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Short Stuff: Redacted! · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Chuck's here as always, Dave's here, and Spirit Cherry's here
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: in Spirit. They're both alive. Don't worry, they're just not
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: here with us right now. And that makes this short stuff.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: That's because they're at Spirit Halloween.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: That's true. They both got extra side hustles, as they're called.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: We just got a bunch of new Halloween stuff. Emily
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: really wants to ramp up our Halloween game.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: Oh nice, we got one last year. We got a big, tall,
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: scary guy who's holding a baby upside down and they
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: both like the baby screams. Not a baby, let's say
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: a toddler.
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: Does it suck the breath out of the baby?
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: No, it just holds her by her leg upside down
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: and she screams a lot. And the guy's like, and
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: it's pretty great. I mean, this is a huge step
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: up from what we normally do, which is a like
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: a paper mache pumpkin and a sign that says get away.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. The reason I ask about the breath as
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: there's a legendary figure that you can, like this giant
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: that you can put on your front porch where the
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: dude holds up a toddler and it has I guess
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: steam or smoke or something, and it looks like it's
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: sucking the breath out of this child.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: And our friends of the show, John Hodgman and Jesse Thorn,
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: talked a lot about it on their Judge John Hodgman podcast, which,
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: by the way, is on tour. If you want to
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: go see those guys on tour. It's a lot of fun.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they'll take your breath away for sure seeing them live.
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So just go go check out Judge John Hodgman Tour.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: It's a fun show and you never know who might
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: show up. Might be me, might be Josh Man.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: Hodgman knows you some money for that segue.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: That was amazing and spirit Halloweencot.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: I'm still trying to figure out how you worked it.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: And that was great.
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: All right, Well, we've wasted two of our twelve minutes,
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: so let's talk about redaction.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Chuck, redaction. We definitely touched on it in our
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: Foyer episode for sure, but just to kind of refresh everybody.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: Redaction is where there's parts of documents or transcripts or
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: something like that that are so sensitive that they have
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: to be essentially removed. They're usually blacked out. Is the
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: traditional way that you know, you think of redaction, but
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: it turns out there's a lot of other types of
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: redaction and ways to do it, and tons of reasons.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: It's not just because you asked the CIA for a
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: bunch of documents. There's a lot of different groups that
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: react on the regular.
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, you mentioned FOYA, the Freedom of Information Act.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: If you've ever laid your eyes on something as a
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: request from that Act, then you will probably see a
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: bunch of sharpie magic marker through names and places, maybe
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: entire pages redacted. But it's often thought of as a
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: government thing, but like you said, a lot of sometimes
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: like a court will order that to protect sensitive information.
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: In the medical field, obviously, there's the Health Insurance Portability
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: and Accountability Act, the hip hop thing that you always
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: hear about it the doctor. It's you know, your medical privacy,
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: so they might order a redaction there. Your grades and
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: your schooling is private thanks to the Family Educational Rights
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: and Privacy Act, so your educational records could be redacted
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: if it was brought into court. That kind of thing
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: for sure.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: And then speaking of court, the legal world is huge unredaction.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: They're riduculously.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: That one really got me, actually, that one.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: That in particular in the legal world, redaction is usually
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: associated with civil cases because there's a process of discovery
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: where it's like, give me all the documents you have
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: pertaining to this case, and I'll give you all the
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: documents I have, and if not, we'll get in big,
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: big trouble if we don't do that. Right, But in
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: those documents there's inevitably stuff that doesn't pertain to the case.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: There's protected like say copyrighted or trademarked or patented information
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: like trade secrets can be in there. If there's a
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: company involved, there's people not related to the case who
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: may be emailed about something or we're just CC you
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: want to get rid of that.
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: There's any client privilege, of course.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: Exactly, there's a lot of reasons to redact in legal cases,
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: and there's a certain way to do it. And yet
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: regardless of all these reasons that people have to redact
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: in all these fields that are like required to redact
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: things like hippa requires the medical field to redact, there's
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: not actually like a prescribed way like and this is
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: how you do it. It's more like you need to
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: redact this and go figure out how to do that,
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: and then if you do it wrong, you're going to
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: get your pants suit off.
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: That's right, And shall we take a break and talk
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: of about the myriad ways that you can do so, yeah,
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: all right, we'll be right back. All right. So you
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: mentioned that there are not any set rules in place
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: about how to redact something. It's up to the redactor
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: what you will usually see. And if you've ever seen
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: government documents on the news or whatever, you usually will
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: just see like a black magic marker drawn through names,
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: and not through a name, but like completely over a name,
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: or it's not always a name, just whatever you're redacting. Again,
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: it could be sentences or wold pages or paragraphs. And
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: then what you should do then is then make a
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: copy of that otherwise someone and this has happened plenty
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: of times. If you give that person the original, you
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: can just hold it up to the light many times
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: and see what's going on. If you photocopy it, you can't.
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: So that's a pretty good old school way to do.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: So, yeah, you, me and I watched The Amber heard
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: Johnny Depp lost suit a couple of years.
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: Ago on the trial and TV.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's where I learned that that's what you're
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: supposed to do from some lawyers who analyzed it like
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: just about every night, and they said, apparently the reason
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: they brought it up is because somebody was holding a
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: document and on the TV camera it was the original
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: just with it blacked out, and apparently the internet could
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: read what it was. I think it was somebody's email,
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: like maybe even Amber Heerd's email. Oh yeah, And that
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: night the lawyers are like, they that's not how you
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: do it. You do that with the originals and you
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: make a photocopy of the originals, is just not possible
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: to see what you've redacted at that point.
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: So but a dumb thing to do.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, dude, that's I mean, what do you do?
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: Like are you just like, well, you just gave me
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: your services for free? Like what you know? What's what
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: happens as a result of that? I'm curious?
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, me too. Well we'll talk a little bit about
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: that at the end. I don't know what happened in
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: that case, but what can happen? So yeah, drawing black
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: magic marker is good old school way, but you know
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: a lot of stuff these days, most stuff, in fact,
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: is an electronic form. So people started using software tools
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: and you know, like things within a program to essentially
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: black magic marker over it. And that can be good.
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: But you know, one of the articles I use for
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: this talk to an attorney, a DC based national security
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: law attorney. He was like, I don't trust it. I
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: don't trust technology even if you do that, and maybe
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: somebody could design a program to undo that and override it.
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: So this guy like he didn't even like the black
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: magic marker because I think he's been burned by that before.
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: So he cuts everything out literally with scissors, and he said,
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: you know, it's kind of sloppy looking, but it make
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: sure that no one can see what was there or
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: if it's electronic, I might just completely delete the sentence
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: or word right and type and type in over that
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: in all bold letters deleted by the request of the CIA.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and that guy's name is Mark Ze, the lawyer.
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: And there's really good reason to actually go in and
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: delete the words because there's been at least one case,
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: the trial of Paul Manifort, who was on trial for perjury.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: I think lying to the FBI obstruction of justice a
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: few things related to that whole Mueller Report investigation of
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: Russian interference in the twenty sixteen election. And in that case,
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: one of the redacted documents that a journalist from The
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: Guardian named John Swain got, all they did was put
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: a black bar, like they used the square like draw
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: tool in Microsoft Word and filled it in with black
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: and sent it out and like John yeah, and John
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: Swain copied the whole thing and pasted it and that
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: stuff was not redacted in because it didn't coffee paste
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: the black box. So there's there's definitely the wrong way
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: to do it, and it does happen from people who
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: just aren't thinking or just don't have enough experience, But
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: it seems like it would be a really big big deal,
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: Like you'd be like, Okay, your job for the rest
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: of your career is redacting, and you get perfect at redacting,
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: and that's what you do. Not welcome to the firm,
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: start redacting stuff. Good luck?
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: You know, yeah, for sure you can. You know, if
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: you're in a case and you see some things redacted,
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: but you're trying to still kind of figure it out
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: and like guess and speculate. First of all, that attorney's
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: you'd said, it's really not smart to do that, because
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: you can be off base and get things wrong, and
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: I've even done that in cases. But like, I was
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: trying to figure out how this could happen, and one
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: thing that I just sort of dreamed up was, you know,
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: let's say it's a case where you might know it's
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: one of like four three people that did something, and
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: one of them's name as Abraham Abramowitz. One of them's
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: name is is Joshua Clarkin Clarkin Gauge.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: I was gonna say, don't drag me into it, but
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: I don't know this. Joshua Clark engaged.
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: And then one guy's name is Tom Bill. And you
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: see this very short reaction. You could probably figure, oh,
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: I bet you anything, it's the guy with a really
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: short name because it's a short reaction. So we've narrowed
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: it down that way. So that's just one way that
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: I dreamed up that you can you can smart redact,
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: you know, maybe do like longer lines if it's a
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: really short name or something that you're trying to conceal.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: Good good point. I prescribe you to spend more time
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: looking at names on headstones and cemeteries. Because that's apparently
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: where writers, good writers get their best ideas for names
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: that aren't like Josh Clarkin Gage or something like that,
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: or Chance Finkelstein or something you know, like and sorry
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: it all Finkelstein's out there, but that's sounds made up
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: as a name. And if you are a Chance Finkelstein,
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: right in, because that would be amazing to hear from you.
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: Well, that's why I did silly things, because I didn't
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: want to accidentally say someone's real name.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: Oh okay, oh I get it. What good idea?
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: I don't think Josh and Eric Clark Engage is a
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: real surname, is it.
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: I don't know, Probably not. It doesn't sound right. Maybe
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: Mick Clark Engage.
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: Back to redacting earlier, he said, like, what could happen
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: if you're like, I guess I don't have to pay
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: my lawyer. If they've screwed up on that level, maybe
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: that could happen. There could be legal penalties. There could
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: be like if you had to pay some big fine
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: in your attorney screwed up and you had to pay
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: that fine because of that bad reaction, then you could
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: certainly go after them. There would certainly be a loss
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: of trust. Which is another one of the things and
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: damage to reputation, Like, if that kind of thing gets out,
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: then you're not going to be someone that gets all
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: out of work. You're gonna be the bad redactor.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: Right, So I think I think the moral of this
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: story is if your job is to redact things, do
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: it right. Yeah, Well, chuck silence means short stuff is out.
• 12:13
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• 12:16
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