“Your failure to plan does not constitute my emergency”.

Sounds to me like they’re just choosing not to comply with FOIA, a federal law.

This is a bullshit ruling and everyone involved with it knows it. They have my information, I require a copy of my information, end of story. Not providing it is noncompliance.

But of course nothing will happen because the American federal government is broken.

I never specified correctly read data.

I don’t care weather they read it by microwave the tape and provide me a transcript of chef and dinner quest first reactions to it. Or if that ends up actually useful. But its interesting to know wether or not specific data is at all requestable.

When it comes to things that are deemed public, all the information around it should be too, regardless of intend or use.

In essence, everything is information, it would be a mistake to discriminate on perceived value because we never know what future science can accomplish or what specific aspiration someone may follow.

Practical Example: While its reasonable that most people assume The text of the Declaration of Independence is what is important. That is not the case if you happen to do a historical study of hemp genetics and want to learn what strain of the plant was used for the declaration.

An officia office should to my opinion put as much effort into being helpful against requests of both kind.

They haven’t forgotten about “The Thing”. Anyone donating hardware might have an ulterior motive for wanting hardware inside an NSA building.

If the information that is the tape cant come to us maybe we can visit the tape and measure it ourselves.

you could donate one and at the same time claim (somewhere really anonymously in the internet) that you want to destroy that tape with that player for protection. They then might actually ‘want’ to investigate

1. the tape
2. the player

(3. possibly also you)

after doing 1 and 2 they then actually have the technology AND the hardware to play that stupid tape.

if they do 3. and ask you who you want to protect, you can truthfully say “law fulfillment”

always think outside the box AND around the corner ;-)

hope that helps