Redacting Information for Dissemination

[#1]

I love the nighttime. There’s something calm and quiet about the dark. I can curl up in bed under my soft heavy blankets, resting and hiding away from the world and all of the busyness and demands of the day. Yet, I hate the nighttime. I don’t like being in the dark – not just physically but metaphorically. My mom would call it being nosy, but I simply believe that I am curious. I want to know things that others don’t even think to think about.

Over the years wisdom has taught me that there is a time to be in the know and a time to let it go. For example, one time I was walking around Mineral Wells State Park, in Texas, having a glorious time enjoying the beauty of nature. As nighttime fell, it became dark, quiet, and even more peaceful.

Well, until my friend had the crazy idea to pull out her flashlight and turned it on. In an instant I was exposed to the sight of a million ninja spiders scattering all over the place. Ok, I’m being a little dramatic because a multitude of spiders isn’t the end of the world (well, except for the ones in the movie Arachnophobia), but in that moment I know I would have been way better off NOT knowing that those spiders were crawling in droves across my shoes and legs. UGH!

Ok, back on topic. Speaking of highlighting information, the way that my friend highlighted the presence of an army of spiders, in the last few posts we discussed ways to use markup materials to highlight relevant information. The data that was gathered and marked up was to help focus on the important pieces of evidence to advance their investigation and obtain a resolution.

But let’s say a local news outlet heard about the phone theft and sent a request to the policing agency asking for information about the crime. The information report contains data that is relevant to the overall arching story, but only some of that information is for public consumption while the rest is private and should be kept in the dark from those not involved. In this post, we will look at how an investigator uses the redaction feature to conceal the sensitive data contained in the information report, before passing that report on to the news outlet.

First, let’s define what redacting is and why redactions are used before disseminating information. Redacting is the action of selecting or adapting, by securing or removing sensitive information, for publication or release. (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). There are many reasons for redactions like censoring text, images, or audio, safeguarding individuals by protecting their private information and concealing their personal identifiers. The redaction can be whole or in part, depending on circumstance and based on any federal or state regulatory laws, etc. Law enforcement agencies must comply with federal laws like the Privacy Act of 1974 which includes the governing of how information is disseminated.

By looking at our scenario, we know that the victim and witnesses are minors in high school. Let’s walk through what redacting their information looks like in an example configuration of the SAS Law Enforcement Intelligence user interface.

Just like the Markup control, the Redaction control contains the marked-up text in the middle pane of the three-pane control. On the left side, we still have our concepts, but we now have a column that displays the redaction label we assign each concept we want to redact. Because the individuals involved are minors, as the investigator, I will redact all directly identifying information like name, phone number, and email address.

Select any image to see a larger version.
Mobile users: To view the images, select the "Full" version at the bottom of the page.

First, with the Redaction control open, I select the concept Dante Williams and then click the Display concept properties icon.

In the Edit Concept Properties window, I enter a redaction label. I could enter Person, or Name or even leave it blank, but I will enter Victim.

I repeat the process for all other concepts I need to redact, assigning them appropriate labels as I go.

Now, let’s redact the data. I click Redact annotated text. The text updates. The confidential data is hidden, as seen here. For concepts where a redaction label was assigned, a black box covering the data also displays the designated label. Otherwise, the redaction shows just as a black box. Once text is redacted, and the investigator saves the object, and the data is no longer visible.

At that point, the information report is now ready for dissemination to the news outlet. The information is hidden, and according to my mom, no longer anything that Nosy Nelly gets to know.

Find more articles from SAS Global Enablement and Learning here.