You open a records release, find black bars where names should be, and search for the redacted meaning. Here it is in one sentence. Redacted means that someone removed or hid specific information before sharing the rest.
What does redacted mean?
A redacted definition has two parts. Some information is taken out of a document, image, recording or video. The person receiving it can still see everything else. They usually see a marker that shows something was withheld, such as a black box or the word [REDACTED].
Redact is the verb and redaction is the act. A redactor is the person who does it, though the word is also an older term for an editor who compiles and revises a text. Biblical scholars still use it that way. Everywhere else, the privacy sense wins.
You will also see [REDACTED] in fiction and memes, where it signals secrecy. Nobody is following a rule there. In real work, a rule decides what comes out, such as a privacy law or a court order.
Redact meaning: where does the word come from?
Redact comes from the Latin redigere which means to drive back or bring into a state. Its past participle is redactus. English borrowed the word around the 15th century, when it meant putting something into written form or editing it.
The narrower sense, hiding parts of a document before it is disclosed, came later and belongs mainly to law and government. Today it covers far more than paper. People redact video, audio, photos and screen recordings.
What does redacted mean in legal and government documents?
Most people meet redaction in one of four places: a court file, a government records release, a data request, or a news story.
Court filings
In US federal courts, Rule 5.2 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure tells filers to shorten certain details. They must do this before a document goes on the public record. Filers show only the last four digits of Social Security numbers and financial account numbers. Birth dates show only the year, and minors appear by initials.
This is partial redaction. The reader can see that a number existed, and how it ended.
Freedom of Information releases
When a US agency answers a FOIA request, it can withhold information that falls under one of nine exemptions. The official FOIA.gov portal lists them. Exemption 6 covers personal privacy. Exemption 7(C) covers privacy in law enforcement records. Agencies must mark each redaction with the exemption they relied on, unless the marking would itself reveal protected information. That is why released pages carry small codes such as (b)(6) beside the black boxes.
Reasons can also be shown by label. The Mueller report, published in April 2019, color coded its redactions by reason, including Personal Privacy and Harm to Ongoing Matter.
In the UK, the Freedom of Information Act 2000 sets its own exemptions, such as section 40 for personal data. The idea is the same. Release what you can, and mark what you held back.
Subject access requests
In the UK and EU, a person can ask an organization for a copy of the personal data it holds about them. A CCTV clip showing the requester also shows other people. Article 15(4) of the GDPR says the right to a copy must not adversely affect the rights and freedoms of others. So those other people get blurred or removed. The ICO's guidance for organizations explains how UK bodies should respond. Teams that handle subject access requests must apply this step to every clip that shows other people.
Journalism
Reporters redact too. A newsroom that publishes a leaked contract may black out a source's phone number. A court reporter may leave out the name of a child witness. The editor signs off each cut and should be able to state the reason, such as a source's safety or a witness under 18.
What does redaction look like in documents, video and audio?
The method changes with the file type. Whatever the method, the hidden information must be impossible to recover.
| File type | What is usually hidden | Common method | Check before release |
|---|---|---|---|
| Document or PDF | Names, ID numbers, addresses | Black box, text removed | Try to copy the text |
| Video | Faces, number plates, screens | Blur or solid mask | Scrub frame by frame |
| Audio | Names, card numbers, addresses | Bleep or silence | Listen to the whole edit |
| Photo | Faces, labels, documents in shot | Blur or pixelate | Zoom in on each area |
Documents
A proper redaction deletes the text underneath. Drawing a black rectangle over a PDF does not, and anyone can copy the hidden words out. Good document redaction software removes the underlying characters and metadata, then flattens the page.
Video and photos
Video is harder. A face moves through the frame, turns away and comes back. A 30 minute clip at 30 frames per second holds 54,000 frames, and each one can show a face, a number plate or a screen. Scrubbing through that by hand at one second per frame takes 15 hours.
Secure Redact's video redaction tools detect faces and number plates and blur them across the clip. The tool will miss some faces, and it misses more on footage below 720p, in low light or under heavy compression. No single miss rate applies, because it depends on the camera and the footage. Run 10 minutes of your own footage and count the faces the tool missed. Divide that by the total faces to get your miss rate before you trust the output. A person should review the output before it leaves your building.
Audio
Audio redaction covers names, addresses and card numbers spoken in recordings. The usual method is a bleep or silence over the exact words. Audio redaction software finds the words through a transcript, but it misses more words on noisy calls and when two people speak at once. Compare the transcript with a 5 minute sample of the audio and count the missed words to measure the drop. That is another reason for a human check.
A worked example: before and after
Here is an invented incident log entry, prepared for release to a journalist. The aim is to keep the event and remove anything that identifies a private person.
The original entry reads: "On 14 March, Jane Okafor (born 2 June 1984) reported a theft at 12 Mill Lane, Leeds. Her card, 4417 5521 9032 8810, was used twice. Call back on 07700 900123."
The released version reads: "On 14 March, [REDACTED] (born 1984) reported a theft at [REDACTED]. Her card, XXXX XXXX XXXX 8810, was used twice. Call back on [REDACTED]."
| Detail | Before | After | Reason |
|---|---|---|---|
| Name | Jane Okafor | [REDACTED] | Identifies a private person |
| Birth date | 2 June 1984 | 1984 | Partial redaction, year kept |
| Address | 12 Mill Lane, Leeds | [REDACTED] | Points to a home |
| Card number | 4417 5521 9032 8810 | XXXX XXXX XXXX 8810 | Last four digits kept |
| Phone number | 07700 900123 | [REDACTED] | Direct contact detail |
The date of the theft and the card's two uses stay. The reader learns what happened but not who it happened to. Before release, copy the text out of the finished file and search it for "Okafor" and "Mill Lane". If either appears, the redaction failed.
Video follows the same logic. Take a 20 second shop camera clip where the requester stands at the counter, two other customers wait behind, and the till screen is visible. In the released version the requester stays clear. The two customers are blurred, and so is the screen. Scrub through every frame to check, including the ones where a customer turns their head. Confirm that no face or number has slipped through.
How is redacted different from deleted, edited and censored?
Deleted material is gone, and the reader is not told. A redaction is marked as withheld, so the reader knows a gap exists. Editing changes or shortens a text, which can alter what it says. Censorship usually means an authority decided something should not be seen, and the reason may be political or moral rather than a rule about privacy.
One page can be all of these at once. Redaction is the one that should leave a paper trail showing what was removed and under which rule.
What happens when redaction goes wrong?
In January 2019, lawyers for Paul Manafort filed a court document whose redacted passages could be copied out. Journalists pasted the text elsewhere, and the hidden details became news.
The same mistake takes other forms, such as a black highlight over live text or a layer that can be switched off. White text on a white background fails the same way. In video, a light blur may leave a person recognizable, and a face missed in a few frames identifies them anyway.
The costs include regulator fines, such as UK GDPR penalties of up to £17.5 million or 4% of annual global turnover, whichever is higher. They also include lawsuits from the people whose details leaked. Our article on the consequences of redaction failure lists further cases and the penalties that followed.
How do you read a redacted document?
Four markers show where information was removed and, in some cases, why.
Black or white boxes mean text was removed at that spot.
[REDACTED] or a similar label means a replacement was typed in.
A code such as (b)(6) names the exemption cited in a US FOIA release.
A blank page with a note means the whole page was withheld.
A redaction tells you something was there. It does not tell you what, and you should not guess.
How can you test your own redaction?
Pick one file you need to release and list what must come out before you open any tool. Names? Faces? Then check the result as a stranger would. Copy the text from a document, or scrub the video frame by frame. For audio, listen from start to finish.
Do you handle more than five video files a week, or any single clip longer than 10 minutes? Use a tool that detects personal data and logs each change. It does the first pass, and a person still reviews the result before release. Try Secure Redact on a sample file and see what it catches and what it misses.
Frequently asked questions
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Redacted means that specific information has been removed or hidden from a document, image, recording or video before it is shared.
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No. Deleted information is simply gone, and the reader is not told. Redacted information is marked as withheld, and the organization that did the redaction usually keeps the original, so it can be reviewed or released later if the rules change.
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It comes from the Latin redigere, meaning to drive back or bring into a state. English adopted it around the 15th century with the sense of editing or putting text into written form.
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To protect personal details and other protected information while releasing the rest. In US federal courts, Rule 5.2 limits Social Security numbers to the last four digits, and FOIA lets agencies withhold information under nine exemptions.
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Try to select and copy the text under the black box, then paste it into another document and search for a name or number that should be hidden. If any of the hidden words appear, the redaction failed and the text is still in the file.