Comment by Teever

Absolutely. The other comments replying to your original comment that are nitpicking over implementation details miss the purpose and importance of this step.

The fact that this release process is missing this key step is significant too imho. It makes it really clear that the people running this didn't understand all of the dimensions involved in releasing a redacted document like this and/or that they weren't able to get expert opinions on how to do this the right way, which just seems fantastical to me given who we're talking about.

In other threads people are discussing the possibility of this being intentional, by disaffected subordinates, poorly vetted and rushed in to work on this against their will. And that's certainly plausible in subordinates but I have a hard time believing that it's the case for the people running this who, if they understood what they were tasked with would have prevented an entire category of errors by simply tasking subordinates to do what you described regardless of how they felt about the task.

So to me that leaves the only possibility that the people running this particular operation are incompetent, and given the importance of redacting that is dismaying.

Regardless of how you feel about the action of redacting these documents, the extent to which it's done and the motives behind doing it, the idea that the people in charge of this aren't competent to do it is not good at all.