The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is coming under fire for discontinuing its policy of taking a “digital snapshot” of all federal agency and congressional public Web sites at the end of congressional and presidential terms.
NARA, which until this year had collected a “harvests” of federal Web sites at the end of presidential and congressional terms, said in a recent memo that it would discontinue the practice at the end of George W. Bush’s presidency.
“Discontinue” when, exactly?
Discontinue as in this upcoming harvest will be the last one, or discontinue as the last one we did was the last one? The sense I get from the article is that the last one is already the last one. If so, given the Bush administration’s penchant for secrecy, censorship, and attitude of unaccountability, this decision smacks of ass-kissing. And I will point out that the Bush administration has already unilaterally “destroyed” five million electronic communications.
There is nothing that cannot be found offensive by someone, somewhere.