The NSA Is Defeated by a 1950s Tape Recorder. Can You Help Them? | Hacker News Reader

The NSA Is Defeated by a 1950s Tape Recorder. Can You Help Them?

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72 pointsrolph24 comments

FOIA feels like the wrong way to go about this. I think working with the US National Archives or the Library of Congress might be better, as what people really want here are of historical interest and not citizen oversight of government (the ultimate purpose of the FOIA).

Find and restore the necessary machine. Do up a blog/website about the project. Share the link on HN. The NSA nerds reading this will find it eventually and get in contact. (Everyone at NoSuchAgency is a total tech nerd. They all know about HN, even moreso than those at NotAnotherStupidAcronym.)

It might, but the FOIA process might also be the best (or only) process that allows the NSA to practically release the tapes.

Even a bureaucratic process that is a poor fit for a problem at hand can be easier for a bureaucratic organization to handle than an ad-hoc, nonstandard request. Trying through FOIA first certainly seems reasonable.

The NSA has their own museum, has anyone emailed them to ask about this? https://www.nsa.gov/museum/

They seem more likely to be able to deal with such a tricky request.

The National Archives and Records Administration has standard procedures and approved vendors for this.[1] One of their approved vendors, Colorlab, has 1" type C equipment.[2] Colorlab is conveniently located just outside the Capitol Beltway, about 20 miles west of NSA HQ at Fort Meade. Colorlab does preservation and conversion work for the Library of Congress, Warner Bros., Universal, NBC, The New York Public Library, Paramount, HBO, etc. NARA has a standard form for government agencies requesting this service.[3] It looks like it's not even charged against the sending agency - Archives picks up the bill.

The linked article says this was recorded in 1982, so it probably was recorded on Ampex 1" Type C, which was pro-grade at the time. Not sure how the 1950s got into this. 1950s video tape would be 2" Quad, which Colorlab can also read.

[1] https://www.archives.gov/preservation/formats/video-playback...

[2] http://www.colorlab.com/video/video_digitization.html

[3] https://www.archives.gov/research/order/item-approval-form.h...

Someone reached out to the FOIA liaison asking how an individual or organization might help, and got the reply that it's outside their scope, and to contact the NSA directly. Writing a paper letter to the NSA and cc'ing congresspeople might be good.

If you follow the https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24796009-foia-reques... link, you see that's already classified as uncl, and ready to be released. But first someone needs to digitize it for free. They sure do have the equipment, but probably not the resources for such requests of questionable value. She gave hundreds of such talks.

Geez I know of at least 2 dozen 1” machines off the top of my head, even more 2” machines and a few people including myself who can make new heads for them from scratch. NSA should try harder

It's interesting that someone knows about the artifact in there, and its format.

Is the audio on a separate track, that could be recovered more easily then the video? Also, was this before or after the invention of helical scan?

To the author: perhaps if you want this so badly you could source the machine and officially donate it to the NSA yourself and then reference the donation paperwork in your next FOIA .

I doubt trashing the NSA all over tech media will get you what you want.. plus I don’t want extra bureaucrats hired just to spend more money on obscure FOIA requests..

Ideally, the response isn't to hire more people to fight the FOIA requests, but instead to honor the requests.

The NSA said: "NSA is not required to find or obtain new technology (outdated or current) in order to process a request" (from https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2024/jul/10/grace-hop...)

That seems reasonable to me. The FOIA is about citizen oversight of government, and spending reasonable amount of taxpayer funds on doing that. This request would exceed that remit. As another commenter said, FOIA is quite rightly not an appropriate approach to demand public funds to be spent here.

I agree -HOWEVER- the government should retain the ability to transmit official records. This might include the transcription of outdated formats and technologies to new formats which are supported.

It SHOULD also include release to the public domain BEFORE it becomes a burden to review the records.

that's the library of Congress' job though, not the NSA via the FOIA's job. the LoC has the mission and resources to do exactly that.

The NSA should have the ability to answer any FOIA request. Massive federal agencies shouldn't be able to plead laziness.

No, this is not at all how FOIA works. You cannot request copyrighted, classified, sensitive, or otherwise protected information. You cannot FOIA something that doesn’t exist and you also can’t force the government to do research on your behalf.

If you consider this reasonable then I don’t think it’s a super big jump to say FOIA requests should not force the government to source expensive or hard to acquire equipment.

>classified, sensitive, or otherwise protected information

Do you think this footage falls under any of these categories?

What is to stop the agency from just saying every request is "sensitive"?

Without any accountability, what is the point of the law in the first place?

This behavior does not seem to be in the spirit of the FOIA act itself. This agency is _extremely_ well funded, they can afford to accommodate this request.

> Do you think this footage falls under any of these categories?

Without knowing the details surrounding the talk, it's hard to say, but given that the NSA (not the Library of Congress, or the National Archives, or DEC, or some university) owns the tape, it's quite possible. What the NSA said is that they would have to listen to it to decide whether it falls under any of those categories. I think they do that (listen, read,...) to everything they release under FOIA, precisely because they deal with classified information.

Guys, the talk is unclassified if you care to read the article. It's about the resources. They won't digitize everything for obscure FOIA requests on old tapes unless some billionaire spends it for them.

That was my point, look at the budget this agency has, it is incredibly huge, they can afford to accommodate the request.

> Do you think this footage falls under any of these categories?

Read my message again, you clearly didn’t get it the first time.

> What is to stop the agency from just saying every request is "sensitive"?

The courts. It's not that unusual to have to litigate a FOIA request and get a judge to decide that no, the agency's excuse does not exempt it from the request.

Unfortunately this means that the eponymous "freedom" in the FOIA can become quite expensive.

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