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My view is not that I’m against digitizing archives (in part, because it can make items available to a wider cross section of people), just that physical archives still matter and will into the future… I’m actually harder lined on these other issues (voting, planes, battleships), all need a person there. There might be a role for computers, just not the primary one. At least not the computers we have right now…
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I think the point is that the documents that should come to them are not getting that far. Hard to scan something in that you don’t physically have.
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If anything, I’d treat all data as suspect unless you can back it up with a branch office (ex. NWS) report. BTW, the EPA is doing the same thing as ICE by deleting many records regard to pollution now, especially on indigenous people’s lands, so this is a widespread mandate it seems. Worse still, they could easily apply security clearances to this and let it rot in FOIA hell for twenty years but it seems someone is more paranoid than usual which makes me wonder if they think the next President will prosecute any of the wrongdoers.
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Yep. They don’t want to be held accountable for crimes against humanity and they know that most career people at places like the NA and EPA act in a non-partisan way in their jobs.
We have a history of not doing that, but this might be an extreme case. That paper trail needs to be preserved as much for that, as for future historians.
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I read that story before. This reaction is kind of obligatory when I hear about what ICE does.
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I’ll try to find it again (saw it yesterday, trying to look up comprehensive info on all this), that NA allowed the shredding based on a claim that they didn’t have the resources to store the hardcopy docs, hence the go-ahead to ICE. Still at work (lunch!) so I’ll try tonight for that ref.
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Yeah, post it whenever you can find it, thanks!
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People easily and erroneously believe that little saying about the Internet being written in ink not pencil. Anyone who has gone looking for anything that was around in the earlier days of the web knows the frustration of finding nothing but dead links and deleted sites. Similarly news sites update stories without showing their edits, and trying to follow links to older stories often just gives a 404. Relying on the internet to store information forever is just terribly foolish.
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