Op/Ed: Politicians Shouldn’t Get to Delete Inconvenient Facts

From a NY Times Op/Ed by By Nanna Bonde Thylstrup (Studies Data Loss at the University of Copenhagen and Richard Ovenden (Head of the Bodleian Libraries at the University of Oxford):

President Trump’s administration has targeted information curated by government agencies, erasing vast swaths of knowledge. While database updates and website changes are routine, this is probably the first time Americans are witnessing deletion weaponized on a large scale as a political tool. These deletions undermine basic good government — and the historical record. Democratic governments need far more robust legal frameworks and safeguards for data that is essential to citizens’ well-being. Scientific practices may change, policies may shift, and history may be debated, but the record of government should endure, regardless of who holds power.

[Clip]

Presently, there is no clear way to avoid these impacts. Some of the deletions involving the C.D.C. and Food and Drug Administration were halted in February by a court order, but that probably saved only a small fraction of deleted pages. Solutions vary: The Trump administration’s purge of government databases prompted The New York Times to recommend that concerned readers download their Social Security records, tax histories and medical data. Others have turned to volunteer crisis archiving, emergency preservation efforts designed to scrape public data before it is lost. Some of this is done by ordinary people through forums on Reddit, by established university libraries or by the Internet Archive, an organization that digitizes and stores web pages and other materials.

Learn More, Read the Complete Op/Ed (about 1100 words)

Filed under: Data Files, Libraries, News, Preservation