Electronic Discovery and Evidence

Microsoft Word's Hidden Tags and Metadata

Microsoft Word's Hidden Tags Reveal Once-Anonymous Peer Reviewers.  "The peer-review process at many academic journals is intended to be blind, meaning that authors do not know who is reviewing their work. But a little-known setting in Microsoft Word has led to the unmasking of some peer reviewers, compromising the anonymity of the process. Keyne A. Cheshire, an assistant professor of classics at Davidson College, in North Carolina, is new to scholarly publishing. He recently discovered the problem by accident. After submitting an article to a journal in his field, he received a reviewer report by e-mail, forwarded from the journal's editor (he declined to name the journal or editor). The report, which Mr. Cheshire said included some "hefty criticism" of his article, arrived as a Microsoft Word file attached to the e-mail message . . .

The Dangers of Metadata

NSA and the Dangers of Documents. "A U.S. soldier accidentally kills an Italian secret service agent in Iraq. The Pentagon posts a report online in Portable Document Format (PDF), discussing the tragic incident. Clever readers on the Internet, however, are able to access blacked-out, confidential information in the PDF simply by cutting and pasting sections of the censored text into a Word file. Information-security problems caused by metadata, like the Pentagon fiasco from last spring, are becoming a pressing issue for the government and many corporations, are concerned that may transform the way information is shared online. . . "

WordPerfect - Removing Metadata

U.S. Government Agencies Choose Corel WordPerfect Office X3; "PDF represents one of the world's most widely deployed open formats and WordPerfect X3 is the world's first and only word processing to be able to open, edit and publish PDF files. The new WordPerfect X3 also has the ability to easily remove hidden metadata contained within word processing documents.. . ."

See also Without a Trace. - article on removing metadata.

Metadata - How to Redact

Companies tackle hidden data issue. High-level leaks are driving efforts to strip hidden "metadata" that can be found in documents. "BOSTON -- When the New England Journal of Medicine used a word-processing function to reveal that Merck & Co. had deleted study data about Vioxx and heart attacks, the pharmaceutical giant joined a long line of organizations bitten by information lurking in electronic files. It's happened to no less than at the White House, the Pentagon, the British prime minister's office and the United Nations. Each time, making minor electronic adjustments to documents aired juicy details not meant for public disclosure -- such as the true author of a file or sensitive data hacked from a final draft. The pitfalls of such hidden "metadata" have been long known in computer-savvy circles, but these high-profile leaks are driving new efforts to keep a lid on metadata. . ."

Comment:  Redacting with Confidence: How to Safely Publish Sanitized Reports Converted From Word to PDF

Tony Blair's Microsoft Word Metadata Unveiled

Microsoft Word bytes Tony Blair in the butt. Microsoft Word documents are notorious for containing private information in file headers which people would sometimes rather not share. The British government of Tony Blair just learned this lesson the hard way.
Back in February 2003, 10 Downing Street published a dossier on Iraq's security and intelligence organizations. This dossier was cited by Colin Powell in his address to the United Nations the same month. Dr. Glen Rangwala, a lecturer in politics at Cambridge University, quickly discovered that much of the material in the dossier was actually plagiarized from a U.S. researcher on Iraq.

Metadata Alarm

Free Tool Identifies Hidden Data in Office Docs. "When it comes to Microsoft Office documents, there is often a lot more in them than meets the eye. Most people don't realize that when two or more people collaborate on a Word, Excel, or PowerPoint document, hidden information--such as deleted text, names of authors, and revision marks--are sometimes unintentionally left in final drafts. A company called Workshare Technology now offers a free safety net from the potential embarrassment of a public display of these hidden and forgotten comments and changes. The company's Trace application sends out an alert if hidden information, also known as metadata, is embedded in a Microsoft Office file. When hidden data is identified, a dialogue box pops up from your system tray alerting you. . . "

Metadata Uncovered

Avoiding Snares and Gotchas in Word 2003.  "Dear Mr. Holbrook (oops, that should be Holford): Thanks for your contribution in the amount of $(insert amount here: use fancy letterhead if over $100). We hope to see you and your wife (scratch that! they got divorced last month)...

Would you really like your contributors to see this version of the letter? Doubtful. But if you don't turn off some of the metadata options in Word, you could unknowingly be e-mailing documents containing all sorts of sensitive or embarrassing data just like this. Find out how to fix the problems, before they find you. . ."

RFID

Technology's Benedict Arnold? "(Radio Frequency IDentification) tags also called EPC (Electronic Product Code tags) are poised to replace the ubiquitous UPC bar codes that adorn most everything we buy. And that may be a good thing. Unlike UPC bar codes which have to be individually "looked at" by an optical reader (think grocery store checkouts), the RFID tag removes that line of sight restriction. As the "RF" (Radio Frequency) portion of their name suggests, RFID tags are queried by radio waves, not by light, and so they can be read at a distance. . . "

Digital Camera Metadata and GPS

Now, where did I take that photo? Ask the camera. "When you release the shutter on a digital camera, it records more than just Aunt Millie's toothy smile. With each photograph, the camera attaches descriptive data - information like date and time, make and model, white balance settings and whether the flash was used. Among the 300 or more types of data that can be attached are Global Positioning System coordinates, pinpointing where the photograph was taken. Most digital cameras cannot be connected to a GPS receiver, so they cannot automatically tag images with coordinates. But interest in the combination is growing. When Frederik Ramm, a software engineer in Karlsruhe, Germany, strapped a digital camera and separate GPS receiver to his car and drove around northern Scotland, he posted his results on the Web in the form of a geographically navigable travelogue. . . "

Metadata in Your Documents

Do your documents contain hidden data?
"With governments, large corporations and newspapers guilty of inadvertently disclosing information hidden in the content of Word and other electronic documents, a new web site has been set up to help ordinary companies and individuals avoid embarrassing disclosures. The problem relates to metadata - the hidden but potentially threatening information that lives and travels within every genre of content, from basic documents and spreadsheets to presentations and web copy. Generally the information retained in the document relates to its title, author, date of origin, content, size and location, but corrections, comments, deletions and other information stored in track changes can also get locked in metadata. . . ."

Electronic Discovery and Electronic Evidence