Proof That Document Redactions Are Often a Joke

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http://www.thememoryhole.org/feds/justice_redaction.htm

 

Justice Department Censors Supreme Court Quote

 

Offers Smoking Gun Proof That Document Redactions Are

Often a Joke

 

 

 

>>> Anybody who has read many official

documents—including those making headlines in the last

year or more—has seen plenty of redactions (those

portions that are blacked out or otherwise made

unreadable). This, we're told, is for legitimate

reasons, such as " national security " or " protecting

intelligence sources and methods. " But now we have

absolute, incontrovertible proof that the government

also censors completely innocuous material simply

because they don't like it.

 

The Justice Department tipped its hand in its ongoing

legal war with the ACLU over the Patriot Act. Because

the matter is so sensitive, the Justice Dept is

allowed to black out those passages in the ACLU's

court filings that it feels should not be publicly

released.

 

Ostensibly, they would use their powers of censorship

only to remove material that truly could jeopardize US

operations. But in reality, what did they do? They

blacked out a quotation from a Supreme Court decision:

 

(Go to website to view this portion showing as a blacked out area.)

 

" The danger to political dissent is acute where

the Government attempts to act under so vague a

concept as the power to protect 'domestic security.'

Given the difficulty of defining the domestic security

interest, the danger of abuse in acting to protect

that interest becomes apparent. "

 

The mind reels at such a blatant abuse of power (and

at the sheer chutzpah of using national security as an

excuse to censor a quotation about using national

security as an excuse to stifle dissent).

 

It's hard to imagine a more public, open document than

a decision written by the Supreme Court. It is

incontestably public property: widely reprinted online

and on paper; poured over by generations of judges,

attorneys, prosecutors, and law students; quoted for

centuries to come in court cases and political essays.

 

Yet the Justice Department had the incomprehensible

arrogance and gall to strip this quotation from a

court document, as if it represented a grave threat to

the republic. Luckily, the court slapped down this

redaction and several others. If it hadn't, we

would've been left with the impression that this was a

legitimate redaction, that whatever was underneath the

thick black ink was something so incredibly sensitive

and damaging that it must be kept from our eyes.

 

Now we know the truth. Think about this the next time

you see a black mark on a public document.

 

The image at top shows a portion of the ACLU's court

filing after the Justice Dept was allowed to censor

it. The image below shows the restored passage. The

full document is located here [PDF format], with

background info here (includes many other documents in

which the Justice Dept censored innocuous passages)..