Recreating Epstein PDFs from raw encoded attachments
The Department of Justice's release of Epstein documents is marred by astonishing technical incompetence, specifically in the botched handling of base64-encoded PDF attachments. This deep dive details the frustrating, almost impossible, process of recovering obscured files due to abysmal OCR and poor font choices. It's popular on HN for exposing government tech failure and inviting a community challenge to solve a complex data recovery puzzle with high-stakes implications.
The Lowdown
The DoJ's recent release of Epstein-related documents has drawn criticism not only for redactions but also for profound technical ineptitude, particularly concerning data integrity. Mahmoud Al-Qudsi's investigation reveals how a seemingly simple task—recovering an embedded PDF attachment—became an arduous technical challenge due to the DoJ's shoddy processing.
- The DoJ's document release included emails with binary attachments base64-encoded directly into the text, which were then poorly OCR'd into PDFs.
- An example, a 76-page base64 string intended to be a PDF invitation, was rendered unrecoverable by the DoJ's incompetent OCR process, which introduced errors and non-base64 characters.
- The author attempted recovery using various OCR tools, including Adobe Acrobat Pro, Tesseract, and AWS Textract, each producing unsatisfactory or inconsistent results.
- A significant obstacle was the use of Courier New font, which, especially in low-resolution scans, makes distinguishing between '1' (one) and 'l' (ell) nearly impossible for both humans and machines.
- Despite efforts like image scaling, the resulting base64 data remains too corrupted for standard PDF tools to decompress.
- The article concludes by issuing a 'nerdsnipe' challenge to the community to attempt reconstructing the original PDF and locating other hidden attachments, providing source files for assistance.
This technical saga underscores the critical importance of proper data handling in sensitive document releases, highlighting how poor digital hygiene can inadvertently obscure crucial information and undermine transparency.