In 2004, CBS News anchorman Dan Rather was caught in controversy when government documents purporting to be authentic contemporary records of criticism of George Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard in 1972 and 1973 were challenged as being recent computer-produced fakes.

All sorts of government records, either purportedly retreived by FOIA or leaked to the press or to activist organizations, have some kind of murky origins that should force you to pay closer attention to help determine if that purported proof is actually accurate. This edition of FOIA Friday looks at some signs that you can look for in an all-digital era to see that what seem to be authentic records actually are what they say they are.

If you haven't been following along, the introduction to the FOIA Friday series is a good start.

The easiest set of government records to authenticate are ones where the information has been released through the FOIA process. A complete original set of documents will include not only the records requested, but also the original letter requesting them, and a copy of the formal response from the government agency. These can be verified either by requesting the records again or by checking the FOIA log at the agency to validate that the request was actually made. Check the cover letters to see which records were requested and how the request was phrased, and also check for the response letter to determine which records were not released and what has been redacted or removed.

Many agencies have distinctive production methods by which they release information to the public. Federal agencies are often extremely careful in noting as required by law which exemption they use to black out or redact materials, and the resulting printed or electronic copy has a distinctive look that would be very hard to fake using a common word processing tool like Microsoft Word. Evidence that portions of a document have been removed to protect personal privacy or to hide unreleasable information are a surprisingly easy-to-recognize visual check on truthfulness of the document. I've come to be relatively unwilling to accept at face value a first clean digital copy of a purported government record without wanting to see the grainy, photocopied, redacted original.

It's possible to independently verify accounts through news sources, but again you would do well to take care if there is a concentrated effort to defraud. News wire services have been hacked into in the past, as in the case in 2000 when a student ran a false press release on the company Emulex that caused a run on its stock price. The activist group the Yes Men produced a fake New York Post and put it on news stands in New York City, and have showed up in character as fake representatives of Dow Chemical, the U. S. Chamber of Commerce, and other groups in order to put their message forward. News indexing services like Google News occasionally have less-than-credible sources come in temporarily, and a common theme in advertising fake sites is to design them so that they look like official news sources complete with logos.

There are many ways for documents that purport to be an accurate record to be altered or manipulated. AnnArbor.com has taken some steps unusual for news organizations like publishing original unedited copies of FOIA requests. Digital records provide a greater challenge because of the ease by which they can be silently changed, and news organizations have to be on their guard.

Edward Vielmetti writes the FOIA Friday column for AnnArbor.com. You can reach him by telephone at 734-330-2465 or by email at edwardvielmetti@annarbor.com.