Current event: TSA document exposed

Recently, a document of the Transportation Security Administration was inadvertently exposed through a private contractor of the cabinet department while consolidating. The process of redaction, when an organization consolidates literature into a more concise overview, can pose a security threat when this information is published. The final overview also needs to be more heavily guarded, because it contains more information in one location.
The scenario unfolded like this: An employee of contracted company was going through the Transportation Security literature, which directed TSA employees on the proper procedure for screening protocols used at more than 450 U.S airports, was posted on the Federal Businesses Opportunity website. It was posted in part of a TSA contract solicitation bid. A blogger discovered the document and passed it on to website administrators of anti-secrecy site Cryptome.org. They publicized the document and the confidential information began to spread across the web.
The problem in this case was a simple human error; the employee posted information that should have been kept confidential. The publishing of redacted information, however, goes much further than human errors however. The overarching issue causing this problems with redacted information is that organizations do not have a good understanding of the difference between redacted information in print, documents that are physically sent through the organization, and digital reacted information, sent or published electronically. In one case involving the department of defense, a document was published with the name of a Special Forces soldier that had been killed in Iraq that had been blacked out. The name was simply copy and pasted, and then the font was change. In the past, a marker could do a lot to redact a document. Today, however, technology has made it much easier to discover the information that has been disguised. Another common problem is that information that has been deleted or made indiscernible is the information has been already been recorded in the metadata of the file. In a case involving pharmaceutical giant Merck, information that had been simply deleted from a word document was later recovered through the metadata of the file.
Companies and government organizations (especially those subjected to the freedom of information act) are in a constant struggle between publishing information to the public and retaining information deemed private to the organization. The process of redaction in the new virtual world has made the struggle that much harder. Today, companies such as Redact-IT are selling software to remove confidential information from company documents. Even with these tools, redaction will continue to pose a threat to company struggling to be both private and public.


http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9142141/Analysis_TSA_document_release_show_pitfalls_of_electronic_redaction?taxonomyId=17&pageNumber=2