Redacted: Blacking out PDF text does not delete it. Idiots.

This is old news, but I found a cartoon that needs this story. So, here it is.

It seems that a lot of folks, including the stellar legal team at AT&T, think that overlaying black or some other color on a PDF will cover up the text. Which it does.

Only if you select the covered-up text with your cursor and then paste it into another tool, like Notepad, viola, the text magically shows up.

Here's the initial story that prompted my search for a relevant photo. Sadly, it took me a year to find it! (I really wasn't looking.)

But now, many PDF creators allow one to properly redact information in a PDF file. One is the source of the picture above: ScanSoft.

AT&T leaks sensitive info in NSA suit | CNET News.com: "AT&T's attorneys this week filed a 25-page legal brief striped with thick black lines that were intended to obscure portions of three pages and render them unreadable (click here for PDF). But the obscured text nevertheless can be copied and pasted inside some PDF readers, including Preview under Apple Computer's OS X and the xpdf utility used with X11."

AT&T whistle blower tells a tale of wiretapping and secret rooms

Verizon and AT&T (then SBC) caved to government pressure to allow spying on US citizens -- Qwest reportedly did not.

Mark Klein, a technician at AT&T, broke open this story by handing over documents pertaining to a "secret room" in the Folsom Street office of AT&T that he claims was a room reserved for government spying. Others have concluded similarly.

In June 2003, as we gradually moved under a Folsom Street supervisor ... the Geary Street technicians had a tour of the Folsom building, and one of the technicians on the tour pointed at a door and said, "That's the new secret room and only one guy is allowed in there."

Spying in the Death Star: The AT&T Whistle-Blower Tells His Story