Publication and privacy
Redactions and Withholdings
How the archive distinguishes agency redactions, withheld records, privacy edits made by this project, and unanswered questions about nonproduction.
A citation is not a ruling. When an agency withholds a record and cites a legal basis, we record that citation as the agency's stated justification without automatically agreeing that it applies.
Last reviewed: October 13, 2026
Different situations should not be conflated
- Agency redaction
- An agency releases a document with selected words, fields, pages, or images obscured or removed.
- Full withholding
- An agency states responsive material exists or is being withheld in full. The archive records the claimed scope and reasons.
- Partial production
- An agency produces some responsive material while indicating that other responsive material is withheld, absent, or still under review. The exact status should be attributed.
- Privilege objection
- An agency invokes a privilege, sometimes without stating whether records were located. We do not assume a specific privileged record exists unless the response establishes it.
- No responsive records located
- An agency reports that its search identified none. This is distinct from a withholding and does not independently establish that the records never existed.
- Project-applied redaction
- The project removes or obscures unnecessary personal information in its published copy. Such an edit is explicitly labeled and kept separate from agency redactions.
What a log entry should contain
When records are added, entries should identify the agency and request; response date; affected record or category; precise location (page, field, row, etc., if known); whether withholding was complete or partial; the legal citations as the agency gave them; a plain-language summary; source links; and any scope or segregability question the documents leave unresolved.
If an agency supplies a cluster of statutes without matching each to a particular record or redacted field, the archive should say so rather than assigning explanations that are not in the source. Legal commentary created by the project is labeled Analysis and kept separate from the agency's own stated basis.
Project-created privacy redactions
Before publication, a review may remove irrelevant private addresses, personal phone numbers, signatures, identity numbers, medical or financial details, or other information whose public amplification is unnecessary to understand government business. When the project publishes a modified copy, it should identify the modification, its general purpose, and whether an original source is retained separately for provenance.
Source files should not be silently overwritten with project-modified copies. A security-related redaction or restriction may also be warranted where detailed information could create unnecessary risk.
Segregable portions and legal references
California Government Code § 7922.525 addresses inspection and reasonably segregable nonexempt portions of public records. Agency responses and specific claimed exemptions require individual evaluation. See the Methodology page for our approach to agency-cited justifications.
Current Calaveras log
No redaction or withholding entries published yet
No Calaveras agency-specific responses have been entered in this archive's redactions log. The absence of an entry is not a statement about any agency's practices.
Machine-readable data: redactions.json and legal-citations.json. There are no entries in these logs at this time.
Ask about a redaction
If a linked record appears to contain information that should not be republished, or if a withholding entry misstates an agency's actual response, please submit the specific page and source details for review.