instantly disseminate on the internet.
|
| (Fwiw: I don't care who leaked or how leaked. I think people
| should focus more importantly that the legal opinion in the
| draft uses reasoning applicable to any sense of personal
| privacy. It's more than just reproductive rights here, because
| the reasoning is that any rights logically derived from a right
| to privacy are illegitimate.)
| philjohn wrote:
| Disparate news agencies?
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| Yes. They each maybe have one, maybe two big editors, and
| there are only a few major conservative news agencies, then
| they all can definitely be in a group chat! I doubt that
| list of contacts would be over two dozen people and I
| definitely have discord chats bigger than that.
|
| News media if you think about it is a really small world.
| If you're a conservative reporter on national beats how
| many companies can you work for, actually? The national
| review, Fox News, Wall Street journal, OAN? Maybe Cato
| institute? That's only a small handful of possible
| employers.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| > In sum--I'd suppose it's a friend, spouse, or family member of
| a Supreme Court justice who has consistently opposed Roe v. Wade,
| acting with something between autonomy and plausible deniability.
|
| So I'm curious if he wrote this with knowledge about what's been
| going on around Justice Thomas and his wife's behavior [0]. It
| fits pretty perfectly with that narrative, though is totally
| bereft of any actual evidence.
|
| [0] https://apnews.com/article/elections-donald-trump-
| presidenti...
| philjohn wrote:
| Same as lots of other people writing that it's definitely, 100%
| a liberal clerk, and even linking to their supposed suspects
| LinkedIn with 0 evidence?
| mhh__ wrote:
| No one ever learns from the "We did it Reddit" incident.
| ianferrel wrote:
| Near certainty. Someone familiar with the typography of the
| Supreme Court would definitely also be aware of high visibility
| current events around it.
| benmmurphy wrote:
| If Politico knows the identity of the leaker then I think that
| reduces the chance that it was conservative aligned. You have to
| be either mad or have very little to risk to put your trust in
| Politico. If they are 4D chess enough to come up with this game
| theory strategy then I assume they would use washington post
| securedrop (https://www.washingtonpost.com/securedrop/) or
| something similar or at least leak through a non-mainstream
| liberal/non-conservative reporter that can be trusted like
| Greenwald.
| Imnimo wrote:
| I'm somewhat skeptical of attempts to play out the game theory of
| what the leaker's motivations would have been. While I generally
| agree that the author has identified the correct incentives, I'm
| not so convinced that we can sure the leaker would have arrived
| at the same conclusions.
|
| I'd still count this sort of reasoning as evidence, but I'd give
| it significantly lower weight than the author seems to.
| livinginfear wrote:
| Although this might be a bit too conspiratorial for the tastes of
| many. I suspect that this is an act in a larger piece of
| political theatre. Someone showed me this:
| https://who.is/whois/jewishrallyforabortionjustice.org
|
| It's an incredible coincidence that someone knew to have this
| website up and running just ahead of the draft leak:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20220426203219/https://jewishral...
|
| It could be totally unrelated to _this_ abortion controversy,
| however that would be amazing coincidence.
|
| The site maintained by this group:
| https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/national-council-o...
|
| I'm aware of the fact that it's run by Jewish organisations will
| make me the butt of many accusations. All I'm alleging is that
| rumours have probably been moving around the right circles for a
| long time.
| ComradePhil wrote:
| eCa wrote:
| As a western (but non-US) male, anyone who thinks that women
| and couples that discover that they are having an unwanted
| pregnancy, won't (sometimes) go to extreme lengths to end such
| pregnancy, if it isn't lawfully available, is, and I quote:
|
| > absolutely insane to me
| ComradePhil wrote:
| umvi wrote:
| > I believe it's much more likely that the leaker is someone who
| supports the opinion rather than an opponent
|
| > If [the majority bloc in favor of the opinion has held
| together], there's no reason for a supporter or an opponent to
| leak an old draft now.
|
| I don't find the reasoning behind this convincing at all. It
| would make for a good plot twist in a book, but in my opinion the
| leaker was most likely an opponent wanting to spark national
| outrage ahead of the final ruling, in an effort to either
| pressure judges if the outcome can still be changed, or as an act
| of vengeance against the court in retaliation for a ruling they
| feel _extremely_ strongly about.
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| I lean to this - It was leaked by an opponent, but the timing
| was in consultation with a political strategist as to timing.
| Primaries are starting up, and that's why it's now and not
| earlier or later. This is the perfect time to fire up the base
| and get them watching primaries and contributing dollars. The
| leaker may have had idealistic reasons, but the timing feels
| like it's much more cynical.
| philosopher1234 wrote:
| This models the leaker as unsophisticated/naive. It's not clear
| to me that's warranted given they were likely part of the
| Supreme Court staff. The actual effect of leaking this as
| opposed to waiting for it to be announced seems beneficial for
| supporters of the decision not detractors.
| Terry_Roll wrote:
| The actions after the leak, like the barricades going up I
| think was more telling. The intelligence was good enough to
| prompt a knee jerk reaction to protect the building, yet the
| intelligence is not good enough to find the leaker. Something
| doesnt add up!
| nl wrote:
| That makes no sense.
|
| Anyone can predict that this could prompt protests. It's a
| no-brainer to put up barricades.
| 650REDHAIR wrote:
| I read there were barricades before because the person lit
| themselves on fire recently.
| zerocrates wrote:
| It doesn't take much intelligence, under any definition, to
| know that once this leaked there would be protests.
| [deleted]
| gfodor wrote:
| It seems highly unlikely anyone who leaked this was part of
| the core of the institution of the Supreme Court. Selection
| bias kind of leads to an assumption that those who work for
| the court support the neutrality and processes of the court,
| and have much to lose from this action vs possibly marginal
| potential upside. Much more likely is this was either a low
| level or external actor imo.
| db65edfc7996 wrote:
| >...and have much to lose from this action vs possibly
| marginal potential upside
|
| That would be my assumption as well. Clerking at the
| Supreme Court seems like one of the top appointments one
| could possibly achieve. Requiring top tier academics and
| some number of personal connections to secure the position.
| This stunt would destroy all of their future prospects.
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| >Selection bias kind of leads to an assumption that those
| who work for the court support the neutrality and processes
| of the court
|
| That may be true, but a key issue with this reasoning is
| that there has been an increasing opinion that the move to
| overturn _Roe v Wade_ is an explicitly _partisan_ affair
| precipitated by bad-faith manipulations of recent SC
| appointments from the conservative side.
| forgetfulness wrote:
| Roe v Wade is already a result of the politicization of
| the US Supreme Court, which is used an an upper-upper-
| house to pass legislation for which there is no
| consensus, by both parties. This has resulted in a
| continued erosion of institutions.
| [deleted]
| cudgy wrote:
| Clerks work at the Supreme Court for short periods of
| time, and most of these clerks are brilliant people that
| would succeed in almost any job. If a clerk felt strongly
| enough about a polarizing, complex issue such as abortion
| and also knew they would be considered heroes by others
| of similar beliefs, taking an action such as this is not
| only implausible but could quite possibly vault the
| leaker into legendary status.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Institutions with any sort of money prestige power to
| hand out only value loyalty and societies destroy
| defectors because they ultimately don't now and have
| never valued ethics decency or morality. We only like
| rebellion when its a prepackages story about someone
| whose values and loyalty are aligned with the present
| winners about their rebellion against now disgraced and
| powerless losers. We aren't good people we just play them
| on TV.
|
| They would be more likely to get a legendary amount of
| shares on facebook while their actual life crashed even
| if folks didn't find a way to put them in jail based on a
| usefully broad interpretation of the CFAA for example.
|
| One could imagine that they face merely professional ruin
| NOW but face actual legal action only years hence when
| the administration changed for example. It would an
| extremely dubious position to be in.
| zerocrates wrote:
| I think you have an extra "im-" (or a missing "not")
| around "implausible" there.
| anothernewdude wrote:
| > Selection bias kind of leads to an assumption that those
| who work for the court support the neutrality and processes
| of the court
|
| Certainly hasn't been true for those who make up the court.
| It's one of the least legitimate legal courts in the land.
| CPLX wrote:
| I mean the implication here doesn't seem all that subtle.
|
| I think he's kind of pointing in the direction of Clarence
| Thomas's wife, who is a batshit crazy right wing activist
| that was involved in the events of January 6th.
|
| No idea if he's right but it's well within the range of
| plausibility.
| not2b wrote:
| The issue is that the decision was not final; Chief Justice
| Roberts was still trying to persuade other justices to adopt a
| split-the-difference decision (uphold the 15-week law but don't
| kill Roe v Wade). Justices have switched sides before. Leaking
| it could kill any quiet negotiations. There was a second leak
| after the first one about this (about Roberts' position).
|
| So someone on the hard-line anti-abortion side had a motivation
| to do the leak.
| hooande wrote:
| They would have to be _very_ convinced that someone was going
| to flip. And even then there 's a good chance that the
| wavering Justice would see this as a ploy the same as you do,
| and take offense.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _would have to be very convinced that someone was going
| to flip_
|
| The only element making me question the amateurishness of
| this leak is its timing, on the eve of bellwether
| primaries.
| zerocrates wrote:
| The opinion piece from about a week ago in the Wall Street
| Journal reporting this wavering on the margins of the
| conservative bloc points to a more normal, less unprecedented
| type of leak.
|
| So then, one view is that the leak of the draft is just a
| continuation of that effort to hold the line on the full
| overturning, and that view seems pretty sensible. On the
| other hand, what to make of the fact that the leak goes to
| Politico and not somewhere like the Journal? Do you instead
| see it as a disgruntled partisan opponent trying to _counter_
| the likely leaks that led to the WSJ piece? Or simply a minor
| smokescreen?
|
| I don't think there's any reasonable basis to be particularly
| sure either way. My gut leans toward the leak having come
| from the "overturn Roe" camp, but I think most peoples' "gut"
| on this is pretty highly correlated with their personal views
| on the topic.
| masklinn wrote:
| > The issue is that the decision was not final
|
| Wasn't it?
|
| From the descriptions I've seen of the process, the decision
| draft starts circulating once the decision has been taken.
| The language can be softened or hardened, but from what I
| understand here Roe would be dead regardless.
|
| I'd think the possible changes would have been with respect
| to the "blast radius" aka the references to (and explicit
| targeting of) Obergefell, Lawrence, Eisenstadt.
| rayiner wrote:
| Overruling a case isn't an all-or-nothing thing. Upholding
| Mississippi's 15-week ban would simply require the Court to
| acknowledge that Roe's protection of elective second
| trimester abortions turned out to be an error that
| continues to defy international norms and attract public
| opposition.
|
| Overruling that part of _Roe_ doesn't require a meandering
| rant about abortion rights writ large.
| aw1621107 wrote:
| As far as I know the decision isn't necessarily final after
| the initial vote following arguments. A prominent example
| of this is _National Federation of Independent Business v.
| Sebelius_ , where Chief Justice Roberts was reported to
| have initially voted to strike down individual mandate of
| the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare), but later
| changed his mind.
| not2b wrote:
| Yes, this is exactly what I meant when I said that
| justices have switched sides before. I understand that
| there was a draft opinion overturning the ACA when
| Roberts switched sides, though I'm not certain how
| complete it was.
| cudgy wrote:
| In fact, knowing how and why these opinions change during
| this phase could be quite illustrative and interesting.
|
| Would also be interesting to see if Roberts received a
| windfall during his deliberations. Insurance companies
| surely appreciate the individual mandates ... it's the
| closest thing to printing money they could achieve.
|
| Earlier today I heard someone state that historically the
| Supreme Court rules in favor of the large corporate
| interests. My thought at the time was it did not make
| sense, since technically supreme court justices are
| beholden to Noone. What explains this bias on the part of
| the Supreme Court, if it truly exist?
| cortesoft wrote:
| They are beholden to no one AFTER they are appointed.
| They are only appointed, however, if their views match
| the people who are doing the appointing, who are beholden
| to many.
| cudgy wrote:
| Yet there are numerous examples of justices not rendering
| opinions meeting their appointee's expectations. Many of
| these justices serve for decades which is plenty of time
| for any human to change their viewpoints.
| rascul wrote:
| > They are beholden to no one AFTER they are appointed.
|
| Article V of the US constitution makes them ultimately
| beholden to the states. It describes how the constitution
| can be amended. Such an amendment can possibly threaten
| the supreme court. Seems very unlikely to happen, though.
| fsagx wrote:
| _supreme court justices are beholden to Noone. What
| explains this bias on the part of the Supreme Court, if
| it truly exist?_
|
| The people who nominate and confirm them may very well be
| beholden to any number of interests. Lower federal judges
| are also appointed for life. It would be logical that
| those who nominate and confirm would select judges with a
| record that aligns with whatever issues they (and the
| ones they are beholden to) find important.
| cudgy wrote:
| Predicting future human behavior is fraught with
| disappointment. Many justices act unpredictability and
| change opinions over time.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Which is an inherent part of the process of nominating
| anyone to any position. _Selection_ is an inherently
| political process. The goal is to eliminate post
| selection influences.
| bigmattystyles wrote:
| > I believe it's much more likely that the leaker is someone
| who supports the opinion rather than an opponent
|
| I only want this to be true and it to be a justice to see how
| quickly Josh Hawley backs off his threat to impeach said
| justice.
|
| I'm also curious, what kind of source control / collaborative
| tools do they use inside the supreme court? These decisions
| look like LaTeX.
| hbosch wrote:
| There is a similar concept used in commerce, where a product or
| service is "artificially" overpriced and then discounted to
| make it seem like the buyer is getting a good deal.
|
| In the same way, it makes sense to leak an "extreme" draft and
| then modify it after the fires have burned a bit, because you
| still get the benefit of passing unpopular legislation while
| seeming like you compromised on the details (when perhaps the
| final outcome is the one you wished for all along).
|
| On the other hand, it makes some sense to me in some cynical
| ways for the opposition to leak this. We've already seen e-mail
| blasts going out asking for fundraising in the wake of this
| event, which certainly will solicit funds for numerous PACs and
| midterm war chests. Still, though, it's not like public opinion
| often ways heavily on the minds of the court -- they are not
| elected, after all, and do not face the perils of the election
| cycle very much. In fact, this puts much, _much_ more pressure
| on the opposition 's comrades in the presidential and
| congressional seats to come together and act. Pressure which
| may not be welcome ahead of said midterms...
| aaron695 wrote:
| jtc331 wrote:
| > > there's no reason for a supporter or an opponent to leak an
| old draft now.
|
| It's a big assumption that it's an _old_ draft. It could also
| be the last draft circulated, and that everything since has
| been on concurrences or minority opinions.
| Hizonner wrote:
| Maybe, but that would be stupid and ineffective. It would be
| more likely to make them feel like they _could not_ change it.
|
| However, I submit that a _supporter_ of the ruling actually has
| a _smart_ reason to release it early, namely that it 's better
| for them to let any possible backlash calm down before the
| midterm elections.
| reitanqild wrote:
| Another explanation that I have considered today:
|
| Someone really doesn't like that US for once stand united (in
| support for Ukraine).
|
| That someone pulled some strings to leak (or "leak", has it
| been confirmed yet?) this document.
|
| I.O.W. a sign that Gerasimov and his ideas aren't completely
| dead, _yet_.
|
| (I'm no specialist, this just struck me today as I realized
| none of the Americans I follow at Twitter care about the
| ongoing genocide in Europe anymore.)
| trasz wrote:
| It would explain why the draft was written in the first
| place: Russia is known for supporting extremist groups.
| SllX wrote:
| Sarah Isgur and David French of The Dispatch ran through
| basically all of the possibilities and basically came to the
| conclusion it could be anyone but most likely it was just a
| stupid young clerk that never had a real job (University to Law
| School to probably at least two clerkships before a SCOTUS
| clerkship) trying to play politics and not having a strategy,
| or at least a _good_ strategy for what they might accomplish
| here. Theoretically this benefits Republicans, conservatives
| and the religious right more by dropping this bomb early, but
| that's just speculation about future possibilities and we're
| talking about judicial clerks, not political operatives. Given
| that applies to mostly if not all of the clerks under any of
| the Justices, all you're really doing is reading soggy tea
| leaves.
|
| Sarah also pointed out that the Chief Justice has, technically,
| firing power over all of the clerks under any of the Justices,
| and there's maybe a case to be made for him exercising that
| power here to fire all of them if they cannot definitively
| prove who it was after investigation in order to defend the
| integrity of the Court's deliberation process. If they can at
| least narrow down that it was in fact a clerk and not some
| other staffer and definitely not a Justice (probably wasn't,
| but still better to go through the investigation), then I can't
| say I would disagree with that outcome.
| verve_rat wrote:
| Maybe, but while the intention wouldn't be to punish these
| people, the outcome would amount to collective punishment.
| Collective punishment is bad, like so bad it is a war crime,
| if done during a war.
| SllX wrote:
| It's the loss of a job with the nearly guaranteed promise
| of a new one. The hiring bonus for a former SCOTUS clerk
| presently going into a private firm is >$400K. It would be
| a terrible outcome to be sure, but we are a long ways away
| from what you can even think to call a war crime and the
| integrity of the Court is vastly more important to me than
| the integrity of the jobs of its staff.
|
| By the way, the June-July recess is about when clerkships
| turnover and they choose to stay on for another term (at
| the Justice's discretion) or move on in their careers.
| Clerkships aren't forever.
| hirundo wrote:
| And such a clerk could be particularly welcomed by an
| ideologically aligned firm, but less so if they have been
| disbarred as a result, which seems to be a real
| possibility. It could be a great boost to a media or
| political career, but not so much for a legal career.
| SllX wrote:
| If it's a mass firing, do you think disbarring would be
| likely for any or all of them?
|
| I think it's incredibly likely if they determine exactly
| who it is and that person would deserve to see their
| career ended and at that point you would just fire that
| one clerk; but I don't think it is likely at all if they
| were fired en masse because the Court couldn't determine
| the exact culprit. It's not great, but we're still
| talking about a group of people who know how the Court
| operates because they worked there recently, and I think
| it would be difficult to make a case for disbarment for
| the whole lot if the Chief Justice actually did exercise
| this option.
| defen wrote:
| Roberts should simply have the FBI ask each clerk if they
| leaked the document.
|
| If the clerk says yes, fire them.
|
| If the clerk says no, they are either telling the truth
| or committing a felony. Would the real leaker risk
| catching a felony charge if they don't know whether the
| FBI actually knows the identity of the leaker?
|
| If the clerk refuses to answer, apply "adverse inference"
| and fire them, because they are either the leaker or are
| hindering an investigation.
| SllX wrote:
| Maybe I haven't made it clear from this comment chain,
| but I view Sarah's proposal as a last resort if
| investigatory measures fail, as I think Sarah did too
| when she presented it. Right now the Court is conducting
| its own investigation and while Roberts could bring the
| FBI in, he can't control how they conduct an
| investigation and it would present its own dangers to the
| Court itself.
| defen wrote:
| True, he can't control but that's federal law enforcement
| 101 - "get the suspect to lie to you".
| rayiner wrote:
| I can't see any blue state bar taking action on this.
| giarc wrote:
| The argument I heard elsewhere is that the draft was circulated
| a few months ago and therefore if they were against the
| decision, they likely would have leaked it then. However, that
| argument collapses when you consider that it circulated in ~Feb
| but doesn't mean the leaker had it then.
| twblalock wrote:
| The timing makes this more convincing.
|
| If the leaker is someone who is outraged by the decision, why
| didn't they leak it in February when it was first circulated?
| Why wait until now?
|
| Also, keep in mind that the final decision was going to be made
| public in June, several months before the midterm elections.
| That's next month -- the outrage was going to happen soon
| enough. Why jump the gun at such a late date, so close to when
| the decision was going to be public anyway?
| blueelephanttea wrote:
| draw_down wrote:
| [deleted]
| d--b wrote:
| It's mostly not at all something one can deduce from the PDF.
|
| This guy is doing some pretty basic 'forensic' work ('ooh,
| there were staples') and then jumps to a completely self-made
| conclusion. It's ridiculous.
| civilized wrote:
| It's always annoying when something tries so hard to have the
| trappings of logical reasoning but is completely lacking in
| the substance.
| drewcoo wrote:
| It's not about reasoning. It's about excuses for partisan
| squabbling.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Nah. The only one who wins is Alito. It undermines Roberts
| attempts to be more "moderate".
| marcodiego wrote:
| Beware of leaked PDF's. It is very easy to distribute documents
| with small modifications among workers of a company. If any of
| these is leaked, it is easy to track down who leaked it.
| rhexs wrote:
| Are there services that provide this? If so, what are they
| called and who are the vendors?
| Dma54rhs wrote:
| You can just share a document with small differences to
| suspected moles. You don't jsv to even change the text, typo
| or comma here and there sufficient. Football (soccer) coaches
| have used the tactic to identify who from their own team
| leaks stuff to the press etc, it's s very old tactic.
| jliptzin wrote:
| No one seems to have considered the possibility that it's just a
| leak in the classic sense - maybe a janitor or electrician or
| painter came across a copy of the document, recognized its value
| and sold it to politico purely for monetary gain.
| dzmien wrote:
| That this was the work of an otherwise uninvolved opportunist
| is always a possibility (it came to mind while considering that
| the document was from Feb 10, unmarked, and had been stapled),
| but I am almost certain it was not done for financial gain.
| Maybe I am naive, but I do not think news organizations pay
| their confidential sources very much for their trouble. So it
| just seems unlikely in this case.
| js2 wrote:
| As long as we're using a divining rod to try to derive the
| source, what does it tell us that the document was leaked to
| Politico and not the NYT, WaPo, WSJ, Wikileaks or some other org?
| ksherlock wrote:
| SCOTUS rules require submissions use the Century family (Century
| Schoolbook, etc) font, and it seems reasonable that's what their
| opinions use (as opposed to CMR which would imply LaTeX).
| ParksNet wrote:
| This is all just a wedge issue to distract from the disastrous
| management of the US economy, the US border with Mexico, and
| failed COVID policies. The timing - 6 months before midterms - is
| deliberate.
| vmception wrote:
| The final opinion would come out 2 or 3 months before midterms
| either way, because all opinions come out over summer.
|
| Have you consider grasping at _different_ straws?
| throwmeariver1 wrote:
| the economy was up before the war in Ukraine, dow had its best
| time ever even through covid, the caravans never arrived and
| covid killed itself. Are we living in different countries or
| are you just mad?
| zdragnar wrote:
| It's a little early for that, IMHO. Unless they were worried
| the final ruling wouldn't become public until after the
| midterms, I rather suspect they would have preferred an August
| or late September release to cover up their poor polling.
|
| OTOH, if I were motivated to prevent this from affecting the
| midterms, I'd want it out as soon as possible to let people
| blow off their steam and for the news cycle to move onto other
| issues before the campaign season begins again.
|
| Although support for late term abortions is quite low, support
| for Roe v. Wade itself is quite high (insofar as that it
| legalizes abortion, in general). As an election season issue,
| overturning Roe v. Wade hurts the republicans more than it
| helps the democrats.
| doliveira wrote:
| Making sense in your head isn't enough to make a claim factual.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| If the government was that competent at releasing propaganda to
| distract from ongoing crisises at hyper convenient moments
| wouldn't you think they'd have much better ways of convincing
| people to mask, isolate, and vax?
| tablespoon wrote:
| > (This dynamic isn't limited to political reporting. In 2018,
| Bloomberg Businessweek published a story called "The Big Hack"
| that was vigorously denied by Apple and Amazon. Based on these
| denials, certain tech bloggers became convinced that the story
| was false. The fact that neither Apple nor Amazon sued Bloomberg
| for defamation--despite being extremely rich, finicky, and
| litigious--made nary a dent.)
|
| That's an interesting point!
|
| > But Politico has a strong incentive to protect their source. By
| making their own scan from a paper original, they wouldn't open
| themselves up to the disclosures of confidential information that
| have tripped up others. (That said, printed documents are not
| necessarily free of metadata, as Reality Winner found out the
| hard way.)
|
| If you color-scan a printed document at low-enough resolution,
| will it corrupt the color-printer dot patterns or are they
| resilient to that?
|
| > I conclude it must be someone who only had access to a stapled,
| printed copy of the draft opinion. (If the person had access to
| the underlying digital file, they wouldn't have printed & stapled
| it just to unstaple it.)
|
| IMHO, the author is reading too much into that and many other
| things. The impression I get is he already has a favored suspect
| (who is obvious though he doesn't name her), and his whole
| analysis is looking to find a path to finger that person.
|
| It's totally plausible to me that a moderately savvy leaker with
| a digital file would leak a printed copy to protect themselves
| from metadata, and that Politico just used lesser equipment that
| the author _assumes_ they would have. Quick and dirty is more
| often the rule than careful and perfect.
|
| Even the meaning of the staple may be very unclear: at work I
| print _everything_ stapled, because I set it as a default in my
| print settings. If for some reason I realize I don 't want it,
| it's actually easier for me to remove it than to go back to my
| desk to print another copy after changing the setting and go back
| to the printer.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| > The fact that neither Apple nor Amazon sued Bloomberg for
| defamation--despite being extremely rich, finicky, and
| litigious--made nary a dent
|
| For private individuals, the thresholds for defamation lower.
| But for public officials, and corporations defamation is nearly
| impossible to prove. It's not enough to prove that the
| statements made were false, it's also necessary to prove that
| they were made with malicious intent. Unless there's some
| bombshell piece of evidence, like journalists actively
| conspiring to tear down a target, the journalists can just say
| "well, we were just writing a piece interesting for our
| readers."
|
| The 9-0 supreme court case that set this precedence:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Times_Co._v._Sullivan
| vel0city wrote:
| > were made with malicious intent
|
| That's not what "actual malice" means. Actual malice means:
|
| > with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard
| of whether it was false or not
|
| So its not just that they wanted to harm the person, but that
| they took reckless disregard to whether it was true or not.
| Essentially, writing something without even doing a bit of
| fact finding to try and support it would be considered
| "actual malice". You don't need to prove the defendant wanted
| to harm the person being libeled, just that they didn't care
| whether or not what they were saying was true or not.
| Hizonner wrote:
| Not to mention that suing over something like that would just
| have called attention to it. There's no universe in which
| Apple or Amazon would actually benefit from filing that kind
| of lawsuit even if they _won_ it. And there are relatively
| few universes in which whoever was making the decision would
| be dumb enough to _think_ they 'd benefit.
| pvg wrote:
| _That 's an interesting point!_
|
| It's not really, it's a misunderstanding of both the US
| defamation legal landscape and the typical behaviour of large
| corporations in such circumstances. A news org getting a story
| wrong is not defamation and statistically nobody sues over
| stuff like that because it's nigh-impossible to win.
| ghaff wrote:
| And whether or not we ever know the truth, such as it is,
| it's pretty clear to me that the companies involved sincerely
| believe their positions at an executive level and that BBW
| editors really believe their position for whatever reason.
| The whole thing is very strange.
| MrMetlHed wrote:
| I imagine the Supreme Court is an environment where everyone
| prints everything. Everyone is in their 50s (some in their 70s)
| and they probably print and annotate everything manually. I
| imagine there are copies of everything floating around and
| picking one up and making another copy wouldn't be all that
| difficult.
|
| I also wouldn't assume Politico has full staff in office yet,
| and it wouldn't surprise me if they made a scan-of-a-handed-
| off-copy on a personal device to get to their web staff. It's
| pretty brave of them putting it online as a scan still, I think
| I'd have retyped or taken closer care to crop out the edges and
| all that just in case (source: Am journalist.) But maybe they
| handed it to someone in digital forensics and ensured any sort
| of microdots were stripped out. I worry about words being
| switched on a per-copy basis as a trap (Tom Clancy used it as a
| plot device ages ago and it stuck with me,) so maybe they knew
| it was a copy that floated around and couldn't be traced, or
| they're not as paranoid as me.
| er4hn wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_Identification_Code
|
| The visibility section of the wiki link suggests that they may
| be resilient. They are printed using a low visibility color
| (light shade of yellow) which can be made visible via post
| processing. While they do note using a high resolution scanner,
| I suspect that could be made less important by building
| redundancy into the MIC, a la how QR codes can function well
| despite having portions be damaged or missing.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| I wonder if anyone has looked at the leak for a MIC/yellow
| dots. It contains a color channel (see highlighting) so it is
| plausible it could, even if re-scanned.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| I quickly isolated the blue channel of the document and
| ramped up the saturation (which should emphasize yellows),
| but I can't find any obvious dots (even at 10x zoom). AFAIK
| it's not the only method in use though, just the most well
| known.
| zerocrates wrote:
| I was thinking along those Reality Winner lines that if I were
| an organization today getting a leaked document like this, what
| I would do would be to print it and then scan it grayscale and
| post that. Thereby being sure to avoid issues of embedded
| metadata and probably making it at least harder to read things
| like sneaky printer codes. Not that I'd really expect the
| Supreme Court to use something like that, but just as a general
| principle. Obviously this wouldn't be foolproof (something as
| simple as having a subtly different version of that office
| routing "stamp" on page 1 for different recipients would
| suffice to narrow things down a lot) but good practice anyway.
|
| Other than it being color, that's what I would have assumed was
| done here, except the staple holes and relatively decent image
| quality do seem to argue against it.
| MrMetlHed wrote:
| You either print and rescan and crop the edges, or you type
| it all out yourself. It'd be safest to never put it online at
| all other than paraphrased summaries. The next safest would
| be to just type it all out yourself in your own words, but
| it's pretty darn difficult to do when you've got legalese.
| Politico must have had reason to believe they're in the clear
| there. Maybe they had two copies or they knew their source
| got a shared copy that couldn't be traced. Journalists lose
| sleep over this.
| scarmig wrote:
| I've always thought that the best approach would be to embed
| some kind of steganographic identifier in the rendered text.
| Small variations in the spacing or even kerning.
|
| The simplest way to get around that would be to retype the
| whole document, which is a bunch of friction. But to counter
| that, more invasively, the texts different people would get
| could be different themselves. Sentences subtly reordered,
| slight differences in word choice or spelling. Though that
| makes collaboration more difficult.
|
| Less technical savvy but resourced organizations wouldn't
| face difficulty using those approaches. It could just be a
| bit that an IT admin toggles on the GSuite or MS Office admin
| panel.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| You could use OCR, and reproduce it as all ASCII.
| Apparently EVE Online guilds would start to put minor
| variations in the text of memos, or even alter critical
| information (like changing timing of convoys or attacks by
| a few minutes) to weasel out informants.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| Printers have done this since the 1980s
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_Identification_Code
| scarmig wrote:
| That's the watermark, which is well known. Low resolution
| scans of the original document can counteract them (...I
| think...), so I'm brainstorming (dystopian) alternatives.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| I misunderstood the intent it seems.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Sentences subtly reordered, slight differences in word
| voice or spelling. Though that makes collaboration more
| difficult.
|
| I think that would make collaboration impossible. If that
| were standard practice collaboration would eventually
| uncover that was occurring, and a leaker would compensate.
|
| IMHO that technique is only valid when the recipients can
| be assumed to _not_ be in contact, or as an unusual thing
| to identify a leaker when one is already suspected.
| scarmig wrote:
| > If that were standard practice collaboration would
| eventually uncover that was occurring, and a leaker would
| compensate.
|
| I don't think that's really the issue. Let's suppose you
| have 64 employees with access to a doc. You can uniquely
| identify them with 6 bits in the doc. A doc of a couple
| pages would be more than enough to put in those bits, and
| many more. Even if you had two collaborators who shared
| docs for a word for word diff, they'd still miss half the
| identifying bits, which reduces the potential culprit
| pool to 8, and that's assuming zero redundancy.
|
| The issue I imagine is more usability. Someone identifies
| one of those bits as content that should be changed: what
| happens when they suggest the edit?
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Even if you had two collaborators who shared docs for a
| word for word diff, they'd still miss half the
| identifying bits, which reduces the potential culprit
| pool to 8, and that's assuming zero redundancy.
|
| That's not really what I'm talking about. It seems like
| you're focusing on identifying all the exact bits that
| are being used to identify someone, _but that 's not
| important_. What _is_ important is the recipients
| figuring out that _someone_ is monkeying with the
| documents in a systematic way to trace them. Once a
| leaker knows that, instead of leaking the exact document
| for publication, they 'd either leak reworded summary of
| key points themselves, or require the journalist to only
| publish something similar.
| dorfsmay wrote:
| Why not OCR the document to limit traceability?
| ghaff wrote:
| Fewer potential clues but also less credibility I expect.
|
| OCR also isn't going to be 100% though probably more than
| good enough in this case. If you really want to implement
| subtle tracking, you could make changes in the document
| itself that differ by recipient.
| zerocrates wrote:
| Sure you could do that too. You mean, just release it as
| text, I assume. It would certainly cut out a lot of
| possible methods of fingerprinting, leaving actual changes
| to the text only pretty much, which are probably not as
| common outside some limited scenarios.
|
| I think the reason you don't do that is that things like
| the formatting and so on being accurate lend credibility to
| the document.
| scythe wrote:
| >If you color-scan a printed document at low-enough resolution,
| will it corrupt the color-printer dot patterns or are they
| resilient to that?
|
| I think that if you used Fourier analysis, you could identify
| the frequency generally associated with the dot size, and
| delete the signal in that band. This can also be used to
| achieve excellent reduction of the Moire effect:
|
| https://www.getrevue.co/profile/shift-happens/issues/moire-n...
|
| https://ijournals.in/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/5.3106-Khanj...
|
| This has the advantage of also not reducing the image quality
| as badly as when you try to blur the patterns away spatially.
| fluidcruft wrote:
| > If you color-scan a printed document at low-enough
| resolution, will it corrupt the color-printer dot patterns or
| are they resilient to that?
|
| It should be completely trivial to destroy any markings in the
| PDF. Black and white text in particular once scanned can just
| be thresholded and passed through filters. Heck it seems like a
| trivial application of deep learning to obfuscate text. For
| example, it would be interesting to train a transformer to
| learn degradation from multiple print/scan cycles using the
| same source using different printers and scanners so that it
| learns how to fake all sorts of imprecision.
| aksss wrote:
| Some of Author's conclusions just seem like failures of
| imagination:
|
| * "it must be someone who only had access to a stapled, printed
| copy of the draft opinion (If the person had access to the
| underlying digital file, they wouldn't have printed & stapled it
| just to unstaple it.)"
|
| * "I don't think the leaker was an opponent of the opinion,
| because there would be no tactical value in doing so."
|
| On the former, that assumes it's less risky to grab a digital
| copy (copied to some medium plugged into some machine, likely
| audited, maybe rights protected), than to smuggle out (and
| smuggle back in?) a physical copy. The latter is super low-tech
| and in an environment where (as demonstrated by Roberts' press
| release) the trust level is super high, I wonder how hard it is
| to smuggle out paper copies. There's all sorts of potential black
| magic in a digital copy that the tech unsavvy may (rightfully) be
| afraid of. So even if you had access to both, low-tech may be
| best.
|
| On the latter, it's usually not wise to put your own rational
| thoughts into the head of a suspect. You need to understand
| *their* "rational" thoughts. It's not too hard for me to imagine
| some perceived benefits that an opponent or proponent of the
| opinion would see in the leak.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-05-04 23:00 UTC)