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

As usual

[SpaceCadetTrav]

Here we see the typical Slashdotter over-simplified solution: smugly link to an open source product.

2000

[serano]

So that's what happened in Florida in 2000.

Re:Disturbing...

[letxa2000]

Particularly because the policy allows withholding information due to "foreseeable harm" to the Administration, and not necessarily to the country.

Is that comment based on some real document that I can see, or are you being funny, or are you being Moore-like and just making it up as you go along?

Re:Regime Change

[taustin]

I'm voting again EVERY encumbent, since I don't think there's a human being in office worth the air they breath.

I can't help but wonder how frightened any incumbent should be of someone who can't spell incumbent.

Maybe if everyone voted against all incumbents for a decade or so we'd flush the professional policiticians out and take back our country.

No, then we'd have government run by professional bureaucrats who are all appointed, and completely unanswerable to the voters.

Re:I guess they must be using MS servers......

[bonch]

After all, Apache servers never go down when Slashdot links to them...

Re:Official announcement to Slashdot

[jburroug]

Well as the AG of the US, Ashcroft is in charge of the Justice Department and along with his boss, Dubya, is ultimately responsible for the policies that drive such decisions. So it's perfectly fair to bring up his name in an article relating to the actions of DoJ.

Fine I won't make fun of the fact that he believes in Jesus, but can I still make fun of his fear of calico cats, fear of the breast of Justice , the ritual annoiting in cooking oil for every office he takes or for his musical stylings?

Re:Easy

[sybert]

SELECT * WHERE organization != "Haliburton"
and Country != "Saudi Arabia"
and Topic != "Energy"
ORDER BY "Contribution Amount"

Results:
Name,Organization,Country,Contributee,Amount
Mochtar Riady,Lippo,Indonesia,Clinton,?
James Riady,Lippo,Indonesia,Clinton,?
Charles Trie,Triad,China,Clinton,>450k
John Huang,Riady,China,Clinton,?
Johnny Chung,,China,Clinton,>350k
Liu Chaoying,PLA,China,Clinton,?
...

It would be unthinkable if the president's top contributors were agents of a foreign government. Our president would never sell out our national security to another country.

Re:Well, we could...

[ChrisMaple]

There are further complications. Fertilized eggs can stop dividing after any number of divisions and persist indefinitely, unborn. Soul?

A cell clump (1 soul?) can split into two (2 souls?) and in rare cases fuse back together (1 soul again?)

Two types of people promote belief in souls: malicious liars and those who refuse to think. I mean you.