Is there legal authority for redaction of witnesses' personal identifiers from public records?

Bear in mind, once again, that Daniel Cameron's request for additional time to make redactions was not necessarily grounded in open records law.

But under that law, there is legal authority supporting redaction. In 2013, the Kentucky Supreme Court ruled that "the public disclosure of the social security numbers, the driver's license numbers, the home addresses, and the phone numbers of victims, witnesses, and uncharged suspects appearing in police department's arrest and incident reports, as well as all references to juveniles, would constitute, in the vast majority of cases, a clearly unwarranted invasion of those persons' privacy."

https://caselaw.findlaw.com/ky-supreme-court/1653242.html

In Kentucky New Era v City of Hopkinsville, the Court balanced the individual's substantial privacy interest in "personal information the dissemination of which could subject him or her to adverse repercussions [, including] embarrassment, stigma, reprisal, all the way to threats of physical harm" against the insubstantial open records related public interest served by disclosure.

Recognizing that information need not be secret to be deserving of privacy protection, the Court held that, "absent a statute to the contrary, Kentucky's private citizens retain a more than de minimus interest in the confidentiality of the personally identifiable information collected from them by the state. This interest increases as the nature of the information becomes more intimate and sensitive and as the possible consequences of disclosure become more adverse. A person's involvement in any capacity in a criminal investigation poses risks, if disclosed, of embarrassment and stigma, and can easily pose much graver risks as well."

In affirming the City of Hopkinsville's redaction of addresses, phone numbers, social security numbers, and driver's license numbers of the witnesses, victims, uncharged suspects, and juveniles, the Court carved out a narrow exception for cases in which "access to the [information] is necessary to confirm or refute substantial evidence that the agency is engaged in improper conduct."

The Court held that "absent some substantial reason to believe that the redacted records provided to the newspaper fail adequately to reflect the substance of those interactions and that the private citizens involved could shed meaningful light on some sort of police misfeasance or controversial policy, the public interest in monitoring the police department clearly does not extend to providing phone numbers, addresses and driver's license numbers."

It is unclear on what basis Cameron made his request for additional time for redactions, but caselaw supported redaction of witness identifiers on the facts presented in Kentucky New Era v City of Hopkinsville.