If you read a story that talks about a sensitive subject, maybe it will refer to a document. It might even print that document to make it a focal point of that story. You may see that some parts of the document have been blacked out.
This is redacting the information. If you have documents, and you want to do this, you usually can with no difficulty. You might use a PDF redaction tool.
What is the point of redaction, though, and when is it considered appropriate?
What Does Redaction Mean?
Redaction means there’s a section of a document that is being purposefully blacked out or obscured so no one unauthorized can read it or tell what it says. If you have a document that pertains to something sensitive, like the JFK assassination, some parts may be redacted.
How Can You Do It?
You can redact information from any document with print on it. You might do so in analogue fashion by taking a black marker and blacking out parts you don’t want someone to see.
You can also digitally delete text passages or words. You can blur them as well, and that has the same effect.
These days, there are specialized software programs of the sort we mentioned that can do it. With one of them, you might go through a document and blot out any mention of a word or phrase.
What Might You Redact?
Often, personal details of individuals are redacted in documents. For instance, if you have someone who gave testimony in a criminal case, they might have their name redacted. A lawyer can refer to their testimony in a grand jury trial without having to worry about anyone unauthorized hearing this person’s name.
Privacy and Legal Contexts
If someone needs their privacy, they may request that their identity be redacted. However, there are other instances where redacting of details might be considered sensible.
Maybe you have a document making the rounds through the federal government. It’s vital that several different people look at it to figure out what strategic operations it would be appropriate to engage in.
However, since various individuals in the government have different clearance levels, it might be necessary to redact some of the document so that certain people can’t see it. In such a situation, there might be different versions of the document that get passed around between offices.
Redacting and Metadata
While blacking out a physical document can be done with computer programs, tools, or analogue measures, there’s also metadata to think about. Let’s say we’re looking at that same scenario again, where you have a physical document being passed around government offices in anticipation of a missile strike.
There will be different versions of that physical document with more or less redacted, but what about the online files that have the completely unchanged version? Presumably, only individuals with the highest level of military clearance should look at it.
This unaltered document typically exists within the cloud as metadata. It therefore becomes incumbent upon whoever has the proper authority over the document to protect it.
Cyberattacks
If there’s an enemy combatant who wants access to that unaltered document, they may use a cyberattack to gain access to the metadata that contains it. Text redaction often represents just the tip of the iceberg as to what must be done to keep such a state secret under control.
While redaction is crucial and must happen with situations like jury trials to protect witnesses, there are also situations where simple redaction of parts of a document won’t be enough. The original information must be kept shielded behind firewalls. That’s usually where encryption occurs.
If redaction is a form of protecting sensitive information, encryption goes a step beyond that. It’s a way of making sure that even if this data is intercepted, no one who should not be reading it will be able to.
The post Text Redaction: What Is It and Why Does It Matter? first appeared on The Yucatan Times.