Justice: Sharing Data Would Crash System (they really said that)

[donsu]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=536&ncid=536&e=5&u=/ap/20040629/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/foreign_lobbying

The Bush administration is offering a novel reason for denying a request seeking the Justice Department (news - web sites)'s database on foreign lobbyists: Copying the information would bring down the computer system.



"Implementing such a request risks a crash that cannot be fixed and could result in a major loss of data, which would be devastating," wrote Thomas J. McIntyre, chief in the Justice Department's office for information requests.

-snip-

"This 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. The watchdog group in Washington made the request in January. He said the group expects to appeal the Justice Department's decision.

-snip-

"It sounds like incredible negligence for an agency that is keeping public records to keep them in such a precarious condition," said Stephen Doig, interim director at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University. "I've never heard the excuse that making the equivalent of a backup copy would somehow cause steam to rise out of the computer."
-snip-
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maybe they just need more time to cut and paste and delete

[TrogL]

1. This was slashdotted yesterday

Everybody was killing themselves laughing.