Recently police in Thailand arrested an accused pedophile after German detectives reconstructed an image of the suspect's face that had been distorted using image editing software.

 

Clever work on the part of the German detectives.  This got me to thinking about managing sensitive data implications.  If you distribute an image, part of which you've blacked out -- say, a name or an SSN -- unless the transformation is truly one-way, someone could do the same thing.

 

This could be in a PowerPoint presentation or any document.

 

I'm thinking the only really safe way to do this would be to blacken a printed copy (or better yet cut out the sensitive info) and scan it back in.

 

Food for thought...

 

 

/rich