I'm sure if the tapes they found contained some form of evidence against the founders of SciHub or Anna's Archive, they would have found a way to play it back /s
This case is screwed up. This shouldn't be a thing. At least allow the requester to pay for the recovery (limited to a certain amount) like they do with other things under FOIA.
I've litigated a lot of FOIA. I would definitely try litigating this. Why don't the NSA write all their records to an obsolete format and then destroy the writer. That way they never need respond to a FOIA request again.
I once made a FOIA request and the public body claimed they had put the records in a trash can minutes before they received my request and the FOIA "does not require a public body to reach into the trash to recover records." LOL .. another one for the appellate courts.
I love Kagi - I asked "what unique citations can you find for a talk admiral grace Hopper gave to the NSA in 1982 titled “Future Possibilities: Data, Hardware, Software, and People,” and it returned this citation first:
I'd be really curious to go down this path and push more on freeing this up. Having never filed an FOIA request myself and lacking the training to litigate, do you have any advice for someone like me wanting to put some energy into this? I suppose reading up on muckrock's charter and mission is a good first step. I'd love to hear more about your experience in general if you feel like sharing.
In addition to pushing forward on the FOIA approach, I'd suggest trying to interest whatever group the NSA has assigned with historical preservation. I'm sure they are understaffed and underfunded but at least they have an interest in preserving things like this, whereas the FOIA people's goal is to find grounds to deny requests as cheaply and quickly as possible.
I imagine there are NSA history buffs outside the agency and contacting them first to get their input on who and how to approach (or maybe even an introduction) would probably be better than a cold approach. Two things that may help:
* Make it easy for them by doing the legwork up front. Find a preservationist or museum with a working 1-inch VTR, ideally one of the "portable" ones (actually like a large suitcase vs a washing machine). It may be that removing the tape from the NSA facility makes it a much bigger ask (keeping in mind they don't know for sure what's on it yet). The closer you can make the initial proposition sound to "it just takes one of your people to get the tape for a couple hours to digitize it. We'll set it up but NOT be in the room for the playback, then NSA can decide what to do with it" the more likely success will be. (obviously, it'll probably be more complicated but once they're in...)
* Highlight that this is ONLY about preservation not release. Old magnetic tapes degrade with time. Accessing playback gear may not be possible in another decade. It's probably still savable this year but will soon be lost forever (create urgency with FOMO).
Don't even talk about release or FOIA, make it about some NSA history initiative that already has support. Ideally, they're working on a "Women in NSA" or "NSA and Early Computing" exhibit for next year. Just between us though, once you know that the video exists digitally, the grounds for FOIA denial is gone :-)
These are excellent points. We know there's nothing spicy in her talk, but as soon as you mention FOIA all the sirens go off and the walls go up and everyone shuts down and gets grumpy.
And if you can find some NSA folks they would be able to make calls inside the system to get the wheels greased much faster than some FOIA intern will.
I've litigated a lot of FOIA. I would definitely try litigating this. Why don't the NSA write all their records to an obsolete format and then destroy the writer. That way they never need respond to a FOIA request again.
I once made a FOIA request and the public body claimed they had put the records in a trash can minutes before they received my request and the FOIA "does not require a public body to reach into the trash to recover records." LOL .. another one for the appellate courts.
https://www.governmentattic.org/28docs/NatnlCryptoSchoolTVct...
The citation for Grace's talk is on p29.
I'd be really curious to go down this path and push more on freeing this up. Having never filed an FOIA request myself and lacking the training to litigate, do you have any advice for someone like me wanting to put some energy into this? I suppose reading up on muckrock's charter and mission is a good first step. I'd love to hear more about your experience in general if you feel like sharing.
---------------------
In addition to pushing forward on the FOIA approach, I'd suggest trying to interest whatever group the NSA has assigned with historical preservation. I'm sure they are understaffed and underfunded but at least they have an interest in preserving things like this, whereas the FOIA people's goal is to find grounds to deny requests as cheaply and quickly as possible.
I imagine there are NSA history buffs outside the agency and contacting them first to get their input on who and how to approach (or maybe even an introduction) would probably be better than a cold approach. Two things that may help:
* Make it easy for them by doing the legwork up front. Find a preservationist or museum with a working 1-inch VTR, ideally one of the "portable" ones (actually like a large suitcase vs a washing machine). It may be that removing the tape from the NSA facility makes it a much bigger ask (keeping in mind they don't know for sure what's on it yet). The closer you can make the initial proposition sound to "it just takes one of your people to get the tape for a couple hours to digitize it. We'll set it up but NOT be in the room for the playback, then NSA can decide what to do with it" the more likely success will be. (obviously, it'll probably be more complicated but once they're in...)
* Highlight that this is ONLY about preservation not release. Old magnetic tapes degrade with time. Accessing playback gear may not be possible in another decade. It's probably still savable this year but will soon be lost forever (create urgency with FOMO).
Don't even talk about release or FOIA, make it about some NSA history initiative that already has support. Ideally, they're working on a "Women in NSA" or "NSA and Early Computing" exhibit for next year. Just between us though, once you know that the video exists digitally, the grounds for FOIA denial is gone :-)
Good luck!
And if you can find some NSA folks they would be able to make calls inside the system to get the wheels greased much faster than some FOIA intern will.