Where is your data? Redacted and Locked away

The Government who pioneered “open government” and the Freedom of Information Act, are certainly not living up to spirit of the law they created. In 1996 Tony Blair stated, in a speech about open government, that “The only way to begin to restore people’s trust [in Government] is therefore to be completely open“.

However despite this laudable goal, and numerous other assertions of “open government, a request to access the cabinet record minutes in relation to the Iraq war has been refused by the Labour Government.

This is particulary interesting as both the Information Tribunal and the ICO have stated that the minutes should be released.

The Information Commissioner, Richard Thomas has publicly stated that:

“My Decision to order disclosure of the Cabinet minutes was made under the Freedom of Information Act on public interest grounds. It was upheld by the Information Tribunal. It was made clear by the Tribunal and by me that this was an exceptional case.

The government has chosen not to appeal the Tribunal’s decision to the High Court, but instead has exercised its right of veto under the FOI Act. However, it is vital that this is also an exceptional response. Anything other than exceptional use of the veto would threaten to undermine much of the progress made towards greater openness and transparency in government since the FOI Act came into force.

I shall be studying the text of the Secretary of State’s Certificate and Statement of Reasons which I received today. Using the power available to me under section 49(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, I will shortly lay a report before Parliament to record the circumstances leading to this outcome. This will be in line with previous commitments I have made and the interest shown by past Select Committees in the potential use of the veto.”

This case of the government of refusing to release data, follows quickly on from the “torture case“, where the UK government has evidence of torture, which is redacted, but will not allow the redacted text to be seen, despite the trial judge stating its in the public interest.

Electronic Discovery: Redaction Software Tools

Below is a sample of tools to assist in redaction

Peladon DocXP: Can redact typed and hand written fields, search and redact functionality

RedactIT: Can redact at the desktop or enterprise level, can also redact during the OCR process, search and redact functionality

RapidRedact Desktop:  Search and redact functionality, also allows for redaction via the native document

Brava Viewer: Search and redact functionality

Electronic Discovery: When does Standard Redaction not Work?

“Standard” Redaction, in Electronic Discovery, involves the blacking out of the relevant material on a TIFF or PDF copy of the original document; this normally a manual task, though  there are tools to assist with the process.

However, in LTN, Craig Ball has argued that the old method is not always the best.The argument is that redaction of certain documents fails because of the data type, namely spreadsheets and databases.

The problems with redacting a spreadsheet are two fold, firstly producing a TIFF or PDF from an XLS can often result in 10s of not 100s of pages, which are hard to follow, secondly the simple act of creting a TIFF or PDF results in a loss of data, as the formulas are hidden, and they in themselves, may be important.

Craig’s suggested solution is using sofware functionailtiy built into the latest versions of Adobe and Office that allow for more advanced redaction, with a more granular approach.

While Craig is right, currnet redaction is “clumsy”, and may not give the best results, combining together multiple document handling systems and platforms, through one or multiple vendors will be awkward for both the vendor and client/reviwer.

The technology that Craig alludes to needs to be in built into review platforms from the start, rather than tagged on after wards.

Also, as spreadsheets have been exchanged as TIFFs and PDFs for nearly a decade, a wholly inappropiate manner, it may be that the legal technology companies are not as forward thinking as they would like to be.

Electronic Discovery: RedactIT

Redaction can be a manual task, and there is always a concern that t he confidential account number that has been redacted in 211 documents has not been redacted on the 212th document.

Tools like RedactIT attempt to resolve this, by allowing for automatic redaction using keyword searching.

However, it may not offer the solution to all lawyers as it needs to be implemented in their review platform, otherwise document management becomes awkward. RedactIT, does offer an Enterprise function, that can work with tools like SharePoint, and no doubt other review platforms, but that does not mean to say the vendor has purchased and implemented it.

Electronic Discovery: What is Redaction?

What is Redaction?

The wikipedia definition of redaction is: “In the study of literature, redaction is a form of editing in which multiple source texts are combined together (redacted) and subjected to minor alteration to make them into a single work. Often this is a method of collecting together a series of writings on a similar theme and creating a definitive and coherent work”

However, in Electronic Discovery the term is used slightly different, and simply refers to the blanking out of data in a document, the equivalent of putting a black marker pen over a section of a document.

Why is Redaction Used?

If a lawyer is reviewing a document, and it is responsive/relevant so needs to provide it to the other side, but it contains some confidential information, e.g a personal account number or  a sentence which is confidential, the lawyer can “redact ” this text by blacking out the relevant information. This is not done to the original document, only the copy provided the other side.

How is redaction conducted?

The redaction, assuming the work is conducted on a “review platform” (e.g Relativity, RingTail, iConnect) is normally done by the lawyer on a TIFF or PDF of the document.

Most review tools give the ability to highlight or black out text on a TIFF or PDF of original document. Note: This is conducted on the TIFF or PDF of the original, NOT the original.

Problems with Redaction

Redacting documents has several technical hurdles; firstly the document must be produced a TIFF or a PDF, before the reviewer can redact the document.

Secondly, the reviewer must be careful to redact the text on similar/duplicate documents, because redaction of one document would not normally result in the redaction of another, even if they are identical. Though there are tools to assist with redaction

Thirdly, when producing documents the company hosting the data HAS to know redaction has to be conducted,  prior to production/exchange of documents. When documents are exchanged  a load file (similar to the LIST), and associated files are exchanged. The associated files in the exchange will normally include TIFFs or PDFs of the original document, and possibly the text that has been extracted from the original documents.  It is the “text” files, that  poses a problem if there is any redaction.

The reason for this is that the text files are obtained, by default, from the original document not the TIFF.  Therefore any text that has been redacted in the TIFF/PDF will be included in the text files, and therefore searchable.

For this reason caution must be advised in the production of redacted document, and your technical consultant asked about how this will be handled; most platforms and vendors have solutions for this (the simplest is not providing the text files).