Ireland revises its Freedom of Information law...and decides that computers and the efficiency of se
2 replies, posted
[URL="http://boingboing.net/2013/08/14/irish-government-updates-its-f.html"]Irish government updates its Freedom of Information law with exciting new "Computers don't exist" provision[/URL]
[QUOTE]When the Irish government updated its Freedom of Information law, it promised something fit for the computer era. To say it did not deliver is rather an understatement.
The [URL="http://per.gov.ie/wp-content/uploads/Freedom-of-Info-Bill-13.pdf"]new bill[/URL] (PDF) says: "the FOI body shall take reasonable steps to search for and extract the records to which the request relates, having due regard to the steps that would be [B]considered reasonable if the records were held in paper format[/B]."
Get that? The standard for whether a FOI request is reasonable is whether it would be easy to get if the records were on paper and in a filing cabinet. If the records can be retrieved from a database with one click, but would take a hundred years with a filing cabinet, then the records can remain secret forever, because clicking once is deemed unreasonable.[/QUOTE]
(Emphasis from BoingBoing's post.)
Ireland what are you doing. :v:
It's probably hopeless to ask, but could we please avoid derailing this thread with unrelated political nonsense? Also, this news story is about Ireland, as opposed to [I]Northern[/I] Ireland. And let's not let this turn into a proxy for another NSA/Snowden discussion, either. If you're gonna shitpost, please shitpost about the Irish State's dumb FOI law. Rate Optimistic if you think I have way too high hopes here. Rate whatever you feel like if you think "rate X if Y" is stupid.
To be fair, you usually have to type in a couple key searchwords before you make your one click, and that [I]is[/I] hard on the fingers.
Pretty sure that's a completely mistaken interpretation of what it's actually saying. It's saying that in the case of a paper archive, some requests may be unreasonably difficult/tedious to satisfy. It also helps to read the context of the quote.
edit:
Actually, nevermind; I agree this interpretation makes sense.
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