REDACTION

It is a story that is playing out across America as county agencies that have published whole collections of community records online respond to criticism from citizens and legislators.

Government agencies often turn to their technology vendors for answers to problems the vendors themselves helped to create. The companies promise that, for a price, they can remove the information that identity thieves might use. But the expensive redaction software the vendors offer as a solution is proving to be over-priced, inefficient and at best, only partially effective.

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Records in Suffolk County, New York, for example, show the legislation was warned that sensitive information contained in the records on the County Clerk's Website could be accessed online by identity thieves, terrorists and stalkers. But instead of removing the sensitive documents, lawmakers expanded the system after being assured that the county clerk's office was creating a way to redact private information.

Unfortunately, those assurances did not apply to the records already available, a point some lawmakers now claim they did not grasp at the time. As a result, the system for accessing records in Suffolk County, such as mortgages and deeds was taken off the Internet indefinitely until the problem -- the exposure of thousands of personal identities -- can be resolved.

Many of these records have already been mined, aggregated and sold in bulk form all over the world. These records will never be redacted.

During a legislative hearing in November, 2004 former New Jersey County Clerk Edward Romaine, who is now a legislator, and his director of information technology, Peter Schlussler, boasted that they had developed software that would protect the citizens of Suffolk County.

Sounding like an ad for a software company, Romaine testified: "We think this is going to be a tremendous benefit in terms of protecting people against identity theft, because we will, and we have developed a tool, and my ID director can talk to that, that will block out signatures and Social Security numbers on the subscription service."

"The signatures and private numbers", Romaine testified, are "something you can get now in Riverhead" from records filed at the clerk's office."

He didn't mention that the clerk's website made the records equally available to anyone sitting in an Internet cafe in Bombay, Tehran or Bucharest.

Tip: Ask your County IT department for a report on foreign visitors to the County Website. Click here for an example.

In other counties across the country, clerks are claiming they have the technology to retroactively "redact" the Social Security numbers they have previously published to cyberspace. Do they? Or is this just another misleading statement from the vendors designed to sell expensive software?

In 2005 Hart Intercivic won a $500.000 contract to redact the Social Security number's from document's displayed in Orange County, Florida. The software was found to be only partially effective at identifying and redacting some Social Security numbers. The Social Security numbers of thousands of Floridians remain online. For these people, the program was a 100% failure.

Software developers lack both the technology and the courage to take full responsibility for what their software can and cannot do. News for Public Officials was unable to identify any vendor willing to take legal responsibility for missed redactions or any ability to automatically redact hand written numbers at all. In fact, most contracts between county government and redaction software vendors disclaim all legal responsibility for sensitive data the software can neither find nor redact.

Many, if not most, Social Security numbers appear in the online records in handwritten form. News for Public Officials found a single page from one document on the Fort Bend County, Texas website containing twenty-two signatures and Social Security numbers. Eighteen of the numbers are handwritten and virtually invisible to redaction software but easily discernible by any identity thief, terrorist or stalker from anywhere in the world.

In June 2006 Travis County (Texas) Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir, facing complaints from concerned citizens, pulled the county's huge collection of digitized documents from the county website. At the time, she said, "my obligation as an elected official is to respond to legitimate public concern and to do everything within my authority to protect people now.”

Six months later, after an extensive effort to remove sensitive information using expensive redaction software and teams of "trained" experts DeBeauvoir once again published the images online. It took only a few minutes for researchers to find Social Security numbers, driver's license numbers, medical and financial information and other private information in virtually every type of document displayed.

The

attached copy of a document found online illustrates why corporate attorneys are not likely to allow technology vendors to assume legal responsibility for removing even Social Security numbers from the online record.

In order to protect the people whose names and numbers appear on this single page we have done what software programs and county clerks are unable to do for the millions of documents displayed on county websites. We have altered the document by hand to obscure the Social Security numbers that were displayed on the Fort Bend County Website. However, this document, and millions like it, remain visible with on state sponsored websites across the country even after redaction efforts.

Once the document images have been published online there simply is no way they can be returned to the county repositories. Once online, the images are mined, copied and redistributed almost instantly to websites all over the world. Take Jeb Bush's Social Security number for example.

When Florida Governor Jeb Bush was notified that his Social Security number was appearing on the Dade County Website, he signed a law allowing Florida residents to request their numbers be redacted from official sites. Dade County was quick to comply with the Governor's request and both his and his wife's numbers were redacted by hand from a Quit Claim Deed.

It was too little, too late. A simple Google search reveals the governor's number on seven websites including two websites that originate in foreign countries. It is impossible to determine how many more sites around the world are displaying sensitive information previously downloaded from the Dade County Website.

While some companies work to develop software to redact the sensitive information, others provide services that mine and extract the online information. From this data, they compile background reports and dossiers on American citizens. One such "back office" company claims, as their "unique selling point", a local office in the U.S. and offshore hubs in India, The Philippines and China.This data miner reportedly provides 60,000 reports a month on US citizens from information extracted from databases published in over 400 county websites.

Data miners have been using "redaction" software for years to extract information and compile it into virtual dossiers on American citizens. Use Florida Governor Bush's "redacted" Social Security number as the search criteria at a data miner's website and you will be presented with a screen telling you the site is searching billions of records contained in the "public" records of online agencies to extract and compile your free report. Wait four seconds and the site tells you the Governor's previous addresses. For an additional $50 you can buy an eleven page report on the Governor, his neighbors, friends and family members - all extracted from the all too public online "public" records.

If the goal of redaction is to protect local citizens from outside criminals, redacting nine numbers from online documents will do little to protect anyone. It is the whole document that must be removed from the Internet.

The Constitution promises all citizens that we will be secure in our papers not just a few bits of information that might be extracted from the papers. Their is no security in papers published over the Internet where they are easily searched and seized by anyone on the other side of the world. Removing a Security Number does nothing to protect the either the document or the people. Extracting this number from the documents while publishing the rest of the document is like hiding the key to an unlocked box.

Some redaction schemes call for removal of only the first five numbers in the series and leave the last four numbers intact. These schemes only succeed in removing the numbers that identity thieves do not need. See for yourself. Call your credit card company and request a change of address. You'll need your name, current address and ONLY the last four digits of your Social Security number. Anyone who can give these four numbers to the person on other end of the line can do anything they want with your account.

Contrary to popular belief, a Social Security number is not necessary for many types of identity fraud. A SSN (or the last 4 digits) can help criminals commit credit card fraud but identity fraud often does not involve credit cards. The Federal Trade Commission reports that credit card fraud is only 32% of reported cases. In Texas credit card fraud is only 21% of reported cases.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation calls deed fraud the fastest growing white collar crime in America. An authorized signature and notary seal extracted from a County Website is all the 21st century criminal needs to take your home.

An identity thief can draw a draft on your bank account with any merchant that accepts "checks by phone". All that is needed is a copy of a check that displays the account number and bank routing number. Thousands of these images can be found on any County Website that displays the imaged documents.

All a stalker needs is the home address of his victim. Last year, over one hundred judges cited the murder of a federal judge's family in their Chicago home when they petitioned the Allegheny County Clerk (PA) to remove their names and addresses from the county website. Some state laws allow judges and police officers to block some government agencies from displaying their home addresses in cyberspace. But these laws often do not apply to County Clerks providing remote access to the same information on county websites.

Even the secret locations of women's protective shelters are no longer secret in online counties and these locations are easily accessible by abusive ex-spouses.

There are approximately twenty two of the two hundred fifty four counties in Texas that face the impossible task of redacting personal information from documents they have already released over the Internet. There are thousands more in other states where county government rushed to embrace a technology they did not fully understand. Some agencies are turning to their vendors for solutions to a problem the vendors helped create. Vendors respond with promises of software that will remove the information but the companies will not accept legal responsibility for any information the software fails to identify or remove. Redaction software's greatest success to date is an incredible ability to quickly extract millions of taxpayer dollars from the County Treasury.

Redaction software is an expensive non-answer to the question of how county government will protect the citizens once our sensitive papers are published online to everyone in the world.

The answer is neither complicated or expensive. It doesn't require redaction software, technology or money. The answer that was established by our forefathers is still valid today. It is a system that protected Americans and our documents for more than 200 years. Keep the documents accessible only within the jurisdiction where they were filed.

County officials who consider the safety of their constituents more important than the convenience of those outside the jurisdiction should take the people's documents offline immediately.

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