[IP] Re: "Redacted" DoJ PDFs still leaking confidential data

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

________________________________________
From: Peter Swire [peter@peterswire.net]
Sent: Saturday, May 17, 2008 8:00 PM
To: David Farber; mab@crypto.com
Subject: RE: [IP] "Redacted" DoJ PDFs still leaking confidential data

Dave:

It is a public service for Matt Blaze to show the ineffectiveness of the DOJ’s redaction process.

In light of the government tendency to err on the side of secrecy, could Matt or other readers point us to high-quality and easy-to-use ways to redact government (or other) documents?  Do changes need to be made to widely-used word processing and similar software?

If redaction is easy to hack, then DOJ and other agencies will try to prevent release of documents entirely.  Transparency, the Freedom of Information Act, etc. – strong reasons to have redaction be workable, or else the public will see even less.

Peter

Prof. Peter P. Swire
C. William O'Neil Professor of Law
   Moritz College of Law
   The Ohio State University
Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress
(240) 994-4142, www.peterswire.net

<snip>

Data leaks from ineffectively redacted PDFs go back for
years, and the DoJ itself has been burned by this several
times already; one would think the government might have
learned by now.  In this case, the "sensitive" data is
fairly innocuous (and, I'd argue, was data the public has a
legitimate right to know in any case). But if this represents
the DoJ's normal redaction practices, next time it could just
as easily be a court filing containing the names of
confidential informants.

Last night, after I blogged about it, the DoJ took the entire
web site for its Office of the Inspector General off the air,
presumably to check for other leaky PDFs.

For the original leaky PDF and context, see my
blog post at
    http://www.crypto.com/blog/calea_retrobugs/

-matt

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