NSA Claims It Can’t Watch a Tape It Recorded in the 1980s

they are on a format that NSA no longer has the ability to view or digitize,” the NSA FOIA office said in a follow-up. “Without being able to view the tapes, NSA has no way to verify their responsiveness. NSA is not required to find or obtain new technology (outdated or current) in order to process a request.”

In short, "we don't want to".

Which also gives them another idea on how to deny FOIA request?
- The hard drive with the information is on a very high shelf and you cannot force us to buy a ladder.
- In that case cant we request the raw data in another format? I dont care about the end result if i can make em run trough hoops to comply
It is true that they could resurrect the tapes if they had a compelling reason to do so. Denying the request indicates that they don't believe the reason to be sufficiently compelling to warrant the extra expenditure of resources. That is subtley different from "we don't want to", which implies a level of capriciousness.
Government departments get FOI requests all the time and they take resources to fulfill. FOI is not intended as a way to have taxpayers fund people's pet projects. That's why FOI law doesn't require your government to spend (even more) money to acquire technology they don't have or need for anything other than the FOI request itself. Rather, something that requires that kind of extra effort and expenditure should be submitted as a research request, normally with its own funding.
- The NSA mission is to spy on people and help American corporations create a worldwide hegemony, they ain't got no time to be wasting on pet projects for total losers.
- Makes sense, thanks!
So it was on betamax?
- Betacam?
Wait, so the NSA could put everything on an external HD with a proprietary cable that destroys itself after being used.
Then, they have a way to produce it as needed, but because they are not required to obtain it they can now refuse it.
- .... like a prophet that has genuinely seen inevitable future !!
Insane. This is a violation of our rights.

The Ampex 1" type C video tape recorder needed is rare, but it's not impossible to find one. The NSA could certainly watch the video if they wanted to. The just don't want to go through the effort for a FOIA request.

The article seemed to suggest you could buy them easily on eBay lol
- Yes, they do show up on ebay, but usually not in working condition. Then you have to find someone that can do a restoration. Keep in mind that there may only be one chance to play the tape before it falls apart, so the player needs to be working perfectly.

I know two VCR repair men who would be up to the job 🤔 somebody call Lighting Fast VCR!!

Those guys are a couple of hackfrauds

Techmoan can get them sorted.

I guess Foone could also have something.

I know several youtubers that could be trusted with solving that issue. Why can't they find someone with the skills?

Edit: Thanks for the replies I see now it's not a technical knowledge problem, but a security+law+regulation problem.

Why can't they find someone with the skills?
Because it's a bad excuse to avoid their legal duties because they've probably broken some laws while thinking there would never be any consequences.
Ofc they could digitise it, easily, they're the fucking NSA, not a tech-illiterate grandparent.
I'm not super-well read on the federal FOIA, but am responsible for public information requests at my city, which follow state regs.
At least at my level, the big one is that the government does not have to create documents to satisfy a request. If the data is not in a readable format, we essentially don't have responsive data and are not required to go through the conversion process because that would be creating data.
We also have a rule regarding conversion of electronic data from internal proprietary format to something the requestor can read that allows us to refuse if responding to the request would cause an undue disruption to city services.
My example of when we used it was a request for every copy of a specific formthat had been rejected in building applications. It would have required manually scrubbing tens of thousands of building permits to look for specific forms that were not always turned in using the same name and looking for versions that were rejected (which may have been part of accepted applications if the applicant corrected the form later).
It would have taken about 6 months for a full-time employee, and our city only has 11 staffers, so we were able to tell them "no."
- Who determines whats reasonable?
  What if i claim i can read a sound and a video recording of the tape rolling in HD
  In the quest for preservation of information can you do to much?
- This sounds sideways, as FOIA processing is a part of city services, and state services, and federal services.
  Treating it otherwise has always seemed to invite abuse.
  We also have a rule regarding conversion of electronic data from internal proprietary format to something the requestor can read that allows us to refuse if responding to the request would cause an undue disruption to city services.
  How is that a legal workaround against FOIA? Literally every response to FOIA causes a 'disruption' to city services in that context. This sounds like a strategy from management that is incompetent or intentionally unethical trying to avoid processing FOIA requests. "Undue disruption" reads as a convenient scapegoat to hide things from the public, a public that the government is there to serve in the first place.
  It would have taken about 6 months for a full-time employee, and our city only has 11 staffers, so we were able to tell them “no.”
  ~165 hours for ever 10k documents to review at 1 min avg per doc. 45k documents = 750 hours = 25 work weeks @ 30hrs.
  That's $11,250 @ $15/hr wages. Call it $16,000 for FTE total costs as a govt employer. You can engage 10 local contracted temp workers to process the data in a under 3 weeks.
  Once you have done the review, the dataset to that point has been compiled and can be used for other such requests without additional expenditures towards recompiling data up to that date.
  I'm sure budgets are carefully crafted to avoid including FOIA processing.
- Can the requestor offer to either do it themselves or pay to have someone do it?
Legit reason: Chain of evidence. They can't bring in an outside expert that hasn't been vetted, and they especially can't use equipment that has been outside their control and hasn't been verified intact. Damn near zero youtubers would pass NSA vetting, which clearly rules out their equipment as well. The fact this is such an outdated tech means there's no verified-trustworthy experts within or contracted with the government that can work with it, so they really are stuck not being able to do anything with this tech in house. Digital obsolescence is a very serious problem, especially in government (why do you think they pay so much for COBOL developers?) and this truly is a nontrivial issue to overcome.
... Which is the bureaucratic legitimacy behind this claim. Obviously they could fix this, I mean duh. But it's an actual hassle, and they see no benefit to going through it to reveal something they don't see a point to revealing. So they just hide behind the legit issues, shrug, and know we can't do anything about it.
They've probably secretly listened to someone unknowingly telling them how to fix it.

I'll lend them my VCR

Well, Ampex player, not VCR.
But still, it's available in droves on eBay.

Christ just tell Biden to make them give them to the national archives with an executive order. They'll figure it out.

Whoopsie! History just slips through your fingers like sand sometimes, huh?

Complete incompetence that it wasn't digitized already.

That tape is old and degrading. If it's not digitized soon, it will be lost.
- I don't think tapes degrade that fast. Yes, the quality will get slightly worse but it can be played until it becomes too brittle.

God damn! Somebody buy the government a VCR!

/s

I'm gonna call bullshit based on the story by Snowden in his biography about his Boomer co-worker who was in charge of maintaining a tape drive that recorded all incoming communications from field agents as a backup

- If I remember correctly, he said it was definitely not a modern tape drive, which is why an older man was maintaining it

did they try adjusting the tracking? that does it for me

Just hit it a couple of times
- the downside of spaceballs instant video cassette revolution.

Smart people do dumb things sometimes.

Bureaucrats aren't known for their out-of-the-box thinking. Probably half the staff at the NSA could figure out how to get the data off the tapes, but the person in charge of this isn't that cleaver and might think that there could be something classified on them. Either in plain sight or as in the form of some sort of Steganography. They can't leave the building with the tapes and they can't use someone else's player as it might be bugged. "The Thing" probably still spokes the hell out of them.

They should call TechMoan or CathodeRayDude! One of them probably has the right player just sort of... lying around!

NSA don't know things, they know people.

Lemme guess; it's on BetaMax?

Edit: reels?! You don't have a god damn flashlight and a wall?! I can still watch my dad's old 8mm tapes this way. It just doesn't have a consistent frame rate 🤷🏻‍♂️

I don’t think it’s that kind of reel. Idk anything about Ampex but it’s probably magnetic tape
- This is accurate. I mostly know Ampex because of their history with audio recording, but I'm passingly familiar with some of the other things they did.
Tapes, not film.
Pretty sure you're also going to need a focusing lens and a shutter to not have it just be a smear on the wall.
But it's not projector film, anyway. Magnetic tape also came on reels back in the day. Mainframes were using them for long term storage. There were also reel-to-reel music players.