While Epstein’s victims endure the fallout of their photos and names being exposed in the Department of Justice’s latest tranche of files, investigators redacted a photo of the Mona Lisa. Now we know why.

The Department of Justice redacted the face of the Mona Lisa, a 522-year-old painting of an Italian woman who died centuries ago, as part of its release of files related to the late convicted sex offender Jeffery Epstein.

In a PDF of an email with the subject line “simply paris” sent on July 3, 2009, a redacted sender sent Epstein several photos of, presumably, himself and a woman sightseeing in Paris. The photos of the woman are all redacted with a black box over her face, but the man’s face is visible.

The photos are from tourist locations like Disneyland Paris, the Versailles fountains, and the Louvre, where the Mona Lisa is installed. “We just walked around all over the city not just the sight seeing…we took like 1500 pictures so was really difficult to decide wich to send! :)” the sender wrote at the end of the email.

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  • BremboTheFourth@piefed.caEnglish
    43·
    1 day ago

    This is just such a weird thing to call out as a lie. Pretty sure you’re only doing it so you can validate your snap conclusion. Why would they lie about this? Its not like it makes them look better; pasting some victim’s face over a revered piece of artwork so they can pervertedly leer at both simultaneously is not projecting the image they want. Maybe stick to calling out consequential, evident lies.

    • Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.worldEnglish
      12·
      1 day ago

      Why would they lie about this?

      To hide the fact that the redactions are decided by AI and the files could have been released months ago.

      • BremboTheFourth@piefed.caEnglish
        21·
        1 day ago

        But, like, this one specifically. There are a hundred better examples you could point to for this. Earlier I saw a headline that there are censored random words like “and” or even “I.” But claiming they lied about there being a real person’s face on there is just self serving.

        • Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.worldEnglish
          72·
          1 day ago

          But, like, this one specifically

          Because it is a ridiculous example that is highly memeable. DoJ was so lazy they even censored the most famous face in the world.

          But claiming they lied about there being a real person’s face on there is just self serving.

          Trust in justice is so low that we don’t believe their explanation for censorship. There is no serving of self in that statement.