The Ampex 1" type C video tape recorder needed is rare, but it’s not impossible to find one. The NSA could certainly watch the video if they wanted to. The just don’t want to go through the effort for a FOIA request.
NSA Claims It Can’t Watch a Tape It Recorded in the 1980s
Submitted 4 months ago by jeffw@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
https://gizmodo.com/nsa-claims-it-cant-watch-an-important-tape-it-recorded-in-the-1980s-2000473433
Comments
cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de 4 months ago
jeffw@lemmy.world 4 months ago
The article seemed to suggest you could buy them easily on eBay lol
cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de 4 months ago
Yes, they do show up on ebay, but usually not in working condition. Then you have to find someone that can do a restoration. Keep in mind that there may only be one chance to play the tape before it falls apart, so the player needs to be working perfectly.
sir_pronoun@lemmy.world 4 months ago
I know two VCR repair men who would be up to the job 🤔 somebody call Lighting Fast VCR!!
EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Those guys are a couple of hackfrauds
5in1k@lemm.ee 4 months ago
Techmoan can get them sorted.
manmachine@lemmy.world 4 months ago
I guess Foone could also have something.
BeigeAgenda@lemmy.ca 4 months ago
I know several youtubers that could be trusted with solving that issue. Why can’t they find someone with the skills?
Dasus@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Why can’t they find someone with the skills?
Because it’s a bad excuse to avoid their legal duties because they’ve probably broken some laws while thinking there would never be any consequences.
Ofc they could digitise it, easily, they’re the fucking NSA, not a tech-illiterate grandparent.
chiliedogg@lemmy.world 4 months ago
I’m not super-well read on the federal FOIA, but am responsible for public information requests at my city, which follow state regs.
At least at my level, the big one is that the government does not have to create documents to satisfy a request. If the data is not in a readable format, we essentially don’t have responsive data and are not required to go through the conversion process because that would be creating data.
We also have a rule regarding conversion of electronic data from internal proprietary format to something the requestor can read that allows us to refuse if responding to the request would cause an undue disruption to city services.
My example of when we used it was a request for every copy of a specific formthat had been rejected in building applications. It would have required manually scrubbing tens of thousands of building permits to look for specific forms that were not always turned in using the same name and looking for versions that were rejected (which may have been part of accepted applications if the applicant corrected the form later).
It would have taken about 6 months for a full-time employee, and our city only has 11 staffers, so we were able to tell them “no.”
webghost0101@sopuli.xyz 4 months ago
Who determines whats reasonable?
What if i claim i can read a sound recording of the tape running and a video recording of the tape rolling?
In the quest for preservation of information can you do to much?
dezmd@lemmy.world 4 months ago
This sounds sideways, as FOIA processing is a part of city services, and state services, and federal services.
Treating it otherwise has always seemed to invite abuse.
We also have a rule regarding conversion of electronic data from internal proprietary format to something the requestor can read that allows us to refuse if responding to the request would cause an undue disruption to city services.
How is that a legal workaround against FOIA? Literally every response to FOIA causes a ‘disruption’ to city services in that context. This sounds like a strategy from management that is incompetent or intentionally unethical trying to avoid processing FOIA requests. “Undue disruption” reads as a convenient scapegoat to hide things from the public, a public that the government is there to serve in the first place.
It would have taken about 6 months for a full-time employee, and our city only has 11 staffers, so we were able to tell them “no.”
~165 hours for ever 10k documents to review at 1 min avg per doc. 45k documents = 750 hours = 25 work weeks @ 30hrs.
That’s $11,250 @ $15/hr wages. Call it $16,000 for FTE total costs as a govt employer. You can engage 10 local contracted temp workers to process the data in a under 3 weeks.Once you have done the review, the dataset to that point has been compiled and can be used for other such requests without additional expenditures towards recompiling data up to that date.
I’m sure budgets are carefully crafted to avoid including FOIA processing.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 4 months ago
Can the requestor offer to either do it themselves or pay to have someone do it?
Warl0k3@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Legit reason: Chain of evidence. They can’t bring in an outside expert that hasn’t been vetted, and they especially can’t use equipment that has been outside their control and hasn’t been verified intact. Damn near zero youtubers would pass NSA vetting, which rules out their equipmwnt. The fact this is such an outdated tech means there’s no verified-trustworthy experts within or contracted with the government that can work with it, so they really are stuck not being able to do anything with this tech. Digital obsolescence is a very serious problem, especially in government (why do you think they pay so much for COBOL developers?) and this truly is a nontrivial issue to overcome.
… Which is the bureaucratic legitimacy behind this claim. Obviously they could fix this, I mean duh. But it’s an actual hassle, and they see no benefit to going through it to reveal something they don’t see a point to revealing. So they just hide behind the legit issues, shrug, and know we can’t do anything about it.
dumbass@leminal.space 4 months ago
They’ve probably secretly listened to someone unknowingly telling them how to fix it.
_sideffect@lemmy.world 4 months ago
I’ll lend them my VCR
EarthShipTechIntern@lemm.ee 4 months ago
Well, Ampex player, not VCR.
But still, it’s available in droves on eBay.
roguetrick@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Christ just tell Biden to make them give them to the national archives with an executive order. They’ll figure it out.
Sanctus@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Whoopsie! History just slips through your fingers like sand sometimes, huh?
Complete incompetence that it wasn’t digitized already.
cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de 4 months ago
That tape is old and degrading. If it’s not digitized soon, it will be lost.
ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org 4 months ago
I don’t think tapes degrade that fast. Yes, the quality will get slightly worse but it can be played until it becomes too brittle.
Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 4 months ago
God damn! Somebody buy the government a VCR!
/s
turkalino@lemmy.yachts 4 months ago
I’m gonna call bullshit based on the story by Snowden in his biography about his Boomer co-worker who was in charge of maintaining a tape drive that recorded all incoming communications from field agents as a backup
todd_bonzalez@lemm.ee 4 months ago
I mean, there’s a difference between a reel of AMPEX film that the NSA is dragging their feet on digitizing, and the modern 45TB 8gbps tape cartridges that absolutely could be used to store thousands of hours of video per day.
turkalino@lemmy.yachts 4 months ago
If I remember correctly, he said it was definitely not a modern tape drive, which is why an older man was maintaining it
cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 months ago
did they try adjusting the tracking? that does it for me
Honytawk@lemmy.zip 4 months ago
Just hit it a couple of times
cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 months ago
the downside of spaceballs instant video cassette revolution.
Kolanaki@yiffit.net 4 months ago
Lemme guess; it’s on BetaMax?
jeffw@lemmy.world 4 months ago
I don’t think it’s that kind of reel. Idk anything about Ampex but it’s probably magnetic tape
TexasDrunk@lemmy.world 4 months ago
This is accurate. I mostly know Ampex because of their history with audio recording, but I’m passingly familiar with some of the other things they did.
Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Tapes, not film.
magnolia_mayhem@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Smart people do dumb things sometimes.
Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Bureaucrats aren’t known for their out-of-the-box thinking. Probably half the staff at the NSA could figure out how to get the data off the tapes, but the person in charge of this isn’t that cleaver and might think that there could be something classified on them. Either in plain sight or as in the form of some sort of Steganography. They can’t leave the building with the tapes and they can’t use someone else’s player as it might be bugged. “The Thing” probably still spokes the hell out of them.
LengAwaits@lemmy.world 4 months ago
They should call TechMoan or CathodeRayDude! One of them probably has the right player just sort of… lying around!
uebquauntbez@lemmy.world 4 months ago
NSA don’t know things, they know people.
MonkderDritte@feddit.de 4 months ago
In short, “we don’t want to”.
umami_wasbi@lemmy.ml 4 months ago
Which also gives them another idea on how to deny FOIA request?
Tja@programming.dev 4 months ago
The hard drive with the information is on a very high shelf and you cannot force us to buy a ladder.
webghost0101@sopuli.xyz 4 months ago
In that case cant we request the raw data in another format? I dont care about the end result if i can make em run trough hoops to comply
sailingbythelee@lemmy.world 4 months ago
It is true that they could resurrect the tapes if they had a compelling reason to do so. Denying the request indicates that they don’t believe the reason to be sufficiently compelling to warrant the extra expenditure of resources. That is subtley different from “we don’t want to”, which implies a level of capriciousness.
Government departments get FOI requests all the time and they take resources to fulfill. FOI is not intended as a way to have taxpayers fund people’s pet projects. That’s why FOI law doesn’t require your government to spend (even more) money to acquire technology they don’t have or need for anything other than the FOI request itself. Rather, something that requires that kind of extra effort and expenditure should be submitted as a research request, normally with its own funding.
BilboBargains@lemmy.world 4 months ago
The NSA mission is to spy on people and help American corporations create a worldwide hegemony, they ain’t got no time to be wasting on pet projects for total losers.
MonkderDritte@feddit.de 4 months ago
Makes sense, thanks!
echodot@feddit.uk 4 months ago
So it was on betamax?
NauticalNoodle@lemmy.ml 4 months ago
Betacam?
NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Wait, so the NSA could put everything on an external HD with a proprietary cable that destroys itself after being used.
Then, they have a way to produce it as needed, but because they are not required to obtain it they can now refuse it.
smb@lemmy.ml 4 months ago
… like a prophet that has genuinely seen inevitable future !!
LustyArgonianMana@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Insane. This is a violation of our rights.