REDACTION #101

Suspsended Jersey Police Chief Graham Power
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We see a lot of "redaction" about these days. Perversly, and in a limited way, this may be a good thing. Requests for information from the powers that be were often met in the past with a blank refusal.

Today we have "Freedom of Information" legislation which generally applies to public institutions and which obliges them to provide the citizen with any requested records unless this can be shown to be inappropriate according to a number of strictly defined criteria.

So, in many cases, rather than attempting to justify not providing any of the material requested, resort is had to coughing up a "redacted" version.

I know about all this stuff as I operated the Freedom of Information Act in the Irish Finance Ministry insofar as it applied to my work area.

The term "redacted" was not around in my youth. It simply means "edited". But it sounds sort of authoritative and maybe even respectable. When I was young I had a hankering after journalism and had I followed this up I would have been subject to the "Redacteur en Chef" as the French call him. To me he would have been my editor in chief.

Now, before we go any further I have to introduce you to another term, "jigsaw identification". This applies to a situation where you may have avoided actually naming someone or redacted their name, but the person can nevertheless be identified from various bits of other information which you have neglected to redact but when drawn together can clearly point at that person's identity.

Initial version: Power's published evidence

My example, above, is from a large document published at the time by the "Independent Jersey Care Inquiry". The Inquiry used to publish all the evidence submitted to it in real time. This is an extract from that of the suspended Chief of Police, Graham Power.

I don't want to expand on it here, but Graham was one of the good guys and he was suspended by Jersay's powers that be in their attempt to shut down the earlier police inquiry into child abuse which was a serious embarrassment to them. Just for the record, they succeeded.

In his evidence, Power referred to a well known and powerful member of the Jersey establishment who had been scheduled to be interviewed by the police as a suspect and under caution, in respect of the serial abuse of adult females.

The "Independent" Inquiry, which was tight with the Jersey powers that be, realised they were heading into dangerous territory and decided to redact the person's name. The system was to black out the name and substitute a number, in this case 737. This subsitution would be consistent, always 737, anywhere in the documentation where that name was redacted.

In addition to the name, the Inquiry also redacted information which, in its view, could potentially lead to jigsaw identification. I won't go into it in detail here but the Inquiry, being from outside the island, inadvertently left enough information unredacted for anyone familiar with the Jersey scene to identify the suspect. In this regard I would mention that there is only one daily newspaper in Jersey.

The suspect had one other mention in the document but this was in connection with another issue and was left unredacted.

Lesson #101-1: Know your audience.

Needless to say, once the redacted document was published, speculation on the identity of the redacted person was rife and if became clear to the Inquiry that they had not done a thorough enough job to fool the locals. So they withdrew the document and issued a further redacted version.

Power's evidence, further redactions (yellow highlights)

The new version dealt with the problem of jigsaw identification, but after the horse had already bolted. The relevant additional redaction was to cut out reference to the newspaper, which I have pointed out was a dead jigsaw givaway.

However this time round, the eagle eyed redacteur en chef spotted a reference to the suspect on another page and promptly, and unthinkingly, redacted this. And that was their fatal mistake. The newly redacted reference was to Person 737 but the context was slightly different and, most importantly, it had not been redacted in the previous version where the person was clearly named.

By now associating the previouly published name with a 737 redaction the inquiry was effectively certifying the identity of this person.

Lesson #101 - 2: You only get one shot at this. Do it properly the first time round.

So why am I bothering to raise this sort of stuff now? My example relates to the past in a far away land.

Well, just the other day, Craig Murray was himself on trial, yes trial, for contempt of court in his reporting of the earlier trial of former Scottish First Minisster, Alex Salmond. This was despite the measures he took to avoid jigsaw identification of Salmond's accusers who had the benefit of anonymity.

In passing, the bulk of the Scottish main stream media were clearly in contempt of court by stridently and pruriently amplifying the accusations in a way that in the normal course would have prejudiced Salmond's jury trial. Fortunately the jury nonetheless acquitted Salmond.

As well as defending himself from the accusation of jigsaw identification, Murray also pointed to the contrasting treatment of himself and the main stream media, making the point, with which I strongly agree, that his trial was political, and like that of Julian Assange, was designed to put the fear of God into any potential dissidents, seriously curtail free speech and, paradoxically, freedom of the press.

Lesson #101 - final: Pay attention.