The first rule of journalism? Follow the metadata

Thank you Microsoft! The hidden features you leave turned on by default help journalists reveal the influence of money in politics.

A draft letter purportedly circulated by Bill Lockyer to fellow state attorneys general characterizes P2P software as a "dangerous product" and describes the failure of technology makers to warn consumers of those dangers as a deceptive trade practice.

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However, the metadata associated with the Microsoft Word document indicates it was either drafted or reviewed by a senior vice president of the Motion Picture Association of America. According to this metadata (automatically generated by the Word application), the document's author or editor is "stevensonv." (The metadata of a document is viewable through the File menu under Properties.)

Sources tell Wired News that the draft letter's authorship is attributed to Vans Stevenson, the MPAA's senior vice president for state legislative affairs. MPAA representatives have issued similar criticisms of P2P technology in the past. Stevenson could not be reached for comment.

Unfortunately, computer illiteracy also ends up compromising our national interests:

A classified 1954 CIA file recently released on the web in redacted form by the New York Times, is being re-released by a noted cypherpunk archivist with the names of foreign agents restored, courtesy of a blunder in the method the newspaper used to conceal that information.

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Tim Sullivan, CEO of activePDF, a maker of server side PDF tools, analyzed a page of the original file at SecurityFocus.com's request. "The application that created it was Adobe Photoshop for the Mac," said Sullivan. "They created another layer in Photoshop, and drew a black box over it. And so what's happening is you have one layer that's the content, which is the scanned-in page, and then another layer that's overlaid on top. On a slow machine, you see it displayed."

Someone using a binary editor could modify the document to prevent the opaque black lines and boxes from appearing at all, said Sullivan, and an Adobe plug-in might allow someone to simply slide the black boxes away. "They [the Times] should have used the eraser tool to erase all the pixels, and then draw the box over it," said Sullivan, "or merged the two layers."