What's the difference between declassification and redaction?

They’re related steps in releasing sensitive information, but they’re not the same thing.

Declassification

Declassification is the act of removing the classified status from national security information when it no longer requires protection. It’s a determination about the information itself — that disclosing it would no longer damage national security. Declassification happens through defined pathways: automatic declassification (generally at 25 years for permanently valuable records), mandatory declassification review (on request), and systematic review.

Redaction

Redaction is the act of removing or obscuring specific portions of a record before releasing a copy, while disclosing the rest. It operates at the level of individual passages, not the whole record. Redaction is used both in declassification (blacking out the parts that remain classified while releasing the rest) and in FOIA (removing exempt information such as personal privacy or law-enforcement material).

How they work together

A single record is often partially released: reviewers declassify and release what they can, and redact the portions that must still be protected — whether because they remain classified, contain another agency’s equities, or fall under a FOIA exemption. So a released document may be neither fully classified nor fully open: it’s a redacted version, with the protected passages removed.

In short: declassification changes the status of information; redaction changes a copy of the document so the releasable parts can be shared while the protected parts are withheld. Effective redaction must be permanent — hidden text that can still be extracted is a serious failure.