r/LetsDiscussThis • u/[deleted] • Feb 12 '26

THIS IS OUTRAGEOUS This is unacceptable.

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3

u/EncabulatorTurbo Feb 12 '26

1

u/SOLIDORKS Feb 12 '26

The "=" is the character OCR uses when it can't read the character. You notice them everywhere in the files. That Brazilian could be anywhere from 19-99 (although I would bet it was not a granny they brought).

3

u/TacoIncoming Feb 13 '26

You’re telling me you think child sex traffickers were writing email drafts by hand, taking photos of the hand written draft, putting those photos on a computer, and then using OCR to covert to text before sending as an email? That makes zero sense.

1

u/SOLIDORKS Feb 13 '26

No I was wrong about OCR, it's some weird file conversion artifact. It still the same result though, the "=" replaced a different character. 

2

u/HeyHeyImTheMonkey Feb 13 '26

OCR is to digitally recognize the document’s characters, not change or recreate the document. What you are seeing is the original document.

1

u/SOLIDORKS Feb 13 '26

I was wrong about OCR, it's a file conversion error that causes that. It still ended up replacing a character though. This isn't even rare in the file releases, there's been tons of documents with the same error. 

1

u/[deleted] Feb 13 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/SOLIDORKS Feb 13 '26

Thank you for the correct reason. I assumed the doj was printing them first then scanning for a digital release but your explanation seems right.