Automated Redaction Software?

[zzyzxuk]

Hi all,

 

Our school is looking for software to help us automatically redact documents that we are preparing in response to a Subject Access Request

 

We frequently receive Subject Access Requests for all documents our school holds containing a particular individual’s name.

 

However, before we can send these documents out, we need to first remove the names of other students and staff, including their emails and phones, without removing the name of the individual requesting the document, and we typically need to review several thousands of documents per request.

 

So we are interesting in finding a software solution that will do the following:

-Redact the names of all students except the requestor’s name from all documents. Because we have 1,700 students, we would like the software to be scanning for all of these names without our having to do this one-by-one.

-Redact out email addresses and phone numbers (in UK format) from documents.

-Be able to scan documents in MS Office formats, as well as documents downloaded from Google Documents including Google Sheets and Google Docs.

-Be able to scan .pst files for email messages located in them.

 

Does anyone know of any software packages that might be able to do the above?

[TechMonkey]

Tricky as how will the system know what is a name?, particularly a pupil's name? John may be a pupil, or the name of the local church a visit went to.

 

I'd also be hesitant as if it missed a single one, all hell could break loose.

[zzyzxuk]

I'm hoping I could dump into such a system a .csv containing all student names, and then it would just redact all of those names that it found.

 

Understand what you're saying about what happens if you miss one, but that's already a possibility with our current procedure which is hiring support staff to process the SAR, who go thousands of sheets of paper with a redacting pen, and are bound to miss one or two. Our solicitors are suggesting that if we are taking reasonable steps to ensure that we are not breaching data rules, that's OK. It doesn't have to perfect - just 99.99% perfect.

[Knil92]

I'm hoping I could dump into such a system a .csv containing all student names, and then it would just redact all of those names that it found.

 

Understand what you're saying about what happens if you miss one, but that's already a possibility with our current procedure which is hiring support staff to process the SAR, who go thousands of sheets of paper with a redacting pen, and are bound to miss one or two. Our solicitors are suggesting that if we are taking reasonable steps to ensure that we are not breaching data rules, that's OK. It doesn't have to perfect - just 99.99% perfect.

 

I'm sure you'd be able to use a csv and powershell to go through documents and if it finds a name or e-mail address or phone number etc... from the csv in the document it could just replace it with *'s

[zzyzxuk]

WAAAAY past my current skillset...

[supportman]

We have the same issue in our school. If its a PDF document thats been scanned in then just open in Word 2019 and do a search and replace on the text.

 

You can replace with a black block font. It works pretty well.

[Achandler]

There is software called Re-Dact which is fairly decent for doing it, it definitely does files that have actual words in, so PDFs, word documents etc. Haven't tried it with the other stuff as it isn't used by myself but the data management person.

 

They have a free trial as well.

[supportman]

There is software called Re-Dact which is fairly decent for doing it, it definitely does files that have actual words in, so PDFs, word documents etc. Haven't tried it with the other stuff as it isn't used by myself but the data management person.

 

They have a free trial as well.

 

Got a link? Google isnt much help with that name

[Andrew_C]

Just to throw into the mix - Your name set isn't going to be restricted to the current 1700 kids is it? You will need to look at at least 4 year's worth of ex-pupils / staff.

[Achandler]

Here you go https://www.e-redact.co.uk

 

Seems I missed the e out, apologies!

[Areku]

Sub Macro1()

'

' Macro1 Macro

'

'

Const ForReading = 1

Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")

Set objFile = objFSO.OpenTextFile("d:\SARS\namestodedact_forename _cg.csv", ForReading)

Do Until objFile.AtEndOfStream

strLine = objFile.ReadLine

Selection.Find.ClearFormatting

Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting

With Selection.Find

.Text = strLine

.Replacement.Text = " ***FORENAME*** "

.Forward = True

.Wrap = wdFindContinue

.Format = False

.MatchCase = False

.MatchWholeWord = True

.MatchWildcards = False

.MatchSoundsLike = False

.MatchAllWordForms = False

End With

Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll

Loop

objFile.Close

End Sub

 

 

 

add that to an office document, and it will take the names from column 1 of "namestodedact_forename _cg.csv" and change them to ***FORENAME***

 

the CSV i use is one i generate from sims (then removing any of the names associated with the student, as well as things like, april, winter, summer)

 

does the bulk of the work for office documents, you then just need to check it.

Edited October 15, 2019 by Areku