By John Markoff
The New York Times

European researchers at a security conference in Switzerland last week demonstrated computer-based techniques that can identify blacked-out words and phrases in confidential documents.

The researchers showed their software at the conference, called Eurocrypt, by analyzing a presidential briefing memorandum released in April to the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks. After analyzing the document, they said they had high confidence the word "Egyptian" had been blacked out in a passage describing the source of an intelligence report stating that Osama Bin Ladin was planning an attack in the United States.

The researchers, David Naccache, the director of an information security lab for Gemplus, a Luxembourg-based maker of banking and security cards, and Claire Whelan, a computer science graduate student at Dublin City University in Ireland, also applied the technique to a confidential Defense Department memorandum on Iraqi military use of Hughes helicopters.

They said that although the name of a country had been blacked out in that memorandum, their software showed that it was highly likely the document named South Korea as having helped the Iraqis.

Full article at New York Times

Hmmm...

Don't be fooled by expensive imitations, you can do the same thing in many cases by adjusting the contrast and brightness in any photo program.

I have tried it on a couple of project blue book docs and it works about 50-70% of the time. Depends on copy clarity and how well words are blacked out.

Thanks for the tip...