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?"

Comments

Resign, Mr. Ashcroft

[Randym]

Under looser policies issued in 1993, agencies could hold back information to prevent "foreseeable harm."

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?

Re:Resign, Mr. Ashcroft

[multiplexo]

If you're referring to the fact that Ashcroft as AG might be revenge on the Democrats for playing dirty and getting Jean Carnahan to replace her husband Mel then you're probably right, although he seems like revenge on the rest of us as well. So much for Democratic perfidy, although what if Ashcroft, who is detested by all liberals and a lot of conservatives helps to drag Bush down in 2004? Could this be construed as part of a Democratic ueber-master strategy?

You're missing my point though, any incumbent senator who's worth a shit should be able to crush a competitor like a bug in a vise, especially a dead one, even the dead one's widow trying to get into office on a sympathy vote. Hell, look at senators such as Scoop Jackson, Strom Thurmond, Lyndon Johnson or Jesse Helms. Those guys wouldn't have had any problem smacking Jean Carnahan down, despite whatever sympathy vote her dead husband was worth. Lyndon Johnson probably would have ended up winning the election and fucking her. Scoop Jackson would have won that election and sold Boeing aircraft to the state of Missouri and Thurmond or Helms could have won that election and gotten the MIssouri schools resegregated (which wouldn't take that much work, but still).

Re:Administration marked by lack of transparency

[CoitusRex]

In this light the following quote from Bush, in response to Bob Woodward asking if the president explained his positions, is not surprising at all:

Of course not. I'm the commander. See, I don't have to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation.

Florida

[dpilot]

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.