National Archive Security Fatally Flawed: Loses 2TB Valuable Records of Clinton’s Time

The National Archives and Record Administration has lost two-terabyte of hard drive enclosing degital records from Bill Clinton’s presidency. The  hard drive was reported to have copies of electronic storage tapes from the Executive Office of the President of the Clinton Administration. NARA has taken the matter seriously and reviewed its internal information controls and worked upon the security processes.

The crisis not only affect Clinton’s privacy, it would also involve the names and SSNs of an untold number of visitors.  The hard drive contains snapshots of the hard drives of departing administration officials. The information was stored on 113 4mm tape cartridges. According to the reports from NextGov, a panel of records management told to the House that

It’s fair to say, that NARA’s security procedures are fatally flawed,

Further, as Patrice McDermott, director of OpenTheGovernment.org advocating on transparency in governance, explains “NARA’s use of technology appears to be focused on making NARA a museum, rather than a lead agency on life-cycle management of records for public access and government accountability,” He added that the issue of record management of emails can be a massive problem below this tip. NARA’s security policy totally fails.

In a statement, Meredith Fuchs, general counsel of The George Washington University’s National Security Archives said that NARA has been passive with updating of records management practices at most federal agencies. There are no major changes in federal records management policy unless it’s infiltrated due to scandals like loss of millions of federal records e-mails at the White House.

These provide a clear indication that the issue agencies should embrace social networking seems far distant. That’s an entire new level of complexity to deal with that was not even evident in Bush administration.