Don’t worry if you didn’t sanitize your documents—even the TSA forgets occasionally
Tuesday, 8 December 2009
It’s too comical to be true. A few months back, when I wrote an article warning about inadequate attempts at sanitizing PDF documents, I thought that any organization serious about censoring documents would not make such a basic error. Especially not a government agency, after the military had been caught by this pitfall.
Apparently this is not the case
It seems that the TSA has leaked their official document of airport security guidelines. ABC News says Online Posting Reveals a “How To” for Terrorists to Get Through Airport Security
A Rookie Mistake
Look at the screenshot of the document at the top of this post. Even though a certain part of the document has been blacked out, it is possible to select the text and copy/paste to find out what is hidden behind the black text.
What kinds of things are listed in this document?
- Photographs of all kinds of official ID cards. Ever wondered what a U.S. Senator’s ID card looks like?
- Procedures for calibrating equipment, such as where guns should be hidden for the testing and such.
- Guidelines for who gets searched and who doesn’t.
- Guidelines for what objects get searched and which don’t.
- And much much more!
In other words, this was a most unfortunate event.
See for yourself—ABC News (and others) have posted the document with redactions removed.
Easy as Pie
Here’s a screenshot of the original document, opened in Adobe Acrobat Professional.
As you can see, it was a trivial matter to use the TouchUp Object tool to gently slide the black rectangle off of the secret stuff (I have blurred the text here, though you can read it from ABC News if you wish).
If you are working with confidential documents that could potentially cause disaster if leaked, please learn how to redact your documents correctly!
