Redacting a PDF for a federal criminal filing

Updated September 5, 2026. Not legal advice; confirm the current rule, the local rules and any order in your case.

What Rule 49.1 says

Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 49.1 applies to every electronic or paper filing in a federal criminal case, by a party or a nonparty. Quoted from the rule text published by the Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School, read September 5, 2026:

Unless the court orders otherwise, in an electronic or paper filing with the court that contains an individual's social-security number, taxpayer-identification number, or birth date, the name of an individual known to be a minor, a financial-account number, or the home address of an individual, a party or nonparty making the filing may include only:

The filing may include only (Rule 49.1(a)):

1. the last four digits of the social-security number and taxpayer-identification number;
2. the year of the individual's birth;
3. the minor's initials;
4. the last four digits of the financial-account number; and
5. the city and state of the home address.

The criminal rule adds one category the civil rule lacks: an individual's home address, reduced to city and state.

The exemptions are wider than in civil cases. Warrants, charging documents and their supporting affidavits, and pre-charge filings are outside the rule (Rule 49.1(b)(7) to (9)). Filings under seal are outside it too (Rule 49.1(d)).

Rule 49.1(c) sends immigration cases under 28 U.S.C. §2241 to the civil rule, Rule 5.2.

What is exempt

Rule 49.1(b): the redaction requirement does not apply to the following.

1. a financial-account number or real property address that identifies the property allegedly subject to forfeiture in a forfeiture proceeding;
2. the record of an administrative or agency proceeding;
3. the official record of a state-court proceeding;
4. the record of a court or tribunal, if that record was not subject to the redaction requirement when originally filed;
5. a filing covered by Rule 49.1(d);
6. a pro se filing in an action brought under 28 U.S.C. §§2241, 2254, or 2255;
7. a court filing that is related to a criminal matter or investigation and that is prepared before the filing of a criminal charge or is not filed as part of any docketed criminal case;
8. an arrest or search warrant; and
9. a charging document and an affidavit filed in support of any charging document.

Sealing, protective orders and mistakes

Protective orders (Rule 49.1(e))

For good cause, the court may by order in a case: (1) require redaction of additional information; or (2) limit or prohibit a nonparty's remote electronic access to a document filed with the court.

Waiver (Rule 49.1(h))

A person waives the protection of Rule 49.1(a) as to the person's own information by filing it without redaction and not under seal.

What to search for in the PDF

The rule names categories; the PDF holds them as text, as form-field values, as comments and as pixels on scanned pages. Search all of those, not only the visible page.

Category	What may remain	Where to look
Home addresses	the city and state	street addresses of individuals in witness statements, financial records and reports; this category exists in the criminal rule only, so a civil workflow will miss it
Social Security and taxpayer-identification numbers	the last four digits	nine-digit numbers in 000-00-0000 and 00-0000000 form, with and without separators
Dates of birth	the year	dates near DOB, born and date of birth; booking sheets and medical records carry them on every page
Names of minors	the initials	names you know belong to minors; search by name and check every hit
Financial-account numbers	the last four digits	card, bank and loan account numbers, including those in bank records obtained by subpoena

How to redact so nothing leaks

1. OCR scanned pages first, so search finds every instance and no later OCR pass resurrects the text.
2. Search by pattern and by name, then review every hit. Accept or reject before applying anything.
3. Remove, then draw. True redaction deletes the text and image data, then marks the area. A box drawn over live text is not a redaction.
4. Scrub the rest of the file: metadata, comments, bookmarks, attachments, hidden layers, form fields.
5. Save as a new file, never an incremental save, so the earlier revision is gone.
6. Verify by extracting the text of the output and searching for every redacted term, then keep a redaction log.

The full method, with the places redacted information hides and how to verify by hand, is in How to redact a PDF properly.

How ExhibitSet handles it

ExhibitSet's search-and-redact ships with pattern presets for Social Security and taxpayer-identification numbers, dates of birth and financial-account numbers, finds matches in page text, form-field values and comments, and shows each hit for review. Applying removes the underlying text and image data; the output is then re-read and searched for every marked term, and the job refuses to report success if anything is still found. The redaction log records page, reason and area without the redacted text. Everything runs in your browser; no document, page or file name is uploaded.

Frequently asked questions

Do I redact home addresses in a criminal filing?

Yes. Rule 49.1(a)(5) allows only the city and state of an individual's home address, unless the court orders otherwise or an exemption applies. The civil rule has no such category.

Are warrants and charging documents redacted under this rule?

No. Rule 49.1(b)(8) and (9) exempt arrest and search warrants and charging documents with their supporting affidavits. Sealing and local practice still apply.

Is a black box drawn over the address enough?

No. A box drawn over live text leaves the text in the file. True redaction removes the text and image data and is verified by searching the output.