I’ve used bad redaction to my advantage at work to make money, I’m all for other people using bad redaction techniques :)
Flatten everything to a set of just images.
Have normal human staff draw black boxes over anything to be redacted.
Compose a new 'PDF' that's a set of 'scanned' images.
If it does, then Export to PNG almost certainly removes it (while also removing all other selectable text)
Overall, I kind of understand the paranoia even though in principle it does sound pretty foolproof.
I think if you're really concerned, you'd print it once, apply physical black tape on it (or cut out with a razor), then scan that :)
You've certainly piqued my curiosity. Can you say any more?
I’ve unredacted proposals using the ‘unflatten’ command in Bluebeam Revu (which is by far the best PDF editor) which allowed me to underbid my competitor and win the job (and at a higher price than I would’ve submitted).
Definitely an ethical grey area, but an edge is an edge ;)
I'd not do this if I were you.
There are zero legal implications, it was a private contract. My customers regularly tell me the exact price that my competitors have submitted to them and that isn’t illegal.
Probably there are legal implications for attorneys circumventing redaction in legal documents but construction proposal letters have no protections against unredaction.
Legally, I can't see what's wrong with using information that you have, even if the other party didn't intend for you to have it. Lawyers themselves will use information in court that was accidentally sent to them by a counter-party, and that the other lawyer never intended them to have.
There are billions of PDF files out there, but the ones are being redacted are the most valuable of the lot.
Happens a lot.