The art of redaction is the elimination of, or the obscuring of, written information that should not be publicly disclosed, such as certain personal identifying markers, state secrets, confidential sources, and the like. On the other hand, those things that should not be redacted, are the deliberate redaction of pertinent evidence to the case at hand, so deliberately redacted in a manner so as to purposely obfuscate what would be fairly obvious, if such was not redacted. That is to say, to redact something that should not be redacted, for the very purpose to keep the party so requesting that pertinent information, from seeing the whole truth of the matter, is a form of misdirection, deception, and categorically wrong.
Far too many people as well as organizations, are overly concerned only about documents not being properly redacted in the sense, that certain personal information, for instance, has not been fully obscured. While this indeed can pose a problem, one could argue quite forcefully, that all things being equal, that it is almost always better to disclose more information and therefore to be more transparent, than to obscure such, because obscuration is typically the mindset of somebody or some organization having something that they wish to have hidden, because the disclosure of that information apparently cannot handle the disinfection of the light of day.
That is to say, while we might believe that those that are doing the redactions are always above board, neutral, and competent, the fact of the matter is that powerful people as well as powerful organizations and powerful government entities, will go to some incredible extremes, to protect what they feel needs their protection and if they are unable to stall or to preclude the admission of certain compromising documents, then the next best thing to do is to see that those documents are redacted in a manner, to the extent so possible, that this will protect their interests, of which, critical passages and words obscured, can easily change a losing hand to one that at least breaks even.
It is a travesty of justice, when information that the public has the right to know, or when specific parties to a given suit have requested such in discovery, in which, that information is, for whatever reason, endlessly delayed, unnecessarily obscured, is incomplete, or basically the disclosure of that information has not followed the intent of the law and the purpose, of it. In the lack of full disclosure, those then that are trying to render a fair decision, or the people that are attempting to formulate a reasonable opinion, have been cheated, and cheated especially when redactions in certain places of a given document, have for all intents and purposes, served as a tool of deception, as opposed to such redaction edits having always toed the line of being fair and prudent.
One should never underestimate the extent to which people and organizations will go to, in order to protect what they feel has to be protected, and therefore the art of redaction, is that art, which must be monitored by neutral parties that are beholden to nobody, or else, in many an important case, that which has been redacted, has been done so in service to that which has far too much power, to begin with.