Tens of Thousands of Pacer Documents Could Have Failed Redactions, Study Suggests

Tens of Thousands of Pacer Documents Could Have Failed Redactions, Study Suggests

Those black boxes used to hide redacted information in court documents filed with Pacer don’t always work, according to a study that suggests tens of thousands of the online filings may have failed redactions. Timothy Lee, a PhD candidate in computer science at Princeton, conducted the study. He found 194 documents with not-so-hidden information that included trade secrets; personal information; and names of witnesses, jurors or plaintiffs. Lee wrote about his study at Freedom to Tinker, a blog hosted by Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy. Lee explains that PDF documents have multiple layers, and text may still be under a blacked-out rectangle. Extracting the information…

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