Secret Data in FBI Wiretapping Audit Revealed with Ctrl-C

Once again, supposedly sensitive information blacked out from a government report turns out to be visible by computer experts armed with the Ctrl-C keys — and that information turns out to be not very sensitive after all.

Simply highlighting the redacted columnsin this table from an Inspector General report reveals some very un-sensitive information.
Image: Justice Department Inspector General Report

This time around, University of Pennsylvania professor Matt Blaze discovered that the Justice Department’s Inspector General’s office had failed to adequately obfuscate data in a March report (.pdf) about FBI payments to telecoms to make their legacy phone switches comply with 1995 wiretapping rules. That report detailed how the FBI had finished spending its allotted $500 million to help telephone companies retrofit their old switches to make them compliant with the Communications Assistance to LAw Enforcement Act or CALEA– even as federal wiretaps target cell phones more than 90 percent of the time.

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