Justice Department screws up: doesn't redact FOIA document

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

Delivered-To: dfarber+ () ux13 sp cs cmu edu
Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 00:58:44 -0500
From: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
---

Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2003 13:26:12 -0700 (PDT)
From: Joseph Lorenzo Hall <jhall () sims berkeley edu>
Reply-To: joehall () pobox com
To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>, Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
Subject: DoJ uses Word's "Highlight" tool to redact, doesn't work
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.44.0310231316470.16950-100000 () info sims berkeley edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Hi Declan, Dave:

A HARD LESSON TO LEARN: don't use Microsoft Word's "Highlight tool"
with the color set to black to redact documents--one can still copy
and paste "highlighted" text!

The really interesting part about this DoJ case is reading the
un-redacted document and seeing what was "blacked out" under FOIA
exemptions (un-redacted document is here:
http://www.thememoryhole.org/feds/doj-attorney-diversity-unredacted.pdf
).

I wonder how many other electronic FOIA-released documents are out
there where a simple copy and paste will reveal redactions?


Pertinent paragraph:

"It turns out the [DoJ's] report began its life as a Microsoft Word
document, and whoever was in charge of sanitizing it for public
release did so by using Word's highlight tool, with the highlight
color set to black, according to an analysis by Tim Sullivan, CEO of
activePDF, a maker of server-side PDF tools. The simple and convenient
technique would have been perfectly effective had the end product been
a printed document, but it was all but useless for an electronic one."

Joe


---
http://www.securityfocus.com/news/7272

Justice e-censorship gaffe sparks controversy

By Kevin Poulsen, SecurityFocus Oct 22 2003 3:46PM

A government watchdog group Wednesday accused the Justice Department
of improperly censoring portions of a key report on internal workplace
diversity, after online activists successfully unmasked the
blacked-out portions of an electronic copy of the document.

The 186-page report was released to the public under the Freedom of
Information Act last week and posted to Justice Department's website
in Adobe's "Portable Document File" (PDF) format. But the department
blacked out vast portions of the document's text, citing an exemption
to FOIA that permits agencies to keep internal policy deliberations
private.

The text didn't stay concealed for long. On Tuesday a website called
the Memory Hole, dedicated to preserving endangered documents,
published a complete version of the report, with the opaque black
rectangles that once covered half of it completely removed. Memory
Hole publisher Russ Kick won't say how he unmasked it, but
experimentation shows that the concealed text could be selected and
copied using nothing more than Adobe's free Acrobat Reader. Once
copied, the text is easily pasted into another document and read.

It turns out the report began its life as a Microsoft Word document,
and whoever was in charge of sanitizing it for public release did so
by using Word's highlight tool, with the highlight color set to black,
according to an analysis by Tim Sullivan, CEO of activePDF, a maker of
server-side PDF tools. The simple and convenient technique would have
been perfectly effective had the end product been a printed document,
but it was all but useless for an electronic one. "Using Acrobat, I'm
actually able to move the black boxes around," says Sullivan. "The
text is still there."

...

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