How Denial Works: Library Of Congress Blocks Wikileaks

from the head-in-the-sand dept

So the latest in the US government sticking its head in the sand over Wikileaks is that the Library of Congress has blocked access to the Wikileaks site, claiming:

The Library decided to block Wikileaks because applicable law obligates federal agencies to protect classified information. Unauthorized disclosures of classified documents do not alter the documents' classified status or automatically result in declassification of the documents.

I don't know how to put this any more diplomatically, so I'll just say it straight up: this is stupid. This is pure denialism. We've seen it before, such as in the Al-Haramain case, where the government accidentally leaked evidence of warrantless wiretapping, and the information was widely available... but everyone involved in the case had to pretend it wasn't available. It's stupid.

And that's what's going on here. Rather than admitting that the content released by Wikileaks is available all over the damn internet while also being widely reported on in the press and elsewhere, the Library of Congress pretends that blocking access to Wikileaks actually does something. It does not. It just makes the Library of Congress appear to be in denial. If the Library of Congress was actually serious about blocking access to classified information, it would also need to block all of the torrents that contain the cables, the scores of media outlets reporting on this and highlighting the documents and the thousands of other places that are also offering up the documents. But that's (of course) impossible. Which is kind of the point. Why make such a symbolically silly move and claim that it's because you're "obligated" to block such content. How hard is it to admit the reality of the situation, rather than pretending it's something different? I don't know about you, but I would prefer that my government responded to the reality of what's going on, rather than pretending it wasn't going on at all.

Filed Under: denial, library of congress, wikileaks
Companies: wikileaks

Library of Congress Responds To Privacy Gripes By Making Twitter Archive Less Useful

from the qualifed-researcher-of-inane-arcana dept

We recently noted how the Library Of Congress and Twitter made a big deal of the fact that the LOC would now be archiving Twitter conversations. The idea is that researchers may find a mountain of largely-incoherent blathering about the Twilight films useful in providing context as they try to piece together events of the twenty-first century. Late last week a little more detail of the archiving process leaked out, the LOC saying that in response to privacy complaints they wouldn't store deleted tweets, and they'd also be placing all tweets under embargo for a period of six months (for whatever that's supposed to accomplish). For good measure, they're also apparently locking down the Twitter archive to "qualified researchers" and considering further restrictions:

"The library will embargo messages for six months after their original transmission. If that is not enough to put privacy issues to rest, she said, “We may have to filter certain things or wait longer to make them available.” The library plans to dole out its access to its Twitter archive only to those whom Ms. Anderson called "qualified researchers."

The historical dangers of "filtering certain things" aside, what's the point of these restrictions? The entire archive is already being indexed by Google in real time, with no delays or restrictions -- and other copies are being doled out to companies like Microsoft and Yahoo. In an age where phone companies are feeding every single byte of data in real time to the NSA with questionable oversight -- worrying too much about the storage of your clever Twitter barbs seems to be missing the forest for the trees. The Library of Congress appears to have responded to these largely-senseless privacy concerns (you are communicating using a public service) by making the government's Twitter archive more annoying to use. Though hey, if the apocalypse manages to decimate every other copy of the Twitter archive -- you can sleep well knowing that you'll still be able to dig through OchoCinco's insights at The Library Of Congress with a laminated community college ID.

Filed Under: archive, library of congress, privacy, twitter

Library Of Congress To Store Your Inane Twitter Chatter For All Eternity

from the hey-grandma-you-seemed-drunk-a-lot-in-2007 dept

The United States Library of Congress is getting plenty of attention for announcing that they're planning to digitally archive every single tweet ever made since Twitter's inception in March of 2006 (the first ever tweet is here if you're interested). Twitter now processes something like 50 million tweets every day, or about 600 tweets per second. While relatively easy to store due to that 140-character limit (the LOC already stores roughly 167 terabytes of online content for your grandkids to peruse), the vast majority of it will be people talking about the Twilight films, shampoo choices or weekend plans. Obviously offering easy access to the pertinent (to you) and historical bits of data is going to be important.

The LOC blog post is utterly devoid of any real information on that subject, though an accompanying Twitter blog entry indicates that only after six months will Tweets qualify for inclusion into the Library (so start deleting your offensive and incoherent tweets now), and direct or private tweets won't be archived. Google seems to be helping on the accessibility angle by announcing a replay system, allowing people to examine snapshots in Twitter time (for instance take a look at this snapshot of the 2010 Winter Olympics). Given that history can often be written with a heavy focus on the elite, the Library of Congress focuses on the fact that this everyday chatter about events could provide very useful context for historians:

"Expect to see an emphasis on the scholarly and research implications of the acquisition. I'm no Ph.D., but it boggles my mind to think what we might be able to learn about ourselves and the world around us from this wealth of data. And I'm certain we'll learn things that none of us now can even possibly conceive."

All of this raises the question of whether or not permanence will impact the way people use Twitter. As it stands (whether they should or not), most people treat Twitter as an off-the-cuff conversation. And while most people who use the service for business act professionally, even many corporate representatives are a little more candid and conversational while using Twitter. Getting a glimpse of the real human beings behind the brand has helped many companies immeasurably in dealing with customer support and public perception. Does all of this change once the participants realize their customer promises, clever barbs and burrito recipes are going down on their permanent record?

Filed Under: library of congress, twitter
Companies: twitter

The Library Of Congress Goes 2.0

from the welcome-to-the-digital-age dept

It's nice to see that there's some buzz around the announcement today from the Library of Congress that it has teamed up with Yahoo's Flickr to put public domain images online for everyone to see and comment on. That's exactly the sort of thing the Library of Congress should be doing. The Library of Congress has been working for a while on doing a better job digitizing its archives, and it's nice to see them looking for ways to take advantage of what's out there already, rather than trying to do everything internally. Part of the deal is that the LoC is encouraging people to tag and comment on the photos, hoping that it will provide additional information on some of the images that it has little information about. Mathew Ingram wonders how effective that type of "crowdsourced" effort will actually be. He's right, that it probably won't be all that useful, but it probably can't hurt either. However, what could be even more interesting was if they did something like the ESP Game to more accurately tag photos by making it into something of a game.

Filed Under: flickr, library of congress, public domain photos, tagging