OOPSIE! ICE Fails To Properly Redact Document, Reveals Location Of Future 'Urban Warfare' Training Facility
"The immigration agency had sought to redact the location of the new training facility, but failed to do so properly. The agency, which has made this kind of mistake previously, appears to have a systemic information-security problem. In this case, Newsweek was able to simply copy and paste the document's contents into a word processor and quickly establish that the facility would be built at the Office of Firearms and Tactical Programs' (OFTP) Tactical Operations Complex (TOC) at Fort Benning, Georgia, a U.S. Army post used to prepare soldiers for combat. In addition to revealing Fort Benning as the location of the training site, ICE also failed to properly redact information indicating that the Army post would be getting an expansion, with up to 50 buildings expected to be added to the site. "A Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) vehicle will be competed among GSA Federal Supply Schedule holders for additional training buildings and interior/exterior outfitting in the first quarter of Fiscal Year 20," ICE states in a portion it did not attempt to redact from the document. In a following partially redacted line, it states: "OFTP plans to expand the Training Site at Ft. Benning to include up to 50 additional buildings and add additional U.S. city layouts and designs." Throughout the document, areas that were meant to be withheld were not redacted properly, including signature lines at the bottom of the document. Instead of names, these would-be redacted lines contain what appears to be placeholders, such as "ijunynyhhjhjhjjjjjjj," "hnjumgfrdddfffffff" and "BHMKKOOOOOO." ICE's new training facility is expected to include,"at a minimum," a "multitude of basic, intermediate and hyper-realistic training devices, a tactical training warehouse, classroom facilities and vehicle assault training area." Among those training devices will be a "hyper-realistic props/design" that simulates "residential houses, apartments, hotels, government facilities and commercial buildings," along with other training configurations. ICE is specifically interested in acquiring a "Chicago" style replica, as well as an "Arizona" style replica, with the agency expecting to dedicate a total estimated value of $961,347.75 to the effort." More, including Dox, at NewsWeek: https://www.newsweek.com/ice-fails-redact-document-reveals-location-urban-wa... Rr Sent from my Androgyne dee-vice with K-9 Mail
Redaction errors from .gov are surprisingly common. The court reporter at Barrett Brown's first (of two) sentencing hearing provided a transcript of that proceeding. The PDF included black redaction squares censoring her transcribed text of two bench conference.s All I had to do to liberate that text from redaction was use the PDF program Okular: I clicked "Selection", highlighted the redacted text, picked "Copy to clipboard", and pasted the clipboard contents into a text editor. Info here if anyone's curious - http://douglaslucas.com/files/Unredacted_BBLOL_BenchConferences.html - my article mentioned and linked is now no longer up at Revolution News, but it is on Wayback Machine. On 2019-09-11 20:40, Razer wrote:
"The immigration agency had sought to redact the location of the new training facility, but failed to do so properly. The agency, which has made this kind of mistake previously, appears to have a systemic information-security problem.
In this case, Newsweek was able to simply copy and paste the document's contents into a word processor and quickly establish that the facility would be built at the Office of Firearms and Tactical Programs' (OFTP) Tactical Operations Complex (TOC) at Fort Benning, Georgia, a U.S. Army post used to prepare soldiers for combat.
In addition to revealing Fort Benning as the location of the training site, ICE also failed to properly redact information indicating that the Army post would be getting an expansion, with up to 50 buildings expected to be added to the site.
"A Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) vehicle will be competed among GSA Federal Supply Schedule holders for additional training buildings and interior/exterior outfitting in the first quarter of Fiscal Year 20," ICE states in a portion it did not attempt to redact from the document.
In a following partially redacted line, it states: "OFTP plans to expand the Training Site at Ft. Benning to include up to 50 additional buildings and add additional U.S. city layouts and designs." Throughout the document, areas that were meant to be withheld were not redacted properly, including signature lines at the bottom of the document. Instead of names, these would-be redacted lines contain what appears to be placeholders, such as "ijunynyhhjhjhjjjjjjj," "hnjumgfrdddfffffff" and "BHMKKOOOOOO."
ICE's new training facility is expected to include,"at a minimum," a "multitude of basic, intermediate and hyper-realistic training devices, a tactical training warehouse, classroom facilities and vehicle assault training area."
Among those training devices will be a "hyper-realistic props/design" that simulates "residential houses, apartments, hotels, government facilities and commercial buildings," along with other training configurations.
ICE is specifically interested in acquiring a "Chicago" style replica, as well as an "Arizona" style replica, with the agency expecting to dedicate a total estimated value of $961,347.75 to the effort."
More, including Dox, at NewsWeek: https://www.newsweek.com/ice-fails-redact-document-reveals-location-urban-wa... Rr Sent from my Androgyne dee-vice with K-9 Mail
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ On Thursday, September 12, 2019 4:43 AM, Douglas Lucas <dal@riseup.net> wrote:
Redaction errors from .gov are surprisingly common.
The court reporter at Barrett Brown's first (of two) sentencing hearing provided a transcript of that proceeding. The PDF included black redaction squares censoring her transcribed text of two bench conference.s All I had to do to liberate that text from redaction was use the PDF program Okular: I clicked "Selection", highlighted the redacted text, picked "Copy to clipboard", and pasted the clipboard contents into a text editor.
way back when (early 00's) i used this technique to search for PDF court documents with "CONFIDENTIAL", "PROPRIETARY" keywords and used the same trick to un-redact the telco information regarding fiber plats, routes (rights of way), and capacities. there was a lot of litigation among telcos, municipal governments, and others during this time :) i always assumed this trick would die a quick death... alas, here we are! ... i really want a shodan for shoddy redactions.
participants (3)
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coderman -
Douglas Lucas -
Razer