Hello David,
I'm well aware of Mat2 it's a great tool, and have heard about the GUI "Metadata Cleaner" for it no longer being maintained.
Will Mat2 remove PII from flat files and structured databases?
That is more what I'm looking at I know there is some kind of python libraries used for this and I thought there was GUI tool somewhere but maybe I'm getting confused with ones that are for local management of websites or self hosting.
GreyFedora
On Sunday, April 20th, 2025 at 04:33, tails-dev-request@??? <tails-dev-request@???> wrote:
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> Today's Topics:
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> 1. No data masking tools included? (GreyFedora)
> 2. Re: No data masking tools included? (David A. Wheeler)
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> Message: 1
> Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2025 19:20:52 +0000
> From: GreyFedora GreyFedora1913@???
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> To: "tails-dev@???" tails-dev@???
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> Subject: [Tails-dev] No data masking tools included?
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> How come no tools included in Tails to remove PII from database files or data masking software to protect confidential sources in whistleblowing or leaking?
>
>
> thankee,
>
> GreyFedora
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> ------------------------------
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> Message: 2
> Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2025 17:43:00 -0400
> From: "David A. Wheeler" dwheeler@???
>
> To: The Tails public development discussion list tails-dev@???
>
> Cc: GreyFedora GreyFedora1913@???
>
> Subject: Re: [Tails-dev] No data masking tools included?
> Message-ID: 201B9F5D-4612-4270-A241-DF595FD581A4@???
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> > On Apr 19, 2025, at 3:20 PM, GreyFedora via Tails-dev tails-dev@??? wrote:
> >
> > How come no tools included in Tails to remove PII from database files or data masking software to protect confidential sources in whistleblowing or leaking?
>
>
> Hi! I'm not a Tails maintainer, but I can take a stab at answering this question
> based on observations of this mailing list. A real Tails maintainer can give you
> a more definitive answer.
>
> 1. Generally the Tails maintainers want to only add software that is already
> packaged in Debian. Thankfully, metadata-cleaner meets this requirement.
> 2. That software must be maintained. That's a problem. On 2025-01-23 in
> message "Metadata Cleaner is looking for a new co-maintainer" it was noted that
> "Unfortunately, the future of Metadata Cleaner is compromised: it has
> no active maintainer anymore."
> 3. Generally the Tails maintainers are trying to strike a balance. They want to provide
> enough 'general use" functionality so you don't have to install anything else, but each
> package they add potentially adds new attacks, so they don't want to add too much.
>
> Details below. I hope that helps.
>
> --- David A. Wheeler
>
> === Details ===
>
> Currently you can get this functionality by installing the package
> metadata-cleaner, which is a GTK GUI frontend for mat2.
> I've never used it, and I have no idea how good it is. A few comments here:
> https://www.omglinux.com/metadata-cleaner-app-for-linux/
> I suggest you investigate it, examining its results, and report back on
> how well it works. It'd be great if you could find or create a test suite
> to see how well it really does remove metadata. That would address point 1.
>
> I don't know if anyone has stepped up to implement point 2. That
> matters obviously :-).
>
> You could also investigate how much more code it adds & whether or not
> this is widely-needed functionality, meeting point 3. I could see this software
> meeting the bar for point 3 ("it is widely useful for intended users").
> Reporters would often need this in particular to justify claims while
> shielding sources.
>
> I could especially see an argument for it if the
> Tails developers take additional steps to harden the software
> (e.g., implement bubblewrap on some of the lower-level functions and/or
> recompile some C code with hardened options like those identified by
> OpenSSF).
>
>
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