But How do They Make Backups?

If you have essential, important information, I urge you to make copies as backups.

I don't know the number of times that I've had to tell someone that their information was lost for good because they hadn't made a backup of their document or program. And, I suspect that if the information was really important to an organization, the failure to be able to make backups would be a pretty bad policy. Potentially devastating.

I don't intend this post as a political comment, yet I just can't fathom a statement from the Bush Administration that copying data from the Department of Justice computer system would cause it to crash, and result in the loss of extremely sensitive and important material. I can't imagine a computer system where backups weren't an integral part of the failsafes practiced. Yet, that is the reason being used to deny a Freedom of Information Act Request - that Sharing Lobbying Data Will Crash Computers

Maybe they need to get a group of IT specialists in there fast before a squirrel messing with an electrical line causes a power outage that robs us of extremely important data.

The Foreign Lobbyist Database contains records first collected to track if lobbyists were spending money to help spread propaganda by Nazi agents in 1938. It supposedly contains records of some significant recent spending by the Saudi Government. The Center for Public Integrity has more information about its importance on their site in an article entitled Foreign Lobbyist Database Could Vanish.

This sounds like some information that is worth protecting carefully. It's definitely time to update those computers,and make backups.