eli5 what is the difference between censorship and redaction? when the government releases files for the public, they redact quite a bit of information. Isn’t that censorship?
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Words have specific meanings and its important not to conflate them
When we talk about government censorship its “thou shalt not talk about Tiananmen square”, a blanket ban on all discussion related to a topic with penalties for breaking it. It’s not about providing/receiving information from certain sources, its about a broad topic that’s just forbidden
Redactions are significantly different. That’s the government saying “i’m not going to tell you this specific thing” and not “discussion of this topic is prohibited”. They are generally quite limited in scope and have to tie back to a specific government interest like another project that’s still classified or an information source that would be at risk.
Similarly, secret documents are controlled and confidential but they’re narrow in scope. You can’t share the exact specs of an F-35’s radar because that information poses a national security risk but you can know that its an AN/APG-81 and speculate on its specs and if you happen to get it right there isn’t a penalty for that. *The Hunt for Red October* was apparently concerningly accurate, but as it was all pieced together from non-classified sources it was fine
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