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A lot of people wonder if there's a way to decipher the redactions in the documents. There is, but it will only work when the redacted part is surrounded by other text on either side and when you have ideas regarding what the redacted text might say. You have to be able to guess/experiment with the possibilities.
Here's an example from Leigh Ann Clark's testimony (11K, pp.2722-2728). Clark saw a "suspicious person" using a payphone around 9:00 a.m. and his name was redacted.
At first, I thought it was Chris Morris since she said the person was wearing chains everywhere. However, Morris' name doesn't fit. Robert Perry's name fits.
Here's what I did to get this redaction:
Step 1: Open a screen shot of the testimony in Photoshop.
Step 2: Find the typeface and size that matches the screen shot by typing the same text you see and adjust it until it matches. This may or may not be the original size as it was typed since we're dealing with photocopies and images that have been compiled as PDFs.
Step 3: Type the text surrounding the target redaction in that typeface and size and insert the possibilities for the redaction... you can color the black redaction spot light gray to make it easy to see the black text.
Step 4: Drop the text down over the original text to see if it fits:
Step 5: Compare with other possibilities:
You can see that Morris' name does not fit with the text. When you line up "photo #6 to match exactly, it throws the rest of the line off because his name doesn't fit there.
With Robert Perry's name, there is a 1-pixel offset visible with the placement of the commas:
This 1-pixel offset is most likely caused by the original text being bolded in a word processing program. Since I made this comparison in Photoshop, I couldn't create truly bold text - only faux bold, which is not the same.
Here's an example from Leigh Ann Clark's testimony (11K, pp.2722-2728). Clark saw a "suspicious person" using a payphone around 9:00 a.m. and his name was redacted.
At first, I thought it was Chris Morris since she said the person was wearing chains everywhere. However, Morris' name doesn't fit. Robert Perry's name fits.
Here's what I did to get this redaction:
Step 1: Open a screen shot of the testimony in Photoshop.
Step 2: Find the typeface and size that matches the screen shot by typing the same text you see and adjust it until it matches. This may or may not be the original size as it was typed since we're dealing with photocopies and images that have been compiled as PDFs.
Step 3: Type the text surrounding the target redaction in that typeface and size and insert the possibilities for the redaction... you can color the black redaction spot light gray to make it easy to see the black text.
Step 4: Drop the text down over the original text to see if it fits:
Step 5: Compare with other possibilities:
You can see that Morris' name does not fit with the text. When you line up "photo #6 to match exactly, it throws the rest of the line off because his name doesn't fit there.
With Robert Perry's name, there is a 1-pixel offset visible with the placement of the commas:
This 1-pixel offset is most likely caused by the original text being bolded in a word processing program. Since I made this comparison in Photoshop, I couldn't create truly bold text - only faux bold, which is not the same.
