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The National Archives [USA] are asking for volunteers to transcribe thousands of pages of declassified CIA documents. To assist, you have to log in to the National Archives Catalog. The endeavour is part of Sunshine Week which is an open-government initiative, started by a group of newspaper editors, to educate people about the importance of government transparency and the dangers of excessive state secrecy.
You can browse some of the raw documents here.
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Crowdsourcing the Transcription of CIA Documents
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ANN JILLIAN'S HAIR makes LONI ANDERSON'S HAIR look like RICARDO
MONTALBAN'S HAIR!
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Pseudonymous Coward on Friday March 20 2015, @10:44AM
This gem. [archives.gov]
"█████████████ WEAPONS"?
How much you wanna bet that's either "biochemical" or "thermonuclear"?
"Future deployments will be approved by Presidential memorandum to the Secretary of Defense."
Well...
(Score: 2) by prospectacle on Friday March 20 2015, @12:27PM
That's interesting. Given it's a fixed width font, we can narrow down the possibilities (assuming that's a scan of the original document, and they hadn't known when writing it which words were going to be redacted and so added extra spaces or anything).
It has to be exactly 18 letters long. That rules out "nuclear", "chemical", or "biological". What could it be?
If a plan isn't flexible it isn't realistic
(Score: 1) by Pseudonymous Coward on Friday March 20 2015, @12:39PM
It is likely to be exactly or less than 18 letters long, they can black out more than is necessary to throw people off trying to do what we're doing. ('context analysis'?)
It's also a possibility that the word is longer than the blacked text and it's been whited out or photo shopped.
The GIMP has a grid tool that is excellent for trying to determine the length of the blacked out text.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Friday March 20 2015, @11:31PM
nuclear/biological ?
012345789012345678
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Friday March 20 2015, @11:35PM
And I missed a number. How about:
nuclear or chemical
0123456789012345678
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Saturday March 21 2015, @10:40AM
If you look closely, there is the edge of a couple of descenders above the i and t in restricted.
Could be g, j, p, q, or y.
q and j are not visible in the document.
The one above i doesn't seem to match g, p, or y. It is offset in a way that might match q, or it might be an artifact.
The second one seems to be a y
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ? _ y _ _ _ _ _
The second body redaction is probably "facilities".
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Friday March 20 2015, @06:32PM
What the hell is the point of "declassifying" that document? They may as well "declassify" everything and link 1 billion copies of a black image.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by VortexCortex on Saturday March 21 2015, @08:26AM
That's racist.
(Score: 1) by forkazoo on Saturday March 21 2015, @09:12AM
Given the phrasing, Nukes seem unlikely. My guess would be either chemical or biological. Nukes were already in large scale production, deployed outside of the US, and issued to combat units for decades by the time of that memo. If it were Nukes, it would have to be something very specific, but even the very classified backpack nukes were at least deployed to Germany, so it doesn't really fit. It may be "chemical/biological" but it might also be something very specific that won't be obvious without some context.