With another example of improper redaction – this time by US government agencies over airport screening procedures see USA Todayhttp://usat.me/?36993030 – DocsCorp has published a new white paper on redaction within PDF documents.
The whitepaper makes the point that whileredacting paper documents
is a fairly simple process – get a marker and strike-through the text to redact
it – redacting PDF documents is
more complicated. PDF documents are constructed in layers. For
example, text is on one layer and images on another. Thus, redacting text with opaque objects is not a
foolproof method of redaction as you are simply adding another layer, which can
be peeled back to reveal what is underneath. To add another layer of complexity to the
redaction problem, you need to consider the underlying structure of the PDF.
Depending on how the PDF was generated – ie a Word document converted to PDF, or
a scanned document output as a PDF – there may be more than one layer of
information that needs to be redacted.
Proper electronic redaction is the complete removal of content from an electronic document, making it irretrievable and unavailable for view, print, search or copy. Whatever tool organizations choose, they must provide appropriate training for staff, enforce rules on privacy protection, and implement redaction software that’s up to the task. Go to http://www.redact-it.com/whitepapers/ to see a white paper and video showing what went wrong and how to do it right (bet TSA and HSBC Bank wish they’d done so!).
