Censor bars are a basic form of text,
photography, and
video censorship in which "sensitive" information or images are occluded by black, gray, or white rectangular boxes. These bars have been used to censor various parts of images. Since the creation of
digital editing
Digital media is any media (communication), communication media that operate in conjunction with various encoded machine-readable data formats. Digital media can be created, viewed, distributed, modified, listened to, and preserved on a digital ...
software which can apply less obtrusive effects such as
pixelization and blurring, censor bars are typically used for
satire,
[Click: The Forces Behind How We Fully Engage with People, Work, and Everything We Do, Ori Brafman & Rom Brafman, p.10]
/ref> although they remain in contemporary use to address privacy concerns. Censor bars are also used in art forms such as blackout poetry
Erasure is a form of found poetry or found object art created by erasing words from an existing text in prose or verse and framing the result on the page as a poem. The results can be allowed to stand '' in situ'' or they can be arranged into li ...
.
Censor bars may also have the words 'censored', 'redacted', 'private information', 'sensitive information', etc. to indicate their presence.
Illustrations of usage
File:1965 FBI monograph on Nation of Islam - Elijah Muhammad at Airport (redacted).png, A 1965 Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, t ...
surveillance
Surveillance is the monitoring of behavior, many activities, or information for the purpose of information gathering, influencing, managing or directing. This can include observation from a distance by means of electronic equipment, such as c ...
photograph
File:Aclu-v-ashcroft-redacted.jpg, A heavily redacted page from the lawsuit ''American Civil Liberties Union v. Ashcroft
''American Civil Liberties Union v. Ashcroft'' (filed April 9, 2004 in the United States) is a lawsuit filed on behalf of a formerly unknown Internet Service Provider (ISP) owner by the American Civil Liberties Union against the U.S. federal gover ...
''
File:Google Doodle Censored 2.png, The censor bar as used by Google in the SOPA and PIPA online protests
File:CENSORED The Birth of Venus by William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1879).jpg, Censor bars applied to an academy painting, '' The Birth of Venus'' by William-Adolphe Bouguereau
File:Frau-2 censored de.jpg, Censor bars applied to a model
File:Riley day.jpg, Censor bars used to anonymise a woman with familial dysautonomia
File:Censored wikipedia logo for trwiki.svg, The Turkish Wikipedia logo with a censor bar covering the text, used from April 2017 to January 2020 when Turkish authorities blocked online access to Wikipedia in all languages across Turkey
File:Chwiesiuk complaint affidavit 0.pdf, A portion of the redacted affidavit used to obtain a search warrant for former U.S. President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home and resort, with the signature block blacked out.
See also
* Sanitization (classified information)
References
External links
Censorship
{{Humanrights-stub