08.08.2014 - 08:04 [ Techdirt ]

How Redacting ‚Just 15%‘ Can Hide The Details Of CIA‘s Torture Program

As the fight over the redactions on the CIA torture report continue, it‘s worth reminding folks how you can totally change the story with just a few well placed redactions. Director of National Intelligence has insisted that just 15% was redacted — though, as Marcy Wheeler points out, the part that‘s being declassified is just the exec summary, which was written specifically to get around the redactor‘s ink, since the details are buried in the full report, which will likely remain classified for a while. In other words, the vast, vast majority of the report is still „redacted.“ Still, even a 15% redaction can do a lot of damage and hide a lot of facts. Senator Mark Udall has made it clear that the existing redactions make parts of the report „incomprehensible“ in an effort to hide embarrassing information from the public.