Release 3 fixed every metadata leak that defined releases 1 and 2
Comparing the metadata profile of release 3 (June 12) against releases 1 and 2 (May 8 and May 22), every category of Tier-1 finding from the first two releases — PDF title mismatches, named individuals in video credits, placeholder VIRINs, city-level location leaks, scanner fingerprint variety — drops to zero in release 3. The Department of War's metadata-scrubbing process measurably tightened between releases.
This is the most interesting finding *about* PURSUE rather than *within* it. Releases 1 and 2 leaked operational tradecraft through PDF metadata, DVIDS records, and orphaned filenames — that's why findings 2 through 13 exist. Release 3 has zero of those leaks. Either someone at the DoW publishing pipeline reads pages like this one and tightened the process, or they got better the second time on their own. Either way: it tells you future PURSUE releases will be cleaner than the first two, and that the historical record-of-record for this release program is the *first two* releases, not the most recent one.
By the numbers
Evidence
Counts come from per-release analysis of every PDF (/Title, /Creator, /Producer, /Author fields via PyMuPDF) and every DVIDS video JSON in the mirror.
Metadata leak indicators, before-and-after
| Indicator | Release 1 + 2 | Release 3 |
|---|---|---|
| PDFs with /Title disagreeing with public catalog title | 35+ (incl. D20 country/year, Cable 2 Tajikistan, all D→PR relabels, all NARA shelfmarks) | 0 |
| Distinct /Creator values (scanner/tool fingerprints) | 13 (HP 9100C, ScanSnap SV600, PaperStream 5.1, LuraDocument, Photoshop, Acrobat, Word, PowerPoint, PScript5.dll, PaperStream Capture, Aspose, PFU PDF Engine, macOS Quartz) | 3 (Microsoft Word, PaperStream ClickScan 1.4.0.3, empty) |
| Distinct /Producer values | 10 (incl. macOS Quartz PDFContext AppendMode 1.1, Aspose Pty Ltd., Adobe Photoshop, PFUPDF Engine 1.3.10 + 1.3.80) | 2 (Acrobat Paper Capture Plug-in, empty) |
| Videos with city-level location | 1 of 85 (PR073 Columbus OH — see Finding 4) | 0 of 9 |
| Videos with a named credit (vs "Courtesy") | 1 of 85 (Edward Pajak — see Finding 4) | 0 of 9 |
| Videos with non-AARO VIRIN unit code | 1 of 85 (XX999 placeholder — see Finding 4) | 0 of 9 (all D0360 = AARO) |
| Orphan PDFs on disk, not in live manifest | 4 (including the D20 rename leak and the bracketed-vs-unbracketed dupes) | 0 |