WEBVTT - Why and How Are Documents Redacted? 0:00:01.920 --> 0:00:06.720 Welcome to brain Stuff, production of iHeart Radio, Hey brain 0:00:06.760 --> 0:00:10.920 Stuff Lauren Boglebon here. Recently, the American public got its 0:00:10.920 --> 0:00:14.000 first look at Special Counsel Robert Mueller's two volume report 0:00:14.040 --> 0:00:17.720 on the investigation into Russian interference in the presidential election, 0:00:18.200 --> 0:00:20.279 and some may have been startled to see how much 0:00:20.320 --> 0:00:23.279 of the four forty eight page document, about seven point 0:00:23.280 --> 0:00:25.720 to five of the text, according to the news website 0:00:25.720 --> 0:00:28.800 Fox And been blacked out by US Attorney General William Barr. 0:00:29.560 --> 0:00:31.800 Each blacked out word or passage was labeled with a 0:00:31.800 --> 0:00:35.280 color code and notation indicating the legal justification for withholding 0:00:35.320 --> 0:00:39.600 that material. These included potential harm to an ongoing legal matter, 0:00:39.880 --> 0:00:43.680 the need to conceal investigative techniques, personal privacy, and grand 0:00:43.720 --> 0:00:46.599 jury testimony, which generally must be kept secret under Rule 0:00:46.680 --> 0:00:48.640 six of the Federal Rules of Procedure. In less a 0:00:48.720 --> 0:00:53.159 judge issues a waiver, the House Judiciary Committee still subpoena 0:00:53.240 --> 0:00:56.960 the uncensored report and Bar's explanations didn't quell the widespread 0:00:57.000 --> 0:00:59.360 curiosity about what it was that Barr decided that we 0:00:59.360 --> 0:01:03.280 shouldn't see. We spoke with Michael Ravnitzky, an attorney who's 0:01:03.280 --> 0:01:05.399 an expert in the release of government documents through the 0:01:05.440 --> 0:01:09.520 Freedom of Information Act. He said, there's something psychological about it. 0:01:09.760 --> 0:01:11.920 If you see a document with blocked out sections, your 0:01:11.920 --> 0:01:14.160 eyes go to it and you wonder what's under their 0:01:15.319 --> 0:01:19.120 welcomed the arcane, secretive subculture of redaction, which is the 0:01:19.160 --> 0:01:22.600 practice of removing or concealing portions of documents before a publication. 0:01:23.120 --> 0:01:26.320 It's a phenomenon that most ordinary Americans probably are unfamiliar with, 0:01:26.400 --> 0:01:28.679 as evidenced by the four thousand percent spike in the 0:01:28.720 --> 0:01:31.399 number of searches for redact and redacted on the Meriam 0:01:31.400 --> 0:01:33.600 Webster dictionary website on the day that bar sent a 0:01:33.680 --> 0:01:36.160 letter to Congress revealing that he would release a redacted 0:01:36.240 --> 0:01:40.880 version of Mueller's report. But attorneys, journalists, and historical researchers 0:01:40.880 --> 0:01:43.280 are accustomed to blacked out spaces on documents as a 0:01:43.280 --> 0:01:47.160 consequence of dealing with sensitive subjects. Redacting has long been 0:01:47.240 --> 0:01:51.000 part of government imposed secrecy. When former CIA employee Victor 0:01:51.040 --> 0:01:53.360 Marcetti and his co author John D. Marx sought to 0:01:53.360 --> 0:01:55.960 publish a book on the CIA in the early nineteen seventies, 0:01:56.200 --> 0:01:58.640 government censors who had authority to review the book under 0:01:58.680 --> 0:02:01.880 Marchetti's employment contract redacted a hundred and sixty eight pages 0:02:01.880 --> 0:02:04.600 from the text. The book was published with blank spaces 0:02:04.600 --> 0:02:08.560 showing the location of the redacted passages. Decades later, documents 0:02:08.600 --> 0:02:11.320 obtained using the Freedom of Information Act are still sometimes 0:02:11.360 --> 0:02:14.480 riddled with blank squares over faces and photographs, and black 0:02:14.520 --> 0:02:19.080 bars over words and sentences, and sometimes entire pages. But 0:02:19.160 --> 0:02:21.920 it's not just the government. In the legal world, attorneys 0:02:22.000 --> 0:02:24.560 routinely redact portions of documents that are to be turned 0:02:24.600 --> 0:02:28.320 over during the discovery process in civil lawsuits. Those deletions 0:02:28.320 --> 0:02:31.400 occur in order to protect attorney client privilege, attorney's work 0:02:31.440 --> 0:02:35.200 product for clients, commercially sensitive information, and information not relevant 0:02:35.240 --> 0:02:38.320 to the litigation. Other redactions are required by the courts 0:02:38.360 --> 0:02:41.519 themselves to protect personal information, such as social security numbers, 0:02:41.560 --> 0:02:44.960 from misuse. One of the odd things about redaction is 0:02:44.960 --> 0:02:47.280 that while there are rules about what should be redacted, 0:02:47.400 --> 0:02:49.360 there aren't really a lot of hard and fast rules 0:02:49.360 --> 0:02:52.560 about how to block out that material. For years, attorneys 0:02:52.560 --> 0:02:55.480 and government officials often simply used black markers to conceal 0:02:55.560 --> 0:02:58.400 sensitive portions of documents, which were then photocopied so that 0:02:58.440 --> 0:03:00.440 someone couldn't hold the paper up to thee and read 0:03:00.440 --> 0:03:03.560 the censored words. In the mid two thousands, as more 0:03:03.600 --> 0:03:06.160 and more documents began to be distributed in electronic form, 0:03:06.440 --> 0:03:09.200 both the government and private sector law firms started shifting 0:03:09.200 --> 0:03:13.359 to redacting the digital files themselves using software tools. These days, 0:03:13.360 --> 0:03:17.240 attorneys involved in big corporate lawsuits often use e discovery platforms, 0:03:17.320 --> 0:03:19.880 which allow them to manage massive amounts of documents and 0:03:19.960 --> 0:03:23.080 which contain tools for redacting portions, though you can also 0:03:23.120 --> 0:03:26.919 safely redact information using programs like Adobe Acrobat Pro assuming 0:03:26.919 --> 0:03:31.040 that you're working with PDFs, But regardless of what technology 0:03:31.120 --> 0:03:34.160 is used, it's necessary to go through documents individually and 0:03:34.200 --> 0:03:36.920 figure out what to mask, which is a time intensive process. 0:03:37.760 --> 0:03:39.680 In the case of the MULA report, bar and his 0:03:39.680 --> 0:03:42.880 staff apparently scanned a printed copy of the report, redacted it, 0:03:43.000 --> 0:03:45.000 and then printed and scanned it again to create a 0:03:45.000 --> 0:03:48.200 new digital copy. That excess of caution resulted in a 0:03:48.200 --> 0:03:51.400 low quality image that wasn't searchable. Since then, the Department 0:03:51.440 --> 0:03:54.720 of Justice has published a searchable version as well. But 0:03:54.880 --> 0:03:58.560 digital redaction isn't always fool proof. One sophisticated, high tech 0:03:58.640 --> 0:04:01.720 method for reading redact word in the document involves analyzing 0:04:01.720 --> 0:04:03.840 their lengths and comparing them to other words with the 0:04:03.880 --> 0:04:07.280 same length on the page. And Guardian reporter John Swain 0:04:07.400 --> 0:04:09.480 found that he could view redacted text in a court 0:04:09.480 --> 0:04:12.080 document in the Paul Manifort case by copying and pasting 0:04:12.120 --> 0:04:15.200 it into a Microsoft Word document. Matthew Ingram of the 0:04:15.240 --> 0:04:19.039 Columbia Journalism Review explained, quote this likely happened because someone 0:04:19.120 --> 0:04:21.599 either drew over the unwanted text with the black highlighter 0:04:21.640 --> 0:04:25.000 tool and Microsoft Word, or used Adobe Acrobat's redaction tools 0:04:25.040 --> 0:04:28.320 but forgot to merge them with the original document. We 0:04:28.440 --> 0:04:31.080 also spoke with Mark Sade, a Washington, d c. Based 0:04:31.080 --> 0:04:34.360 attorney who specializes in national security law and frequently deals 0:04:34.400 --> 0:04:37.920 with redactions. He said, I don't trust technology. Even if 0:04:37.920 --> 0:04:42.040 there's a safety mechanism, someone will invent something that overrides it. Thus, 0:04:42.200 --> 0:04:45.919 Zaid generally shoes electronic redaction. His preferred method is to 0:04:46.160 --> 0:04:49.040 quote literally cut it out with scissors and then photocopy 0:04:49.080 --> 0:04:51.640 the page. It's a really sloppy looking redaction, but no 0:04:51.680 --> 0:04:54.960 one will ever see what I cut out. In other instances, 0:04:55.000 --> 0:04:57.240 if he's obstructed by the government to redact information from 0:04:57.279 --> 0:04:59.679 a document, he deletes the text and types the number 0:04:59.680 --> 0:05:01.960 of word and deleted by the request of the CIA 0:05:02.240 --> 0:05:06.479 in its place, but manual redactions on actual paper can 0:05:06.520 --> 0:05:10.239 go awry to Zad recalls once receiving some redacted documents 0:05:10.240 --> 0:05:12.000 in a case and discovering that he could hold them 0:05:12.080 --> 0:05:14.320 up and read the words through the black ink. Whoever 0:05:14.320 --> 0:05:16.640 sent them had provided the original pages rather than making 0:05:16.640 --> 0:05:20.359 a photo copy. Zaide says that even when information in 0:05:20.400 --> 0:05:23.200 court papers is redacted, it's sometimes possible to figure out 0:05:23.279 --> 0:05:25.599 what's in the blacked out sections. The client may be 0:05:25.640 --> 0:05:28.040 able to identify a witness or piece together what was 0:05:28.080 --> 0:05:30.320 said in a discussion in which he or she participated, 0:05:30.320 --> 0:05:34.200 for example, but generally, Zaide explained that it's not wise 0:05:34.240 --> 0:05:37.359 to speculate, as even educated guesses can be wrong. He 0:05:37.480 --> 0:05:40.040 gave the example of a Freedom of Information Act litigation 0:05:40.120 --> 0:05:43.760 connected with the DP Cooper skyjacking case. He said, we 0:05:43.839 --> 0:05:46.600 thought a document pertained to a particular person who was dead, 0:05:47.040 --> 0:05:48.880 but when Zaide gave the government a copy of the 0:05:48.880 --> 0:05:51.520 man's obituary in an effort to get the full document released, 0:05:51.680 --> 0:05:54.160 they told Zaide he assumed wrong and the document was 0:05:54.200 --> 0:06:01.760 about someone else. Today's episode was written by Patrick J. 0:06:01.880 --> 0:06:04.360 Kaiger and produced by Tyler clang. Brain Stuff is a 0:06:04.360 --> 0:06:06.800 production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more on 0:06:06.800 --> 0:06:09.719 this and lots of other topics, visit our home planet, 0:06:09.800 --> 0:06:12.200 how stuff Works dot com. And for more podcasts for 0:06:12.279 --> 0:06:14.960 my heart radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, 0:06:15.040 --> 0:06:16.640 or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.