Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/02/05/national-archive-to-let-ice-de.html
…
4 Likes
If there’s an open non-compensated volunteer effort to piece together shredded documents—if this gets around the regs, I’ll be your man.
Fuck ICE, and after being designated a security agency this month, CBP too.
12 Likes
I’m curious if they provided any justification for this other than “hiding crimes”.
9 Likes
19 Likes
7 Likes
Hmmm, where have I seen this sort of thing before?
10 Likes
11 Likes
Absolutely classic l’estat c’est moi. If it is bad for me, it is bad for security and for the nation. Monarchy here we come.
13 Likes
According to the article, the National Archive stopped accepting paper a few years ago because they’ve run out of room to store it. Unfortunately, you’ll need some hardware forensics to extract files from discarded hard drives these days.
3 Likes
They need more funding and more space, but they are now selling OFF buildings instead of building or buying new ones. We still need physical archives in addition to a digital archive. We need to stop thinking that computers are a silver bullet for everything in the world, but I know I’m howling into the void on that one.
21 Likes
Because they want to make it easier to cover up the number of children dying in immigration detention concentration camps.
They admitted to 7 deaths in 2019, which means the number is far far greater.
12 Likes
I got started in tech building a silly little website for lore about the Myst series. Since then I’ve been falling more and more into doing the work of an actual archivist over the years, piecing that material together from collapsing and poorly-archived sources and keeping it (and the history of the community around it) accessible, to the point that it’s an actual side hustle now. Even working on something which, by comparison, is utterly trivial, the ephemerality of digital information has been a constant source of frustration and hair-pulling. Knowing that our national history is being intentionally subjected to the same problems on a grand scale is frankly terrifying.
Of course, Congress likely doesn’t care because keeping records and persisting knowledge as required would almost certainly lead to accountability for them that they definitely don’t want to be subjected to, even historically.
5 Likes
I disagree on that point. The National archives are important, but so is the work of other kind of archivists, at least if we want a proper record of the time. Those of us who study cultural and social history depend on the kind of work you’re doing as a side hustle.
Right? People don’t realize this, but it’s true. We think of digital information as being more durable, because it’s so easily reproducible, but it’s more ephemeral than we think, especially something that lives online…
I know, right? I can’t help but think that part of this is from the same right wing mindset that attacks academia more generally now, due to the fact that more people of color and more women of any race are now in archiving and academia. The push to make our national memory more inclusive has got to piss plenty of bigoted assholes off. The same people who’d rather burn down the whole country than build a more inclusive society.
13 Likes
After this afternoon’s vote in the Senate, we’ll already be there.
2 Likes
I don’t know if the Librarian of Congress is appalled (she should be); I know I am.
7 Likes
The United States of America - nice idea while it lasted.
7 Likes
She had to wear white just to be seen amongst all of the shade.
2 Likes
So the NA have never heard of high-speed high-volume document scanners?!
2 Likes
Totally. There are a lot of things that should never, ever, rely on computers. In addition to archives there’s voting, airliner manual control overrides, and steering battleships, just off the top of my head from things I’ve seen in the news recently.
3 Likes
And:
7 Likes
