sanitisation (of a document)

Removing or rewording passages of a document so that intelligence sources and methods cannot be identified from it.

Definition based on the International Spy Museum glossary: it means deleting specific information or rewording a report so that the sources and methods of collection cannot be established. The aim is to protect sources and methods.¹

Under Polish law, whether and how information is protected depends on the security classification chosen according to the scale of the damage its disclosure would cause – from exceptionally grave damage (“top secret”) to a detrimental effect on the performance of tasks (“restricted”); Article 5 of the Act on the Protection of Classified Information.²