Labor Department To Destroy H-1B Records 190
Presto Vivace writes H-1B records that are critical to research and take up a small amount of storage are set for deletion. "In a notice posted last week, the U.S. Department of Labor said that records used for labor certification, whether in paper or electronic, 'are temporary records and subject to destruction' after five years, under a new policy. There was no explanation for the change, and it is perplexing to researchers. The records under threat are called Labor Condition Applications (LCA), which identify the H-1B employer, worksite, the prevailing wage, and the wage paid to the worker. The cost of storage can't be an issue for the government's $80 billion IT budget: A full year's worth of LCA data is less than 1GB."
US Citizenship (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:US Citizenship (Score:5, Insightful)
The government of the United States of America is behaving very much like an accomplice to a crime
Their unexplained decision to delete EVERY.SINGLE.RECORD regrading the H1-B program is tantamount of the DESTRUCTION OF EVIDENCE !
How can the Americans allow their government to turn so rogue, so fast ?
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People wanted change and they got it. I hope they enjoy every single inch.
Re:US Citizenship (Score:5, Insightful)
> People wanted change and they didn't get it.
FTFY
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Good job dealing with the congitive dissonance of having voted for a gangster.
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Good job dealing with the congitive dissonance of having voted for a gangster.
What are you talking about? I have not voted for a Republican. Ever.
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Good job dealing with the congitive dissonance of having voted for a gangster.
What are you talking about? I have not voted for a Republican. Ever.
Whoosh.....
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I think he means gangster in the classical Chicago sense. You know, Teamsters, mafia, "machine politics" -- that kind of thing. He's accusing Obama of being a suit-and-tommy-gun gangster, not a bandanna-and-sagging-pants one.
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Why do you say "the alternative", when there were "alternatives".
THIS is the major problem in America, people who think there are only 2 options, Demcrap or Republicunt.
There ARE other alternatives, and while not mainstream, I bet if we were to elect them in place of these 2 failed organizations goons or goonettes, it would be a wake up call to those corrupt groups.
Edward Snowden for President!!!
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The funny thing is that two things would fix most of the issues: Term limits in both houses, and some meaningful campaign finance reform.
Unfortunately, the very people who would need to take action to enact such laws are the same people who benefit from the system the way it is. Congress will never do anything meaningful in this area because it would take power away from them. The people in power are extremely power-hungry, that is why they ran for the office in the first place - there is no way they will voluntarily give up any of that power.
Re:US Citizenship (Score:5, Insightful)
The government of the United States of America is behaving very much like an accomplice to a crime
I wonder if the founding fathers ever could have imagined a world where the government they created would be completely owned and controlled by an oligarchy of huge corporations. Could they have imagined a government where something akin to the Dutch East India Company simply walked in and individually bribed every single Congressman and the President to do their bidding, without the American people even realizing it?
How many of the US citizens give a damn? (Score:4, Insightful)
I am a citizen of the United States of America. I realize what is going on
But how many of my fellow Americans know?
And more importantly, how many of them give a damn?
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Most of them are probably too busy working two or three jobs to get by to notice.
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I am a citizen of the United States of America. I realize what is going on
But how many of my fellow Americans know?
And more importantly, how many of them give a damn?
I know, I give a damn, how does that make any difference?
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And more importantly, how many of them give a damn?
I'm an American citizen too, and I give a...oh look, the American Idol Finale is on!
Re:US Citizenship (Score:4, Insightful)
What makes you think the $(nationality) East India Companies didn't bribe their respective governments?
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The government of the United States of America is behaving very much like an accomplice to a crime
I wonder if the founding fathers ever could have imagined a world where the government they created would be completely owned and controlled by an oligarchy of huge corporations. Could they have imagined a government where something akin to the Dutch East India Company simply walked in and individually bribed every single Congressman and the President to do their bidding, without the American people even realizing it?
I think that many of them "realize" it, but they've been convinced that bullshit issues like gay marriage and reproductive choice are more important to them.
Re:US Citizenship (Score:5, Interesting)
Could they have imagined a government where something akin to the Dutch East India Company simply walked in and individually bribed every single Congressman and the President to do their bidding, without the American people even realizing it?
Sure they did:
1. “If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them, will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”
— Thomas Jefferson, 1802 letter to Secretary of State Albert Gallatin.
2. “I hope that we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”
— Thomas Jefferson.
3. “The power of all corporations ought to be limited, [...] the growing wealth acquired by them never fails to be a source of abuses.”
— James Madison
4.“Banks have done more injury to the religion, morality, tranquility, prosperity, and even wealth of the nation than they can have done or ever will do good.”
— John Adams
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I wish I had mod points!
BIG PLUS! Thank you for this post!
Re:US Citizenship (Score:5, Informative)
"I too have been a close observer of the doings of the Bank of the United States. I have had men watching you for a long time, and am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves. I have determined to rout you out, and by the Eternal, (bringing his fist down on the table) I will rout you out!
-Andrew Jackson
Re:US Citizenship (Score:5, Informative)
Also, where does the NSA fit in this "oligarchy of huge corporations"?
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How can the Americans allow their government to turn so rogue, so fast ?
It's really easy when a corrupt supreme court "decides" that corporations are people, and bribery of public officials is legal. But the biggest problem in this country is ... nobody seems to care.
Re:US Citizenship (Score:5, Insightful)
Because Americans are no longer educated about their government or their history, and as long as they can catch the latest episode of Here Comes Honey Boo-Boo they really don't care about what is happening. Those of us who DO care and pay attention are in the extreme minority. No matter how loudly we shout about the problems we're racing into, the rest of America looks at as like we're some crazy conspiracy theorists.
It doesn't help that many of the large news outlets are government sycophants, refusing to carry news that may damage the current administration [socio-poli...ournal.com]. Note that this behavior is not limited to CBS or our current administration. They're all corrupt to some degree.
But yeah, nobody gives a shit, give them some Soma [shmoop.com], all is well. Aldous Huxly [9gag.com] was right.
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Their unexplained decision to delete EVERY.SINGLE.RECORD regrading the H1-B program is tantamount of the DESTRUCTION OF EVIDENCE !
Whoa, hold on there cowboy.
It isn't "every single record", it is records older than five years. And it isn't actually unexplained. Many, if not all, government agencies have data retention policies that specify how long forms have to be kept. Some of that comes from the silly idea that the government shouldn't be collecting and keeping data about people. Once the data is no longer useful (other than as a collection of data about people) it should be destroyed. There's also the cost of maintaining the old
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The government of the United States of America is behaving very much like an accomplice to a crime
Accomplices to crimes are known to do that.
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Statute of limitations is 10 years. After that you can destroy tax documentation. The IRS has 10 years to decide to collect from you, three years to audit you, and three years to assess any additional tax liability.
Re: US Citizenship (Score:2)
Are you kidding be. Would be stupid to do that. The whole point is that many of not most H1B ers are working for less because they'd much rather be in this country. The threat of losing the visa it's what keeps them indentured servants. Just look at the biomedical research industry. No one will ever give them citizenship ebb masse... it would destroy the system by which having a PhD became about as profitable as being on welfare.
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So the government can say?
So the government can set wages?
The LCA is useless (Score:2)
Once H1-Bs get used to working for peanuts to fulfill their "American dream".
Not all H-1Bs work for peanuts... There are also H-1Bs from Canada and various wealthy countries in Europe. I'm one of those.
Either way, after looking at my LCA (I just dug it up) I can tell you that only interesting thing specified there is the salary range. Which can be very inaccurate, I currently make well above the salary range specified in my LCA.
Note, as someone who have submitted everything from bank statements, criminal records, occupation and addresses of family, and an amazing load of other
Indentured servitude and slavery (Score:5, Insightful)
This is because the H1B visa problem is rife with abuse, ranging from fraud, most common, to basic slavery. If you don't believe the slavery port realize that a lot of people working on H1B visa's in the US have signed very abusive contracts with brokers in their home countries. If they quit and leave they'll be in a heap of legal and financial trouble when they get back.
The tech companies know this, the Labor department knows this, Destroying records s a way to hopefully prevent any future legal action on the part of H1B applicants in the future. Similar thing happened with Migrant workers from Mexico, taxes and fees were taken out, then records were destroyed to make it impossible for workers to sue later or collect benefits promised.
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Can you cite some examples of the "abusive contracts with brokers" and "slave wages" and give us some data on how prevalent you believe these are?
Here's survey data on H-1Bs: http://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/USCIS/Resources/Reports%20and%20Studies/H-1B/h1b-fy-12-characteristics.pdf
and here's prevailing wage data for a random area (Denver, Colorado): http://www.flcdatacenter.com/OesQuickResults.aspx?code=15-1132&area=19740&year=15&source=1 prevailing wage for Level 1 is $64,230 for an ap
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"Slavery" is an overstatement, but the important thing to realize that it's not really about money. Crunch the numbers and there isn't a significant difference in formal wages. The difference is the desperation of the people being exploited, and the abuse of the power that employers have over foreign workers that they do not have over others.
Torrent (Score:1)
Simple
1: Just encrypt it thoroughly,
2: name it "Archive of leaked celeb pics" or something.
3: upload to pirate bay
4:????
5: free indefinite storage, fast retrieval
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80 Billion IT budget??? (Score:5, Interesting)
That's more than some small countries national budgets..
How is that even even possible?
You could buy 80 million $1000 computers for that amount!
Sorry for not being completely OT, but that's insane..
Re:80 Billion IT budget??? (Score:5, Informative)
Entire Department of Labor budget is around 12 billions.
I suppose that 80 billions (if true) would come mostly from Department of Defense - I can easily imagine IT costs of various top-end fighters/bombers/missiles etc being quite high.
In any case, it doesn't really matter. Costs of storage is not an issue here. Legal reasons, maintenance, politics - but certainly not cost of few tapes/harddrives.
Re:80 Billion IT budget??? (Score:5, Funny)
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You could buy 80 million $1000 computers for that amount!
Or pay the salary of the CEO of each of the handful of IT corporations that paid your political campaign!
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Government is getting really comfortable deleting (Score:5, Insightful)
... everything. The cover ups are wall to wall.
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...except of course the private data of people they intercepted illegaly.
Plausible deniability (Score:5, Insightful)
The answer to this is easy: plausible deniability. If the records are only temporary, and get expunged after 5 years, then the US government suddenly have an out for bad press over a long history of abuses of that H1B program that have gone unchecked. Instead of changing policy, fixing the program, and investigating historical abuses by various (mostly tech) companies, it is easier to rewrite histrory.
The answer will now be: 'Oh... we can't possibly investigate company X for H1B visa abuses. The records were temporary and no longer exist. Since the records no longer exist, we cannot possibly comment. To the best of our knowledge, the H1B program works.'
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It goes both ways though. Do you want the IRS to be able to audit you or your company going back indefinitely? If your company is sued, do you really want to have to go back forever as part of discovery?
There are practical reasons to limit how long information is retained. I'm not saying that in this particular case 5 years is too long, just right, or too short, but it's not always about plausible deniability.
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Actually they can, there is no Statute of Limitations on Civil Fraud, only Criminal Fraud.
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Hopefully a private watchdog will begin copying these records as a public service.
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not just tech companies. a former employer provides in-home healthcare service, and imports women from the Phillipines as nurses. They're not paid well, they work long hours doing grueling work, then are cut free once their H1B expires. Far better to pay a living wage and treat employees with respect, but I'm not the boss.
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It's the best kind of evidence of a crime - evidence where there actually is a valid reason to delete it.
H1B applicants are people too (Score:5, Insightful)
The article doesn't seem to point out the obvious explanation, ie that H1B applications contain personal data (of the type Slashdotters are usually passionate about protecting), and that it is good practice not to keep such information hanging around once it has served its primary purpose. There are presumably solutions to the research concerns, such as aggregating the data before it is deleted or collecting the specific data necessary before the records are deleted.
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You clearly have no idea the amount of time this takes to do correctly and verify it has been done on every. single. record. This isn't a dozen applications, this is (I presume) hundreds of thousands.
As compared to deleting the files based on date and/or having a shredding company come in and dump the bankers boxes, you're talking several magnitudes of effort (and cost).
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I could be totally wrong, but I'm going to guess that the paper applications have no real value; the real data is stored in a database file. It's easy to remove personally identifiable fields from the tables and leave the non-personal data for analysis. Shred the paper, anonymize the digital data, keep it around and release it to the public perhaps.
That kind of data could be very useful in some kind of complex economic modelling software, or perhaps the data over time can use used as an economic or some oth
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Redacting sounds good on the surface, but piecing the info back together again is somewhat trivial. Sharpies don't do a great job when you can blow something up to ridiculous multiples, then use pattern recognition to infer the data hidden behind the redaction.
It's better to have Norton AV recognize this as a virus. That'll get rid of it. Yeah. Or give it to an IRS exec in the form of an email.....
Re:H1B applicants are people too (Score:5, Informative)
The article doesn't seem to point out the obvious explanation, ie that H1B applications contain personal data (of the type Slashdotters are usually passionate about protecting), and that it is good practice not to keep such information hanging around once it has served its primary purpose.
Given the recent reports of how H1B workers are treated as slaves [slashdot.org] in abuses reminicent of human trafficking [dailykos.com], the timing of this seems more than a bit suspicious. And at least one source has the DOL saying "will no longer respond to inquiries to search for records in response to FOIA requests" [mondaq.com]. Explicitly pre-empting the FOIA process without even the suggestion that the data might be anonymized to allay privacy concerns is, again, more than a little suspicious.
There are presumably solutions to the research concerns, such as aggregating the data before it is deleted or collecting the specific data necessary before the records are deleted.
Yes, there are solutions, but will they be implemented? And is the Dept. of Labor so tone-deaf, and so ignorant of the controversial nature of this decision, that they didn't think to put an anonymization program in place in advance of this announcement? Somehow I doubt it.
Re:H1B applicants are people too (Score:4, Informative)
"The obvious explanation" is incorrect.
The record in question, the Labor Condition Application, does not include personal data. Employers are even required to have them available for public disclosure (see section J of the form).
So, no personal information. Just records of what the employer claimed the prevailing wage was for the roles it brought in H1B workers to fill.
It's ETA Form 9035. Look for yourself.
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He's right Electronic Filing of Labor Condition Applications For The H-1B Nonimmigrant Visa Program [doleta.gov]
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The article doesn't seem to point out the obvious explanation, ie that H1B applications contain personal data (of the type Slashdotters are usually passionate about protecting), and that it is good practice not to keep such information hanging around once it has served its primary purpose. There are presumably solutions to the research concerns, such as aggregating the data before it is deleted or collecting the specific data necessary before the records are deleted.
Yes, and this bit:
A full year's worth of LCA data is less than 1GB.
is pure speculation on the authors part.
We've no idea what the database structure is, and I've seen some pretty horrific databases before. I once found a server that was logging requests in flat text files... basically CSV format, then those were getting queried via a script. It was creating over 60gig of files per day because the guy that wrote the script didn't want to bother with requesting a table in a local database. Altering the code to get new data into a table took minutes. We move
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I have seen a lot of crazy DB constructions over the years. Devs having completely new tables that were a virtual duplicates of a previous one, oddball crap stored as BLOBs or CLOBS because the dev had their own screwy algorithm and wanted job security by making sure things worked, but didn't work without them.
With a database that has been around a while, even though it might supposedly have a gig of data in it, it might be so bloated that it can be orders of magnitudes bigger, and because of territorial d
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The only "personal" information on the form is the applicants bussiness addresses.
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Or just anonymizing the records as soon as no longer required.
However, 5 years is not very much time if they may need to investigate the possibility of fraudulent applications in the future.
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I agree. However, the same thing could be accomplished with a simple SQL script to null the fields containing personally identifying information in each record.
Not a conspiracy nut here but I do suspect there are additional motives for purging the data outside of a purely altruistic one.
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> it is good practice not to keep such information hanging
WTF!? Why not? The government certainly keeps information about US citizens "hanging around?"
Why the double standard?
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H1B applications contain personal data (of the type Slashdotters are usually passionate about protecting),
Slasdotters believe in lots of freedoms except the freedom of movement of labor. Because they believe in the religion of nationalism.
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With aggregated data, you can't go to a sample of individuals for comfiration, you would just have to take the Governments word for accuracy; and just the possiblility of being able to do so would have a chilling effect on potential fraudsters.
Re:H1B applicants are people too (Score:5, Insightful)
*hears a loud popping*
Oh gods it is starting!
But yes, I came in to see if anyone had picked up on this. Having governments restrict the duration they hold potentially personal data for is a good thing.
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but it's data on foreigners, not citizens. that's a little different
So no US citizenship no human rights? No wonder the rest of the world hates the US.
and to steal an american's job at a fraction of the pay.
That does not apply in all cases! :)
Ironically, some people got a great education for free somewhere else, the left the country thinking why not try something new... Whilst politicians in their home countries are less enthusiastic about people who just got 5 years tuition + educational support for free leaving the country to work somewhere else and pay less tax
(In fact there have been suggestions that people leaving after
Duplicate (Score:1)
Never mind. We can just ask Slashdot to make a DUPLICATE copy
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/10/29/1244255/skilled-foreign-workers-treated-as-indentured-servants [slashdot.org]
Duplicate (Score:4, Informative)
The alternative is "forever" (Score:2)
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Problem is that printouts take a lot of space, and are heavy. A gig's worth of data would be in the millions of physical pages if it were text, less for high resolution drawings or photos, but still a lot of dead trees.
It boils down to data prioritization. Extremely critical data like encryption keys and core financial records for the IRS might be something worth printing. Other items may or may not be worth it.
Maybe someone should invent a CAS (which is presented as a filesystem.) Documents get copied
The Cloud! (Score:3, Interesting)
Is the data public information? if so, why not just make it publicly available, and whoever cares can download it. If the data is valuable, it will be mirrored and survive. if not, it won't.
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Is the data public information? if so, why not just make it publicly available, and whoever cares can download it. If the data is valuable, it will be mirrored and survive. if not, it won't.
It's not public, it's not useful, it's not accurate...
But it is private and sensitive data from honest hardworking residents.. Hey yeah, why don't we throw information about every Americans salary range online?
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if the data has any value, it could (SHOULD) be anonymized (names changed to protect the innocent)...
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Department of Corporate Welfare (Score:4, Insightful)
The Department of Defense Pork
The Department of Homeland Pork
The Department of Corporate Lawlessness
The Department of Corporate Welfare
Sensationalist garbage (Score:3, Insightful)
Every single government form and department has a record retention policy of some kind. This is a labor certification record held by the department of labor. This doesn't tell you anything except that the person had the H1B and was OK to work at their original hire date, its a work verification not a visa data repository. The actual visa application and so-on would be with US CIS or US CBP. I'm honestly surprised they held it for even 5 years, since most forms of this nature have a retention of only 2-4 years.
Standard Document Retention Policy (Score:4, Interesting)
The goal of an effective document retention policy is to identify documents that can be destroyed and destroy them as soon as it is permissible to do so. Old documents are a court case with a broad discovery order away from becoming a big cost. It's very cheap to say "the retention policy says these documents are only kept five years and we physically destroy them shortly after this date".
I know of a county government in New York that kept their backups tapes from their mail server as a method of retention. There was some political trouble with a mayor (who used the county's email system) and a contractor - suspicion of giving no-bid contracts or something like that. A request came to the county's doorstep for all of the email correspondence between the two for the four years the mayor was in office. The county had to buy a spare server and restore each monthly tape to it and manually pick out the email messages. It cost them $190,000. It would have been better for them to either have an effective archiving plan, or to have deleted them. Keeping stuff "just in case" is a horrible idea.
Of course, if these documents are being singled out for aggressive purging and other documents are not, then there may be some funny business going on.
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The goal of an effective document retention policy is to identify documents that can be destroyed and destroy them as soon as it is permissible to do so. Old documents are a court case with a broad discovery order away from becoming a big cost. It's very cheap to say "the retention policy says these documents are only kept five years and we physically destroy them shortly after this date".
I know of a county government in New York that kept their backups tapes from their mail server as a method of retention. There was some political trouble with a mayor (who used the county's email system) and a contractor - suspicion of giving no-bid contracts or something like that. A request came to the county's doorstep for all of the email correspondence between the two for the four years the mayor was in office. The county had to buy a spare server and restore each monthly tape to it and manually pick out the email messages. It cost them $190,000. It would have been better for them to either have an effective archiving plan, or to have deleted them. Keeping stuff "just in case" is a horrible idea.
Of course, if these documents are being singled out for aggressive purging and other documents are not, then there may be some funny business going on.
This happens every. When I worked at a county, we kept a couple ancient Novell servers around so that we could rebuild edirectory and groupwise and pull email out of it. The first request took a member on my team a solid month working a few hours of overtime every day to fulfill (that's wehre the ancient servers came from to begin with). After that, the requests were quicker, but still occupied somebody for about a week.
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The county had to buy a spare server and restore each monthly tape to it and manually pick out the email messages
It's a fucking computer. How do you not even try to automate stuff like that? How stupid do you have to be to not even write a script, but sit there and fucking vgrep everything?
The cost was not because of the documents being requested or that the county kept the records too long, the cost was that their IT department is run by retards.
--
BMO
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The retention policy itself is the accountability; I'm only advocating rigorously adhering to the policy. If it needs to be set longer, that's up to the people who set the policy. The important takeaway of my anecdote is that if the IT staff do a half-asses job of keeping documents beyond the required date, it can cost them a lot. Do it right or don't do it at all.
The county government in my example wasted a tremendous amount of other people's money by implementing a poor documentation retention plan.
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I prefer that the county use a proper retention system. This was one of our case studies we used when selling such a system.
In order of best protection of taxpayers to worst:
-Do retention right. The email should have been easily accessible and delivered within a few hours.
-Don't do retention at all. The dirtbag walks, but we save millions of dollars (the $190K was from a single incident). Not ideal, but probably worth it.
-Retain data in a way that is very hard to retrieve, or hard to give a compelling an
I am glad we got... (Score:2)
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_... [whitehouse.gov]
But... (Score:2)
If the the government isn't doing anything wrong, what do they have to hide?
Think of the lawsuits if they keep this data? (Score:1)
Especially once you consider they were on the backside they going after unions and organizers as politicians with a position.
Think of the Children and the kittens that would be at risk if we keep this 1G of data. We need that disk space for my 7G landmark EQ beta install!
Copy Them (Score:4, Insightful)
These are public records (according to TFA). Some research organization (university) can make periodic requests for the data, put it on line and store it indefinitely. They (or some third parties) could even create a few reports, to give the public an idea of which companies are making H-1B visa requests.
Step up then... (Score:2)
presumably these are public records, because it's government and all. What's to stop anybody who is crying about "deletion of evidence" from submitting a FOIA request for all of the records that are set to be deleted, and then maintaining their own database?
Obama's Transparency (Score:2)
We are basking in the glory of a transparent government. Thanks, Obama!
uh.... (Score:2)
Privacy?
litigation hold (Score:2)
Sue the government and put a litigation hold on the documents. They are clearly trying to hide something.
Government priorities (Score:2)
The reason should be obvious . . . (Score:3)
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And those "backups" are entirely useless to we meager citizens. Which is just the way the government wants it.
This is a government cover-up. This is the government not it's citizens to know what the government is up to.
This government wants to know all about what the citizens are doing, but does not want the citizens to know what the government is doing. It should be the other way around.