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DoJ - Making Data Public Would 'Crash System'
orthogonal writes "The Justice Department today denied Freedom of Information Act requests to make public data on foreign lobbyists, claiming that '[i]mplementing such a request risks a crash that cannot be fixed and could result in a major loss of data, which would be devastating'. The requestor responded that '[t]his was a new one on us. We weren't aware there were databases that could be destroyed just by copying them,' Bob Williams of the Center for Public Integrity said Tuesday. Maybe we should tell John Ashcroft about open source database and copying solutions?"
yeah he works hard enough lying to the American public and destroying all openness in government. Have you read Jonathan Dean's book? I realize you're joking but I've had it with this guy. We've had more than enough evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors to impeach his sorry ass.
One of my Linux machines is currently suffering from some substandard SCSI equipment and some DMA problems on one of the hard drive controllers; until I can schedule the downtime for software upgrades and hardware troubleshooting, I'm leaving things the way they are. As long as that's the case, the system mostly works, but certain disk-intensive operations (such as searching hundreds of MB of logs) degrade performance enough to make the system nearly unusable.
I doubt that this is terribly relevant to the computing problems experienced by massive government databases, but I can at least conceive of how a "mass export of all stored images" (to quote the article) could significantly interfere with the database's everyday usage on a sufficiently poorly-designed/maintained/updated system.
The article also states that the government plans on having the upgrades completed, and the data available, by December. (I'm not going to touch the issue of how accurate this statement is.)
it's all just another lie told to us by our government. it's nothing new, but i think this republican majority government is realizing that all this access to information is not beneficial to the government powers which widely conflict civil liberties.
it seems they've simply given up and just make up blantant lies which are served to the american public as excuses.
I hereby call for the resignation of John Ashcroft on the grounds that his ineptitude in responding to legitimate FOIA requests clearly causes "forseeable harm" to American democracy.
Not to mention that the excuse he gave is *not* one of the reasons permitted to be cited by the government to avoid giving us -- the American people, who paid for it all -- *our* information.
Mr. Ashcroft is from Missouri, the "Show Me" state. Tell me, Mr. Ashcroft: what part of "Show me the public records" do you not understand?
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
The FBI is spending nearly $600 million to modernize its antiquated systems.
Call it hubris, but how many people here think they could modernize their systems for a tiny fraction of that?
Lets say the information is held on magnetic tape, now after a while I suppose it starts to get a bit brittle.
Running it through a reader without first restoring the tape could degrage the data and tape to the point where it could no longer be reconstructed, e.g. all the ferite comes off of the tape and floats accross the room in a plume of dust.
So, if the data's stored on old tapes they may have a case.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
What next? Can I send a request that says "I would like a copy of every piece of paper ever produced by the US?" Do I then have the right to moral outrage when they refuse?
Seriously, this is freaking ridiculous. There's plenty of reason to go after Ashcroft without resorting to silly crap like this.
I would see nothing wrong with a $.01/page fee for FOIA request. Pay up if it amounts to more than $10.
How do they know that the records will be destroyed by accessing them? Have they accessed the records already and destroyed them?
More importantly, if they can "fix" the records in time for December, by their logic, wouldn't this process endanger the records from destruction in the first place?
Only government would pull a paradox out of its ass as an excuse.
By the way, take a look at Bush's interview with an Irish journalist. A real journalist, not one that has to submit questions three days ahead of time.
Toon toon! Black and white army!
- Lewinsky
- Lead up to Waco debacle
- Iran-Contra
- Watergate
- Gulf of Tonkin
- Tuskegee "Experiment"
After things like this, to name just a few, why is it surprising?I've written enough letters to my congresscritters that the probably have me filed under "wacko" in several different categories. Their replies show a polite distain for my pitiful rights and nearly-useless vote.
Knowledge is power, and those in power are determined that we lemmings be kept ignorant of the the deeds done in our name for our own good. The only thing more dependable than finding our representatives have sold us down the river for personal profit, is that keeping such dealings quiet is a matter of national security. After all, if all the little lemmings figured out they were being cheerfully led over a cliff they might not follow so blindly. Computer malfunction my arse. I work as an Oracle DBA -- if I EVER responded to a request for data this way I'd be canned on the spot, and rightly so. Somehow, I doubt anyone is suddenly unemployed at the justice department.
Personally, I'm beyond disgusted. I'm voting again EVERY encumbent, since I don't think there's a human being in office worth the air they breath. Maybe if everyone voted against all incumbents for a decade or so we'd flush the professional policiticians out and take back our country.
On the other hand, I'm seriously considering emigration to a land where freedom means something, like Russia!
If you would read the article, you would find that there are four hours a day when the records are accessible from the Justice Department
Would reading them outside of the designated 4 hours cause the ink to evaporate? Just curious.
You want conspiracy theories? How about the fact that the database will be publicly available, but "an overhaul of the system should be finished by December" -- conveniently after the election. Hmmm. I wonder why the Bush-Cheney administration might want foreign connections quiet until after Nov 2? Can you say "Saudi Arabia"?
Now, most likely, this is some technical thing not directed by the White House or even Ashcroft. But this has been an administration with a proven track record of stonewalling, hedging, and obfuscating for political purposes
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
Because there's been exactly one person that I've known who equates abortion with murder and wasn't a conservative religious type. All the rest were. An assumption, but one based on experience.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Florida pulled a really fast one on the entire nation. While everyone was talking about hanging chads, dimpled chads, and killer-ninja chads, we missed the real point. The chads made a few thousand votes indeterminate.
But we got so caught up in them that we missed the 10's of thousands of black voters who were erroneously classified as felons and denied their right to vote. It's a simple search on Google to see some things about it, and the classification was done in what appeared to be a deliberately incompetent manner.
So maybe the electronic voting machines will be used to throw the election.
Or maybe the electronic voting machines will be a smokescreen for some other shenanigans.
Or maybe we're all seeing conspiracies where there are none.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
If SCO can do it (i.e. provide a hard copy to IBM), then the DOJ certainly can. Just replace Ashcroft with McBride. The law could not be in any worse hands than it is now and we would actually get a printout.
Well, it doesn't say it word-for-word, but since you added "or anything like that" to the end of your declaration, I'd have to disagree. There is God's vision to Jeremiah, when God says in Jeremiah 1:5, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you." There is also Exodus 21:22, wherein God commands that if a man strikes a woman and causes a child to be stillborn, it's "eye for eye, life for life." However, I think that verse is ambiguous. Depending on the translation, it doesn't always use the word "stillborn" and so it might be talking about harm to the mother. But in any case, there is another verse which I cannot find without scanning through my whole Bible for highlights. In that verse, a man is condemned for striking his wife in the stomach and killing his unborn son. If I find it at home tonight I might try to email it to you. In any case, if I were you, I'd find some other problems with the Bible, because this problem doesn't appear to be as you suggest.
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
The next sentence is one you should have included:
The internal memo that describes the "technical problem" that prevents releasing the data.
"The government said an overhaul of the system should be finished by December and copies should be available then. "
It's not a big deal. As soon as Bush has locked up another four years of warmongering and cronyism, then the records will be freely available.
-B
Just "PIN" is sufficient. "Enter your PIN."
Besides "LCD Display", my other pet peeve redundancy is "HIV Virus".
Then again, I don't like it when people send "an" e-mail. I send a letter, I don't send a mail, so why would I send an e-mail? It really ought to be an e-letter, but just dropping the article is sufficient. Send me "e-mail", not "an e-mail".
They're numbers. Use an array.
this is one time that both mainstream candidates are so bad that voting third party is a no brainer.
Nah, if Kerry gets elected, then congress will oppose everything he does on principal. If nothing gets done for a year, would that be so bad?
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
I wonder if Prescott Bush, George W. Bush's grandfather, was registered as a Foreign Agent in 1938. He was the U.S. banker for Fritz Thiessen, one of Germany's wealthiest men and a key money man who helped put Adolph Hitler in power. Fritz wrote a rather dull book about it called, "I Paid Hitler". When Union Banking, of which Prescott was a principal, was seized in 1941 for trading with the enemy, it was something of an embarrassment to the Bush family.
@de_machina
I'm utterly ashamed that I am from a country that would so blatantly lie to their people like this. It's totally insulting to the intelligence of anyone who's evolved beyond a single-celled creature. Then again, this is a sad, poigniant testimonial to how ignorant and apathetic Americans have become. It's really a shame that people aren't outraged that their government would act so despicable.