Blame the Computer

"A popular government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy - or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own Governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives."

-- James Madison

The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) was passed in 1966, in order to avoid Madison's "Farce and Tragedy". Under the FOIA, the records of all federal agencies are to be made available to any person who makes a written request for records on a specific topic.

There are some common-sense exclusions and exemptions, but in general, the FOIA ensures that you have full access to your government's knowledge.

"There ought to be limits to freedom"

-- George W. Bush

Today, the Justice Department denied a FOIA request seeking information on foreign lobbyists. What's interesting is the reason they gave for denying the request: that "implementing such a request risks a crash that cannot be fixed and could result in a major loss of data, which would be devastating". That's Thomas J. McIntyre, the DoJ's chief officer in charge of information requests.

It's truly bizarre for them to claim that a database query would produce an unfixable crash in their computer system, resulting in devastating data loss. Do they not make backups? What kind of database are they using that it is not possible to extract data from it? Perhaps I'm naive, but I was under the impression that data retrieval was, in fact, the raison d'etre of a database.

Or, as Stephen Doig put it: "It sounds like incredible negligence for an agency that is keeping public records to keep them in such a precarious condition. I've never heard the excuse that making the equivalent of a backup copy would somehow cause steam to rise
out of the computer."

Indeed, it would be incredible negligence, if it were true. It's far more likely just a convenient excuse for the Bush administration to avoid embarassment on a subject that lots of Americans recently became suddenly aware.

DoJ offers their apologies, and the consolation that their computer system is going to be overhauled, and that this request can and will be answered promptly after the system upgrade is complete.

Well, that's a relief. So, when is the upgrade scheduled to be completed? In December 2004, one month after the U. S. presidential election. How convenient.