Sometimes, Information Does Want to Be Free

In June of 2002, a report was prepared on the racial and gender diversity of the attorney work force of the U.S. Department of Justice. The DoJ kept this report under wraps, despite repeated Freedom of Information Act requests, until last week, when a PDF was posted to the Justice Department's Web site. Approximately half of the contents of the document were blacked out – "redacted" – making it one of the most heavily redacted government documents in recent memory."

In one of the most stunning examples of computer cluelessness in government since Ollie North forgot about the automatic backups of his Iran/Contra emails on the night of his famous shredding party, it transpires that the PDF so posted was in so-called "Image+Text" format; and the while the image was blacked out, the redacted text remained. And one doesn't have to be a l33t h4x0r d00d to get at that text.

You can find the unredacted version at The Memory Hole. Newsday featured a story on the contents of the full report.

The unredacted version confirms that Justice officials rejected some key conclusions by the consultants they hired, writes Newsday's Tom Brune.

Via Calpundit)