Practical Tips on Metadata Cleaning

As Joe Edgell explained in his excellent presentation on metadata at the last OGE conference, it's easy to inadvertently disclose privileged information in the form of not-readily-visible "metadata" when you release electronic documents. Two facts make removing metadata more difficult than frequently assumed:

1. Converting a file to PDF does not always clean all metadata, and
2. The free metadata cleaner available from Microsoft is not considered completely effective.

Some state bar associations have opined it is unethical for lawyers to use metadata against their opponents, but these opinions have limited practical significance for those trying to avoid problems, because none of them is binding on nonlawyers.

An updated version of Mr. Edgell's materials is available at his web site. (Use the down arrow icon at the far right of Joe's file list to download a file; clicking on the file name won't work). He anticipates releasing another update in April.

Here's an IEC member's short summary of practical advice about avoiding metadata problems:

A low-tech way of cleaning metadata is to print out a paper copy, scan it and convert to PDF format. This is guaranteed to avoid releasing metadata, but has the major drawback that your file sizes may become unreasonably large.

Using OCR on the scanned file will also avoid metadata release, but cleaning up OCR errors can be labor intensive.

Here are some alternate ways of cleaning metadata:

A. Follow the National Security Agency metadata guidance for federal agencies.

B. Buy a commercial product intended to take less time than NSA's manual cleaning methods. The September 27, 2007 version of Joe Edgell's outline lists multiple alternatives on p. 27. I have the impression that lawyers who know more about this than I do frequently recommend Metadata Assistant.