The government body which oversees airport security in the USA has hit the news with the leak of an internal guide that could make it easier to sidestep airport passenger screening procedures.

Australia's DocsCorp has responded with a white paper highlighting the penalties for incorrect redaction of sensitive documents.

The US Transportation Security Administration suffered an embarrassing exposure this week after leaking a document that featured important sections that were redacted. Because of lax procedures the original text was able to be uncovered.

USA Today reports that "The document outlines who is exempt from certain additional screening measures, including members of the U.S. armed forces, governors and lieutenant governors, the mayor of Washington, D.C., and their immediate families."

According to one report, "TSA posted a redacted version of the document but did not delete the sensitive information from the file. Instead of removing the text, the government covered it up with a black box. But the text was still embedded in the document and could be uncovered

"As we close out 2009, a number of surveys and research papers are circulating that indicate that more than 50% of data leaks of confidential or private information are accidental rather than malicious," said DocsCorp marketing manager Kerry Carroll.

"Certainly, high profile incidents throughout the year involving government bodies, large corporations and financial institutions around the world show that no one is immune.

"Redacting paper documents is a fairly simple process-get a marker and strike-through the text to redact it. Redacting PDF documents, as some have discovered, is more complicated.

"PDF documents are constructed in layers-for example, text is on one layer and images on another. Thus, redacting text with opaque objects is not a foolproof method of redaction as you are simply adding another layer, which can be peeled back to reveal what's underneath.

"To add another layer of complexity to the redaction problem, you need to consider the underlying structure of the PDF. Depending on how the PDF was generated - whether a Word document converted to PDF, or a scanned document output as a PDF - there may be more than one layer of information that needs to be redacted. The problem: it isn't always obvious what type of PDF you have," said Carroll

DocsCorp has made its complimentary White Paper available at http://www.docscorp.com/public/downloadTrial/RedactionWhitepaperPDFT.cfm