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Announcing the data.gov archive

lil.law.harvard.edu

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Re: Announcing the data.gov archive

#91

Post by sofixa »

Thorrez wrote: post #78
black_puppydog wrote: post #5

Great to see there's some resistance. What I'm missing from this announcement though is any mention of how they intend to secure this "vault" against the current government. I'm assuming good intentions on the part of Harvard, but keeping this data online against the express will of the government is gonna cost (political) capital. And from what I can see, the archive is hosted by US entities on US-controlled servers…

>how they intend to secure this "vault" against the current government Is there any risk of the government ordering them to take it down? That seems unlikely to me. The US has strong free speech protection, stronger than European free speech protection. >keeping this data online against the express will of the government is gonna cost (political) capital. Costing them political capital (aka the government is unhappy)…

> The US has strong free speech protection, stronger than European free speech protection

Citation needed. "European free speech protection" doesn't exist, each country has its own rules and freedoms. Hungary is drastically less free than e.g. France... but overall, as a rule of thumb, unless for you freedom of speech includes freedom to be a Nazi, European countries are pretty free. And don't take stances such as "spending money is free speech which is sacred so no campaign financing rules". You might get arrested for a Nazi salute though... which, if you think is a bad thing, you haven't been paying attention in history classes nor modern news.

Re: Announcing the data.gov archive

#92

Post by andyjohnson0 »

globalnode wrote: post #22
lou1306 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I beg you, please stop applying rule-of-law mindset against might-makes-right adversaries. It creates blind spots giving the illusion that the attack surface is way smaller than it actually is. Muskolites are taking on the SSN system without any Congressional oversight as we speak. The President is attacking ius soli which is a Constitutional right. If they decide that sending their sleuths to Cambridge MA to physica…

Im predicting no more elections for you guys in 4 years. Something makes me think theres gonna be some "reason" to turn them off.

My current thinking for 2028/29:

- 20% likelihood of no election at all

- 70% "managed democracy" with outcome decided in advance

- 10% normal transfer of power if Trump or his successor loses

I think they're racing against the mid-terms next year. If they can lock it in by then then they're home free.

(disclosure: Brit not USian)

Re: Announcing the data.gov archive

#93

Post by sofixa »

nxm wrote: post #69
sjsdaiuasgdia wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly how fascism happens. https://archive.is/g6ElI

Same hyperboles were said in 2017 and we were fine, and in fact, economy was booming and there was world peace during his first term.

> was world peace during his first term

Cringes hard in the Yemeni civil war. Or the conflict in the Donbass. Or the various insurgencies in the Sahel, or the war in Darfur, or the Syrian civil war.

> Same hyperboles were said in 2017 and we were fine

Were you fine? The Supreme Court was stacked by blatantly political appointees who then declared that the president has immunity for official business, even if it's blatantly illegal. This is a disgusting precedent to set, yet here we are.

Re: Announcing the data.gov archive

#94

Post by lloeki »

black_puppydog wrote: post #5

Great to see there's some resistance. What I'm missing from this announcement though is any mention of how they intend to secure this "vault" against the current government. I'm assuming good intentions on the part of Harvard, but keeping this data online against the express will of the government is gonna cost (political) capital. And from what I can see, the archive is hosted by US entities on US-controlled servers…

> What I'm missing from this announcement though is any mention of how they intend to secure this "vault" against the current government.

Maybe this?

> In addition to the data collection, we are releasing open source software and documentation for replicating our work and creating similar repositories. With these tools, we aim not only to preserve knowledge ourselves but also to empower others to save and access the data that matters to them.

https://github.com/harvard-lil/data-vault

And since the data lives here: https://source.coop/repositories/harvard-lil/gov-data/descri...

Combined with this:

> To download an individual dataset by name you can construct its URL, such as:

> https://source.coop/harvard-lil/gov-data/collections/data_go...

> https://source.coop/harvard-lil/gov-data/metadata/data_gov/f...

> To download large numbers of files, we recommend the aws or rclone command line tools:

> aws s3 cp s3://us-west-2.opendata.source.coop/harvard-lil/gov-data/collections/data_gov//v1.zip --no-sign-request

So one could "easily" mirror the whole thing, making it distributed.

Re: Announcing the data.gov archive

#95

Post by matwood »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #92
globalnode wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im predicting no more elections for you guys in 4 years. Something makes me think theres gonna be some "reason" to turn them off.

My current thinking for 2028/29: - 20% likelihood of no election at all - 70% "managed democracy" with outcome decided in advance - 10% normal transfer of power if Trump or his successor loses I think they're racing against the mid-terms next year. If they can lock it in by then then they're home free. (disclosure: Brit not USian)

> I think they're racing against the mid-terms next year.

This is the race. Historically the party in power loses the mid-terms, and I think we're already seeing huge portions of the population having buyers remorse. But, Trumps team knows this. I was waiting for them to attack the FEC, and here we are.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/06/us/politics/federal-elect...

Re: Announcing the data.gov archive

#96

Post by RALaBarge »

globalnode wrote: post #22
lou1306 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I beg you, please stop applying rule-of-law mindset against might-makes-right adversaries. It creates blind spots giving the illusion that the attack surface is way smaller than it actually is. Muskolites are taking on the SSN system without any Congressional oversight as we speak. The President is attacking ius soli which is a Constitutional right. If they decide that sending their sleuths to Cambridge MA to physica…

Im predicting no more elections for you guys in 4 years. Something makes me think theres gonna be some "reason" to turn them off.

Don't worry! There are a lot of fine patriots with firearms that keep them just in case of such a thing!

Re: Announcing the data.gov archive

#97

Post by BorisMelnik »

bjackman wrote: post #10
black_puppydog wrote: post #5

Great to see there's some resistance. What I'm missing from this announcement though is any mention of how they intend to secure this "vault" against the current government. I'm assuming good intentions on the part of Harvard, but keeping this data online against the express will of the government is gonna cost (political) capital. And from what I can see, the archive is hosted by US entities on US-controlled servers…

I think a fully distributed storage system must be the way here. There must be some IPFS type system where Harvard could say "we designated a set of data that we can add to as needed but only delete from with a critical mass of storage providers' consent, here are some instructions for you to add your spare capacity to become a storage provider".

I was just thinking IPFS or possibly even some blockchain solution for this. Bram Cohen (the creator of bittorrent) also has a new project I think in the DePin sector.

Sensitive information just can't be hosted on a centralized server anymore, it has to be distributed for the good of the project.

Re: Announcing the data.gov archive

#99

Post by marcinzm »

dmd wrote: post #80
Thorrez wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>how they intend to secure this "vault" against the current government Is there any risk of the government ordering them to take it down? That seems unlikely to me. The US has strong free speech protection, stronger than European free speech protection. >keeping this data online against the express will of the government is gonna cost (political) capital. Costing them political capital (aka the government is unhappy)…

> The US has strong free speech protection The US literally just told (e.g., [0]) all scientists working for it they are not permitted to publish papers or speak at conferences or travel. What the US "has" is irrelevant when laws are being ignored. [0] https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/revised-and-extend...

That's an employer telling employees what to do? Google can tell the same thing to it's employees and does. I don't see the relevance to the government telling other entities what to do.

Re: Announcing the data.gov archive

#100

Post by dmd »

marcinzm wrote: post #99
dmd wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The US has strong free speech protection The US literally just told (e.g., [0]) all scientists working for it they are not permitted to publish papers or speak at conferences or travel. What the US "has" is irrelevant when laws are being ignored. [0] https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/revised-and-extend...

That's an employer telling employees what to do? Google can tell the same thing to it's employees and does. I don't see the relevance to the government telling other entities what to do.

The employer is the US federal government, in this case.
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