DOJ Report on FBI's Use of National Security Letters
Submitted by jajacobs on Sun, 2007-03-11 09:20.
A Review of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Use of National Security Letters (199 pages, 36MB) U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General March 2007
Other copies: PDF at Washington Post, and a compressed version of only 12 meg at FAS; and an html version at cryptome
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Newspapers should cite
Thanks Jim for posting the various versions of the DoJ report. I had looked around on thurs or fri when it was all over the news, but couldn't find the report. This is a pet peeve of mine. It's always been difficult to hunt down reports/documents mentioned in newspapers. In the paper world, it sorta made sense that news items didn't actually cite the document/report in question because they only had so much space on which to write. But on the Web, it doesn't make ANY sense that a newspaper wouldn't thoroughly cite the documents on which they report. Any journalists out there want to comment on this?
newspaper citations and copies of documents and preservation
Thanks for raising this issue James. I imagine that a newspaper reporter would respond that newspapers have never cited documents -- in the sense we think of in libraries and in academia -- and that it's not their job to do so. I agree with you, though, that it may be time to rethink that kind of policy. One reason is that, as you point out, that on the web they certainly can't claim lack of space!
Another reason is that a link on the web is not as "academic" as a footnote; it's not obscure, or odd, or hard to read. In fact, just the opposite is true: it is self evident and "actionable" (you can click on it and get the document)!
So why would a newspaper go to the extra effort (the way the Washington Post did) to download the document, host it on their own web site, and make a link to that instead of the original? Is it because they want more hits on their site for advertising? Maybe, but if the document isn't the 9/11 Report or the Starr report on Clinton, I doubt that this will generate much ad revenue.
Maybe they do it because they know that links break too easily and they want to maintain a good link until they decide to remove it. That makes sense to me and it is the very reason that I believe libraries should download and store documents and link to their own copy. If they do, then the library is in control of that document the same way it is in control of a book on its shelves; but a blind link in a library OPAC to a government-controlled web server does not add to a library collection, it just hopefully points to something that may or may not be there in the future.
One final comment. Until libraries live up to their responsibility, we should be thankful that organizations like FAS and the Washington Post and Cryptome are selecting, acquiring, organizing, and preserving information. But we should also remind ourselves that this is not their primary responsibility and we don't know if they will continue to host the documents we want for as long as we'd want access to the documents.
It is the primary responsibility of libraries, though.
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