15 boxes?? Who does stuff on hardcopy anymore??? The White House????

[LAS14]

Why is all this stuff on hard copy????

tia
las

[Ocelot II]

1. TFG doesn't use computers.

[Retrograde]

2. Hard copy lasts longer

and if properly archived harder to "accidentally" delete or alter.

[elleng]

3. The Federal Government

[C_U_L8R]

4. Could be a lot of hard drives in those boxes.

And illicit burner phones.

[napi21]

5. One of the specific items that he supposedly took was that "Love letter" that the leader of

North Korea sent to him. Who knows how many other items like that are in those boxes?

[usonian]

6. It has been a very long time but digital classified information is a bear.

And the information cannot be offloaded to unclassified devices (like that phone) that I know of, hence paper. It can be properly shared, and has an audit trail. It can also be stolen.

Correct me if I am wrong, anyone.

[Hekate]

9. Digital devices become obsolete and unreadable at a shocking rate of speed. We have floppy discs...

…floating around the house that cannot be read at all — while the newspaper I saved from JFK’s assassination is still entirely legible. Books printed by Gutenberg can still be read, Shakespeare folios likewise. But not those floppy discs.

[usonian]

10. Yes, you've answered a larger issue than the classified information one.

I do have drives for anything but 5 inch and 8 inch floppies. Syquests are gone. It's a race towards obsolescence. But we asked for new shiny devices.


Correction: we didn't.

Especially bluetooth. My goodness, what an abomination.

DU mail me if you need 3 inch floppies or zips transferred. I won't look at the files.

Former IT manager. When I worked at the University, staff data was property of the state, and academic data was hands off entirely, except for one unfortunate death threat.

I walked that line carefully.

No tape gear at all. One job, I really did not want to drag lots and lots of backup tapes to the new office, so I marked them "Top Secret. The S.E.C. must never see these tapes. " So the boss took them off my hands. Probably still in his wall safe.

[csziggy]

13. I have a couple of 5.25" drives up in the attic

They go with the Commodore 128 my father kept even after it quit working decades ago. I also have the TI-99 new in the box that he bought for Mom - she didn't want it and never used it. I think there might be a floppy disk drive in the box with it.

You mentioned zip drives. When I bought my fourth computer about 1998 or so, the choice was between a zip drive or a CDR burner. I selected the CDR. Still have some of the original CDRs I burned on it and they are still readable, data still good. I was far too smug when the info about the "click of death" came out.

[usonian]

14. I went very briefly with some thrift store commodore stuff

Because it used the IEEE-488 instrument bus, but I never had any equipment to hook it up to.

Not a collector, and not nostalgic. All the hacking fun these days is with RaspberryPi and Arduino.

[csziggy]

16. I got these because I didn't want them going to the dump

But I have no idea what I will do with them. All our older computers were refurbished for use back in the late 1990s, even the 286 ones. Maybe I should offer them up on eBay and see if I can get them to someone who will appreciate them?

[usonian]

20. Noble intention!

I see articles on Hacker News (https://news.ycombinator.com) from people having fun with old stuff. BIG cult of Amiga, by the way.

I have a lot of IMSAI/S-100 stuff that some collectors have expressed interest in.

Building it and running it helped my career to advance.

Hear me out: most "Computer History Museums" are very picky, and I've been turned down several times.
Beggars CAN BE choosers. They ARE.

I was taking a raft of old PC's that I loaded Linux Mint on, to the local thrift store. Saw a guy inspecting old CDROM drives there and asked him if he was interested. My only goal was that they be actually used, and he promised to do so. That was very fortunate. Regular thrift store customers might have used them as doorstops.

[grumpyduck]

7. Sorry to burst any bubbles here, but

a lot of people still keep records on paper. Paper still works. Not everyone was born tied down to a computer.

[Beakybird]

8. What's this about 15 boxes? I'm late to the party.

[crickets]

12. tfg packed up & took WH docs home to FL with him, some extremely classified.

Feb 12 2022 WaPo, no paywall - https://archive.ph/glJBi

15 boxes: Inside the long, strange trip of Trump’s classified records

For the 15 boxes of documents — some classified and marked “top secret” — the long journey from former president Donald Trump’s gilded Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Fla., to a secure facility in the Washington area began last summer, when the National Archives and Records Administration contacted Trump’s team to alert it that some high-profile documents from his presidency appeared to be missing.

But it was not until the end of the year that the boxes were finally readied for collection, according to two people familiar with the logistics, one of whom described the ordeal as “a bit of a process.”

At one point, Archives officials threatened that if Trump’s team did not voluntarily produce the materials, they would send a letter to Congress or the Justice Department revealing the lack of cooperation, according to a third person familiar with the situation.

“At first it was unclear what he was going to give back and when,” said one of these people, who, like the others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to share candid details of a sensitive situation.

https://democraticunderground.com/100216398734

"The documents are so sensitive that they may not be able to describe them in an unclassified way."

[tenderfoot]

11. Who does stuff on hardcopy anymore??? Banks, Hospitals, Doctors, etc..

There will always be hard copies?

[LAS14]

15. Not my bank. Not my doctor. Not my hospital.... Well.... maybe my hospital. nt

[Liberal In Texas]

17. Lawyers. Believe me, lawyers use hard copies.

(Some don't but they're few and far between. And those that do get egg on their faces when their I-Pad with the case on it crashes during a depo.)

[RussBLib]

18. not T-Rump

he's rather famous for not putting anything down on paper, a la Mafiosi.

I've tuned in to Fox several times for their reaction to the FBI search at Mar-a-Lago, and not once have I heard any inkling that this search was for a good cause. No, it's all "democracy is dead!" or "why haven't they raided Hillary or Hunter Biden!?" Waaaaaahhhh!

[SYFROYH]

19. Analog is best for easy, long-term, off-the-electronic-grid storage.

[slater71]

21. Some wingers were posting that Trump was negotiating for the boxes release.

The DOJ should have said we are coming to get them and knock on the door a minute later. He had no right to take them. Even if he declassified them. Remember he could not declassify them after he left office.