Tag: declassification

Archivists on the Issues: “Sensitive documents”, NARA’s role in declassification, and contested spaces

Archivists on the Issues is a forum for archivists to discuss the issues we are facing today. Today’s post comes from Burkely Hermann, Metadata Librarian for the National Security Archive and current I&A Blog Coordinator. There will be spoilers for RWBY Season 2.

A Schnee Dust Company representative warns Weiss Schnee that there are “sensitive documents” on the list of files Weiss requested in a season 2 episode of RWBY

Recently, I was rewatching the young adult animated series, RWBY, and forgot that there is an episode including a scene where one of the protagonists, Weiss Schnee, a daughter of an unscrupulous company executive, requests files from her parent’s company, the Schnee Dust Company (SDC). In the season two episode, “A Minor Hiccup”, Weiss uses a computer terminal, which she accesses at a CCT (Cross Continental Transmit System) Tower, a prominent part of Beacon Academy, using her scroll on the elevator to access the upper level, Once there, she is helped by a communications operator, who patches her through to the SDC. Once at a terminal, she is greeted by the SDC employee who looks at her file list and states that some of records are sensitive. Weiss responds that she will treat the records “with care”, and without even a second question, her request is fulfilled. [1] The records are later used in an effort to figure out more of what the “low-level” villain, Roman Torchwick, is doing. The claim by Weiss about the sensitive records relates to a recent interview with lawyer James Trusty.

Trusty defended his well-known client, the former president, stating there were no classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, and implied that not turning over documents was “not a crime”. He then claimed his client was being politically targeted, declared that the Presidential Records Act is a “non-criminal statute”, and said civil litigation is the answer instead, among other statements. The comments by Trusty on national television and those by Weiss in RWBY relate to what I’ve written about before in regards to how classification works within NARA (National Archives and Records Administration), British Public Record Office, South African State Archives Service, National Archives of Korea, United Nations, and other U.S. government organs and non-U.S. institutions. The aforementioned comments by Weiss and Trusty connect to the reality of document classification within archives, which remains an important issue considering a recent U.S. Senate hearing on over-classification, with calls for “original classifiers to assign sunsets at the front end,” i.e. dates at which classification would expire automatically, along with other changes, as the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) system remains thoroughly broken.

This is not a new issue, are classified records inherent to U.S. government institutions in many ways. For years, U.S. government agencies have been writing declassified institutional histories based upon the “still classified records of the services”, including about U.S. foreign relations. This is coupled with continuing complexities of record classification, leading to issues with obtaining access to “security-restricted records”. However, it can be bypassed thanks to sympathetic archivists or with the proper procedures in place. There have been cases in which classified records have been destroyed reportedly to “protect” operational security of U.S. military actions, even though the records should have been preserved. [2] This makes it clear that archives are not neutral, but are contested spaces instead, which is obvious for libraries, galleries, museums, and other institutions, but is also the case for archives.

There have been efforts to keep classified records intact and store them correctly. This has especially been the case after 1972 when the Archivist of the United States (AOTUS) became the center of government-wide policy-making in terms of research with classified records. Many years before, in March 1946, a National Archives appraiser, Philip C. Brooks, was worried about accepting “highly classified” records from the State Department about the Office of Strategic Services, due to the unknown size of the records being transferred, and had questions about record organization, issue of eventual declassification, and how these records would affect other transfers. Apart from the above-mentioned historical example, there have been instances in which researchers were denied from using classified records. On the contrary, declassification has been said to open up information for “intensive private historical research”. Some records at the U.S. state-level have also been classified, causing those in charge of the records to become declassifiers. [3]

In the past, the Pentagon had a room aside for storing classified records when agencies were reportedly under “extreme space pressures” as a result of World War II. This reality has only been reinforced by ever-present institutional resistance toward declassifying records for scholarly research due to a directive-of-sorts which instructs archivists to “guard” the security of classified records no matter what. This can involve classification for political purposes. [4] There have been evolving challenges from records classification and secrecy, archivists have opened older classified case files for historians, and declassification has become an important duty for NARA, especially since the 1970s. Further scholarship has focused on movement of classified materials, reviews of classified records by NARA, and continued pushes to declassify additional records. [5]

Recently, some have tried to differentiate between the different cases involving classified records involving the former president and President Biden, with Sharon L. Lynch of Reuters writing that neither president “should have had any classified material in their possession” and that such records should be in the “legal custody of the U.S. National Archives.” Lynch added that it is illegal to willfully or knowingly retain or remove classified material, and stated that failing to properly secure and store such material “poses risks to national security if it should fall into the wrong hands.” This has been so egregious in the case of the former president that one of his defense attorneys said the president used a folder with a classified marking to “block a light in his bedroom that kept him up at night”. The former president has further declared that he has the “right” to go through classified records which should have been handed over to NARA. In light of these recent scandals, some have called for NARA to adapt its protocols “around the handling of all classified documents” to prevent future scandals. [6]

All the while, there have been a defense of existing rules at the agency to safeguard records in opposition to those who state that there are too many rules, claims of “political bias”, questions about what NARA “knew” (or didn’t know) about classified records found at the office of the Penn-Biden Center, and laughable comments that such records were safer at Mar-a-Lago than at NARA. Others have praised the agency for its new agreement with the George W. Bush Foundation on a proposal to privatize the presidential library for George W. Bush by “transferring certain operations from NARA to the Bush Foundation” or called for a “revamping” at how the agency collects information, particularly classified information is Top Secret or Secret. [7] There have been broader comments about how it is fairly common to misplace classified documents (and “classified spillage” of documents outside “protected places”), and mentions of secure areas to view documents, known as SCIFs or Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities. Other articles have stated that many public officials have shared classified papers over the years, with some rightly questioning whether too many documents are being classified, or saying that the existing classification system is “clunky”. [8]

This is important to note because archivists, especially those at NARA, have a key role when it comes to declassification. Former AOTUS David Ferriero said the agency has a leadership role in ensuring that millions of classified records are “declassified and made available for the people to inspect and for historians to mine”. Archivists are like Weiss in that they are dedicated to treat classified documents “with care”, but their access to the records is not based on family relation. When it comes to classified documents, archivists become guards. People cannot copy documents held by NARA “with uncancelled security classification markings” and there are specific procedures for copying formerly national security-classified documents.

Classified records need to be more readily available to the public through more-common (or even mass) declassification, something which requires archivists to maintain their roles as declassifiers. More public availability of records will clash with the impossible institutional push to remain “neutral”, as the institutions are contested instead of “neutral”. In any case, archivists are vital since the amount of records, especially classified records from government agencies, flowing into institutions like NARA is bound to increase in years to come.

Notes

[1] The person she talks with tells her that she can talk to her sister Winter or her father but she says that she doesn’t want to, and her smile almost becomes a frown, implying a bad/fraught relationship.

[2] Nelson, Anna. “Government Historical Offices and Public Records.” The American Archivist 41, no. 4 (1978): 407-408; Hill, Edward. “Reviews.” The American Archivist 36, no. 2 (1973): 237; Herschler, David and William Slany. “The ‘Paperless Office’: A Case Study of the State Department’s Foreign Affairs Information System.” The American Archivist 45, no. 2 (1982): 151-152; Robinson-Sweet, Anna. “Truth and Reconciliation: Archivists as Reparations Activists.” The American Archivist 81, no. 1 (2018), doi: 10.17723/0360-9081-81.1.23; Soyka, Heather and Eliot Wilczek. “Documenting the American Military Experience in the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars.” The American Archivist 77, no. 1 (2014): 188, 191.

[3] Angel, Herbert. “Archival Janus: The Records Center.” The American Archivist 31, no. 1 (1968): 9; Heaps, Jennifer. “Tracking Intelligence Information: The Office of Strategic Services.” The American Archivist 61, no. 2 (1998): 301-302; Peterson, Trudy. “The National Archives and the Archival Theorist Revisited, 1954-1984.” The American Archivist 49, no. 2 (1986): 131; Harrison, Donald F. “World War II: A Bibliography of Books in English, 1945-1965” [Review]. The American Archivist 34, no. 4 (1971): 388; Epstein, Fritz. “Washington Research Opportunities in the Period of World War II.” The American Archivist 17, no. 3 (1954): 226; Baumann, Roland. “The Administration of Access to Confidential Records in State Archives: Common Practices and the Need for a Model Law.” The American Archivist 49, no. 4 (1986): 360, 364-365, 367.

[4] East, Sherrod. “Archival Experience in a Prototype Intermediate Depository.” The American Archivist 27, no. 1 (1964): 46, 51; Marrow, Mary. “Moving An Archives.” The American Archivist 53, no. 3 (1990): 423-424; Cox, Richard. “Secrecy, Archives, and the Archivist: A Review Essay (Sort Of).” The American Archivist 72, no. 1 (2009): 220-224, 227, 230.

[5] Leopold, Richard. “A Crisis of Confidence: Foreign Policy Research and the Federal Government.” The American Archivist 34, no. 2 (1971): 143-144; Rositer, Margaret (ed. Brenda Beasley Kepleyand Sara L. Stone). “Understanding Progress as Process: Documentation of the History of Post-War Science and Technology in the United States. Final Report of the Joint Committee on Archives of Science and Technology” [Review]. The American Archivist 47, no. 3 (1984): 298; Newman, Debra L. (ed. Brenda Beasley Kepleyand Sara L. Stone)  “The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, Volume I: 1826-August 1919…[and] The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, Volume II: August 1919-August 1920” [Review]. The American Archivist 47, no. 3 (1984): 309; Weir Jr., Thomas E. “News Notes.” The American Archivist 41, no. 4 (1978): 485; Goggin, Daniel T. and Carmen R. Delle Donne. “News Notes.” The American Archivist 36, no. 4 (1973): 606-607; Dowling, F.P. “News Notes.” The American Archivist 39, no. 3 (1976): 398-399; Dowling, F.P. “News Notes.” The American Archivist 39, no. 1 (1976): 83-84; Goggin, Daniel T. and Carmen R. Delle Donne. “News Notes.” The American Archivist 36, no. 2 (1973): 289-290.

[6] Meola, Lexi and Robert Weiner, “Op/Ed: Better protocols needed to keep classified documents out of the wrong house,” Indianapolis Star, Apr. 7, 2023.

[7] “Strict Rules at the National Archives Preserve Treasures,” Wall Street Journal, Mar. 30, 2023; Johnson, Ron, and Chuck Grassley. Electronic. “Sens. Ron Johnson and Chuck Grassley Ask About Review of Classified Records By FBI and NARA.” Electronic, March 27, 2023 (also see here); “Fox’s Mark Levin: Classified documents are “safer at Mar-a-Lago” than “at the National Archives”,” Media Matters, Apr. 3, 2023; Rigby, David. “Petty Tyranny at the U.S. National Archives,” Wall Street Journal, Mar. 23, 2023; Quinn, Melissa and Arden Farhi, “National Archives says it retrieved nine boxes of Biden records from ex-personal attorney’s Boston office.” CBS News, Mar. 9, 2023; x, Connelly, Gerry. “Chairs Maloney, Connolly Issue Statements on Revised Agreement Between the National Archives and George W. Bush Foundation.” Nov. 16, 2022; Jacobson, Sheldon H. “Do classified document revelations highlight problems at the National Archives?” The Hill, Jan. 30, 2023.

[8] Waxman, Olivia B. “Classified Documents Get Misplaced All the Time. A Former National Archives Official Explains Why,” Time, accessed April 9, 2023;Herb, Jeremy, Katie Bo Lillis, Katelyn Polantz and Zachary Cohen, “‘I had to sleep with that document’: How the government tries to prevent classified government documents from spilling out,” CNN, Jan. 24, 2023; House, Billy. “Kissinger, Albright Among Officials Who Shared Classified Papers,” Bloomberg News, Mar. 9, 2023; Lopez, German. “Too Many Top Secrets,” New York Times, Jan. 27, 2023; “What Biden’s Documents Reveal About the Confusing Classification System,” Time, accessed Apr. 9, 2023;

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Archivists on the Issues: Classified Records, Archives, and Fictional Depictions

Archivists on the Issues is a forum for archivists to discuss the issues we are facing today. Today’s post comes from Burkely Hermann, Metadata Librarian for the National Security Archive and current I&A Blog Coordinator. There will be spoilers for each of the books, animated series, films, and other media he will be discussing.

Chart displaying processes of National Declassification Center, an organ of the National Archives
High-level overview of National Declassification Center processes, as shown in a post on the NDC blog in 2019

Previously on this blog, Rachel Mattson examined whether police body camera footage is public record or is classified, arguing that it should be a public record. Other blogposts on this blog have examined whether the Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Torture is a Federal or Congressional Record, noted selective declassification by the French government, which declassified over 200,000 records about Vichy government’s collaboration with the Nazis but none about France’s occupation of Algeria, and noted the tendency of politicians to avoid documenting their activities and stonewall FOIA requests.

In January 2022, the Director of National Intelligence April Haines argued, in a letter to U.S. Senators Ron Wyden and Jerry Moran that there are “deficiencies” in the current declassification system, and notes the burden of mandatory declassification requirements while the amount of classified material expands. My colleague from National Security Archive, Lauren Harper, noted that Haines, many months later, said that overclassification is a national security threat. Some of these classified records are in the hands of the National Archives, otherwise known as the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), organized into Top Secret, Secret, and Confidential. Other records are deemed unclassified if they do not meet the existing requirements for classification.

Classification of records in the U.S. has often been outlined in presidential executive orders, beginning with President Truman in 1951. National security generally described as the primary reason for classification. Over the years, rules changed and the role of NARA increased. This has even resulted in a part of the agency dedicated to declassification, the National Declassification Center (NDC), which was established in 2009, in accordance with Executive Order 13526. This went beyond the agency’s representation on the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel (ISCAP), or the Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO), which oversees the security classification programs in “both Government and industry“, and reports to the President annually. The ISOO, role on ISCAP, and NDC, most recently, have given NARA an important position in the entire classified information management process. [1]

Unsurprisingly, NARA has been in the public focus, especially for storing presidential records from the Obama Administration, and afterward. Some politicians have claimed the agency is an “enemy” and have wanted to dismantle it because of NARA’s push to return classified records to the public, rather than having the records stored in shoddy locations or controlled by presidents as their personal property. [2] This makes reports, in past years, like in May 2012, that boxes of classified government records disappeared from Washington National Records Center all the more concerning, as it could be representative of a larger trend.

Currently, there are measures in place for declassification of government records, either enshrined in executive orders or provisions of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). However, the FOIA system is currently flawed, especially with existence of various exemptions which can be used to redact documents or reject records requests. [3] There are similar issues with Mandatory Declassification Review (MDR) requests. As one government report put it, storage of classified materials is “widespread” across the U.S. government, with NARA storing records from all agencies at central facilities. Even so, some have argued that politicians have neglected the National Archives and failed to “control official secrecy”, belaying assumptions about government transparency, and resulting in the crisis which will make it harder for researchers to examine the “state’s inner workings”. Recent developments, such as a drop in the annual budget of NARA, attrition, and loss of institutional memory have resulted in the agency having one of the lowest levels of job satisfaction in the federal government. All the while, funding for declassification has decreased and backlogs for declassification have increased. [4]

NARA is not the only archives which handles and processes classified records. There are established procedures for classification of records held by the New South Wales Archives in Australia, British Public Record Office, Taiwanese government, Israeli Defense Force, State Archives of Poland, National Archives of Brazil, South African State Archives Service (later renamed National Archives and Records Service), National Archives of Korea, and National Archives of France. Even the archives of the United Nations has a classification level of Strictly Confidential, necessitating declassification requests, while archival materials over 20 years old are “generally open to the public for research”. [5]

As Electronic Records Archivist Amy Wickner argued, archivists have the “power to name and classify,” a power which has “material effects on the world“. This power can be used to make records more accessible or to make them harder to access. The latter is the case if access is only “granted or refused on an individual basis“. At times, more restrictions are imposed because of compliance with professional standards or data within in a record rather than the document itself. This includes including personal data. On the other hand, records which should be publicly available, like agreements between carceral facilities and FamilySearch for indexing of historical records, have a possibility of redaction, despite the lack of personal or sensitive information. [6]

Loid forget holds a secret file in an episode of Spy X Family, showing his target
In the episode “The Underground Tennis Tournament: The Campbelldon”, Loid examines a file of his target, a man named Cavi Campbell, who has a painting in the basement of his mansion. As the story goes, the painting was originally owned by a general who had compiled a dossier of explosive top secret information which could tip the scales and cause possible cause military conflict if revealed, and the painting has a code revealing the dossier’s location.

Classified records have often been depicted in popular culture. For instance, there is an episode of The Crown about classified records showing Duke Edward VIII collaborating with Nazis. Such records are also major part of the Spy x Family series. The protagonist, Twilight (voiced by Takuya Eguchi), poses as a father named Loid Forger, with a wife and child. He is tasked with a secret mission  to keep two countries from beginning a war. As a result, he is often passed information through a network of informants, spies, and others, or is given mission briefings by dedicated agents. The information he receives often includes classified records. Another pertinent example is the 13-episode anime, Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet. In one episode, “Deep Sea Secret”, the protagonist, Ledo (voiced by Kaito Ishikawa), demands declassification of the record. What he learns causes an epiphany. It results in him questioning what he thought about the world and his life’s purpose, causing a mental breakdown of sorts.

There are other examples, apart from the tongue-and-cheek U.S. Navy recording studio named “Classified Records” in The Simpsons, which included subliminal messages in their songs which encouraged people to join the Navy. For instance, classified archives of the CIA are shown in an episode of the TV series, Alias. Furthermore, classified, and restricted, records are a major part of the animated adventure series, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, which has many archivy themes. In one episode, Mara, the previous She-Ra, learns that the Heart of Etheria project is classified, with Light Hope worrying about information being accidentally shared with Madame Razz. In many others, records are only accessible when specific words are spoken, or specific people are detected by computer systems. The same could be said about the records inside the data archives of the World Organization Of Human Protection which is shown in the Totally Spies! episode “The Yuck Factor”, or the “healing center” for Pearls known as The Reef, which is a structure used to create, repair, or modify Pearls, shown in the Steven Universe Future episode “Volleyball”. Both undoubtedly contain restricted or classified records.

In Star Wars Rebels and Star Wars: The Clone Wars, two animated series, there are records which can only be accessed through magic or other means. As such, they are classified, as a result. Accessing secret, and classified, records is a major plot point for live-action films such as Sneakers (1992), The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (2005), and My Fellow Americans (1996). In other cases, like in Joker (2009), the records are even stolen. In the latter film, the records clerk is implied as an impediment to protagonist Arthur Fleck, as are the bureaucratic requirements which require a signature from Fleck’s mother, before he can take the file.

Samantha “Sam” Cross, a certified archivist who was part of the SAA Issues & Advocacy News Monitoring Team in 2018, has highlighted this on her blog, Pop Archives. She notes Carol Danvers (later becoming Captain Marvel) examining likely classified information in Captain Marvel and Loki trying to use his manipulation and charm in the Loki TV series to get classified files from a female character credited as an archivist. She also writes about a character in the Danganronpa game, Byakuya, who “read and study the classified information” in an archives-like room and states that many of the documents shown in Federal Bureau of Control, in the video game Control, are redacted, and classified. [7]

Other pop cultural critics in the library and information field note other examples. For instance, librarian Jennifer Snoek-Brown, known as the creator of the site Reel Librarians and real-life librarian at Tacoma Community College, noted classified records featured in Rollerball (1975), Soylent Green (1973), and likely ones in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011). [8] Elsewhere on her blog, she pointed out similar themes in Mercury Rising (1998) and WarGames (1983).

The over twenty popular culture examples described in this post only scratch the surface. There are as undoubtedly many more films, comics, and series which featured classified or restricted records. The examples noted in this article do not always feature archives, however, as some creators confuse archives with libraries. To add insult to injury, archivists are often not present, resulting in the characters, who have no archival training, to go through the records themselves. Very few depictions in popular culture reflect the current reality of classified records within archives. Hopefully, this changes in the future.

Notes

[1] Čtvrtník, Mikuláš. “Classified records and the archives.” Archival Science 22 (2022): https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-021-09370-3.

[2] O’Rourke, Ciara. “Claims about Obama Foundation keeping classified records in an abandoned warehouse are wrong.” Poynter, Oct. 7, 2022; Caputo, Marc. “Barr suggests Trump ‘deceived’ the government over classified records.” NBC News, Sept. 2, 2022; Suebsaeng, Asawin and Adam Rawnsley. “Trump Tells His Lawyers: Get ‘My’ Top Secret Documents Back.” Rolling Stone, Aug. 23, 2022; Alemany, Jacqueline, Isaac Arnsdorf, and Josh Dawsey. “Inside Trump’s war on the National Archives.” Washington Post, Aug. 27, 2022; Legare, Robert. “Archives found 100+ documents with classified marking in first 15 Trump boxes.” Yahoo! News, CBS News. Aug. 23, 2022; Kochi, Sudiksha. “Fact check: Archives agency transferred 30 million unclassified Obama records to Chicago.” USA Today, Oct. 3, 2022; Derysh, Igor. “‘He has the right to remain silent’: Legal experts say Trump’s Truth Social post may be ‘evidence’.” Salon, Nov. 29, 2022; “Press Statements in Response to Media Queries About Presidential Records.” National Archives and Records Administration, Nov. 9, 2022; Reilly, Steve. “What the government’s former top classified records overseer sees in the Mar-a-Lago search.” Grid, Aug. 10, 2022; Wood, Jennifer. “Donald Trump Just Couldn’t Keep His Mouth Shut And Went Ahead And Confessed: ‘I Did’ Steal Classified Documents From The White House.” Uproxx, Nov. 29, 2022; “Fact Check-National Archives and Records Administration says they manage all of Obama’s Presidential records, contrary to claims online.” Reuters, Sept. 30, 2022. There have also been cases, like a lawsuit by the conservative legal group, Judicial Watch, against NARA, aiming to declassify Clinton Administration efforts, but their efforts were dismissed by the courts.

[3] “Freedom of Information Act flaws need fixing, experts say.” American Bar Association, Aug. 4, 2018; “The media’s problems with FOIA.” Reporter’s Committee for Freedom of the Press, Winter 2007; Goos, Christian. “Seeking Access to Classified Records: Requesting Mandatory Declassification Review (MDR) versus Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).” ISOO Overview, Oct. 1, 2021.Also of note are pages like the “Overview” webpage on the Records Management Directorate and Army Declassification Directorate, the NSA’s page on supposed declassification/transparency initiatives, and a press release about ZL Tech’s support of a  “records management platform with DOD classified technology”.

[4] “Appendix V: Central Storage, Declassification and Destruction” in Classified Information: Costs of Protection are Integrated with Other Security Costs: Report to the Chairman, Information, Justice, Transportation, and Agriculture Subcommittee, Committee on Government Operations, House of Representatives (United States General Accounting Office, 1993), 26;  Connelly, Matthew. “State Secrecy, Archival Negligence, and the End of History as We Know It.” Knight First Amendment Institute, Sept. 21, 2018. The latter article also says that state secrecy and state archiving began at the same time, around the establishment of NARA and into World War II.

[5] “Standard on the physical storage of State records.” New South Wales Archives in Australia, Feb. 2019; Wittner, Laurence. “What I Learned About Governments from Researching Classified Documents.” History News Network, Sept. 4, 2022; “The Management Regulations for Classified Archives.” Law & Regulations Database of the Republic of China (Taiwan), May 10, 2005; Peterson, Terrence. “The French Archives and the Coming Fight for Declassification.” War on the Rocks, Mar. 6, 2020; Makleff, Ron. “Sovereignty and Silence: The Creation of a Myth of Archival Destruction, Liège, 1408.” Archive Journal, Aug. 2017; “Public Reference Services.” United Nations Archives and Records Management Section, accessed Dec. 5, 2022; Franco, Shirley. “Transparência e opacidade do estado no Brasil: Usos e desusos da informação governamental.” The American Archivist 84, no. 1 (2021): 196; Sromek, Teresa. “Teoria i praktyka archiwistyki USA.” The American Archivist 83, no. 1 (2020): 177; Harris, Verne and Christopher Merrett. “Toward a Culture of Transparency: Public Rights of Access to Official Records in South Africa.” The American Archivist 57, no. 4 (1994): 681-2, 684, 688, 691; Lee, Kyong. “Political Democracy and Archival Development in the Management of Presidential Records in the Republic of Korea.” The American Archivist 69, no. 1 (2006): 119-120,129, 134-135, 137-138.

[6] Wickner, Amy. “Recognizing Co-Creators in Four Configurations: Critical Questions for Web Archiving.” Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies 8 (2019): 4; Geraci, Noah and Michelle Caswell. “Developing a Typology of Human Rights Records.” Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies 3 (2016): 18; Taylor, Claire, Lucia Brandi, Cecilia A. Acosta Sánchez, and Marcelo Díaz Vallejo, “Archives of Human Rights and Historical Memory: An Analysis of Archival Practices ‘From Below’ in Four NGOs in Colombia Archival Practices ‘From Below’ in Four NGOs in Colombia.” Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies 8 (2021): 11, 16; Rinn, Meghan R. “Review of The Future of Literary Archives.” Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies 7 (2020): 4; Szekely, Ivan. “Do Archives Have a Future in the Digital Age?” Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies 4 (2017): 4; Jansson, Jenny, Katrin Uba, Jaanus Karo, “Labor Gone Digital (DigiFacket)! Experiences from Creating a Web Archive for Swedish Trade UnionsArchive for Swedish Trade Unions.” Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies 7 (2020): 5; Windon, Katrina and Lydia M. Tang. “Archival discretion: a survey on the theory and practice of archival restrictions.” Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies 9 (2022): 8.

[7] Cross, Samantha. “Archives in the Movies: Captain Marvel.” Pop Archives, Aug. 20, 2021; Cross, Samantha. “Archives in Video Games: Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc.” Pop Archives, Jan. 19, 2021; Cross, Samantha. “Archives on TV: Loki.” Pop Archives, Jun. 24, 2022; Cross, Samantha. “Archives in Video Games: Control.” Pop Archives, Aug. 20, 2021.

[8] Snoek-Brown, Jennifer. “A round-up of library, archives, and reel librarian scenes in MCU’s Phase Four TV series (so far).” Reel Librarians, Aug. 24, 2022; Snoek-Brown, Jennifer. “Reel librarians and archivists in 16 sci-fi films.” Reel Librarians, Mar. 11, 2020; Snoek-Brown, Jennifer. “Reel librarians in ‘Rollerball’ | Analyzing the 1975 original film and 2002 remake.” Reel Librarians, Feb. 1, 2017; Snoek-Brown, Jennifer. “Reader poll of runner-ups, Fall 2016: ‘Soylent Green’ and the Books.” Reel Librarians, Nov. 30, 2016; Snoek-Brown, Jennifer. “First impressions: ‘Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’.” Reel Librarians, Jan. 23, 2012.

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Steering Share: Digging Into the FamilySearch Inmate Indexing Program

Steering Shares are an opportunity to find out more about the I&A Steering Committee. This post comes courtesy of Steering Committee member, Burkely Hermann, National Security Archive.

Hello everyone! In today’s post I’d like to share a project that I’ve been working off-and-on since 2019, in my spare time, which relates to digitization, archival ethics, and access. Since then, I have been using MuckRock to request documents from county jails and state prisons about FamilySearch’s program to have inmates index public records, like censuses and military records, which are then used by genealogists and the general public. In order to put this project into context, I’d like to give some background to highlight why this project matters.

In February 2020, in my first article on the closure of the National Archives facility in the Seattle area, I noted that some U.S. legislators criticized the partnership between the National Archives and FamilySearch, who stated that this partnership, meant to digitize records, has not “resulted in actual access to records that have been prioritized by stakeholders.”

Currently, NARA’s webpage on digitized microfilm publications and original records states that digitization partners like Ancestry, Fold3 (owned by Ancestry), and FamilySearch “have digitized microfilm publications and original records from NARA’s holdings and made them available on their websites.” NARA has had a partnership with FamilySearch since 2005, with NARA describing them as having a “clear focus on records of interest to genealogists.” The current partnership agreement with FamilySearch will remain in effect until NARA or FamilySearch terminates it, which is unlikely.

All of this matters because FamilySearch, a division of the Mormon Church (LDS), is using inmates to index many of these public records. This means that the records you might be using on Ancestry, which FamilySearch shares records with, or on the latter site, have likely been indexed by inmates.

It is important to keep in mind that jails and prisons are not the same. Jails are run by counties or cities, housing those with short-term convictions or awaiting trial. Prisons are operated on the federal or state level, with inmates who have longer-term convictions.

I became interested in this topic after reading Shaun Bauer’s short article in Mother Jones in August 2015 entitled “Your Family’s Genealogical Records May Have Been Digitized by a Prisoner”. Unfortunately, Bauer never wrote a follow-up piece, and some genealogists, like assorted people on social media and Megan Smolenyak, more prominently, defended the indexing, claiming that a “few key aspects” were left out.

In contrast, Jarrett M. Drake, a Harvard University PhD candidate who focuses on “archival, educational, and organizing projects that pertain to prison abolition,” argued, in a 2020 book, Paths to Prison: On the Architectures of Carcerality, that the national and state governments that partner with FamilySearch certain “untold millions of dollars” by sharing their records for indexing and digitization, and argued that “millions of archival records have been made available by incarcerated labor.”

Although my research on this subject is still ongoing, there is clear evidence that sometime in the 1980s, LDS opened a Family History Center at Utah State Prison, followed by one at California’s Tehachapi State Prison in 1989. In February 2001, the Chicago Tribune acknowledged that the Freedman’s Bureau records, which are popular especially with Black genealogists, were collected and culled by 550 inmates at the South Point Correctional Facility at Utah State Prison.

Smolenyak’s interview with one of the indexers, Blaine Nelson, said that the indexing of the Freedman’s Bureau records took eleven years, 600 inmates, and “over 700,000 volunteer hours.” He declared proudly that, by February 2001, “some 480,000 Freedman’s Bank records had been extracted and indexed.” This means that one of the “richest databases for African-American research” as Ed Lunt, who helped establish the indexing program at the Utah State Prison in 1990 with his wife Penney, described it, was only possible due to the large amount of unpaid inmate labor.

The indexing did not end there. It has continued since then, with millions of names indexed by inmates, not only in Utah, but in other states, like Idaho and Arizona. Some even declared that this indexing means that prisoners are “working to strengthen everyone’s family tree.”

In 2021, Steve Collings, a product manager for the FamilySearch Correctional Services program, stated that LDS had “35 different facilities” with where inmates do indexing across the Mountain West, including Utah, Wyoming, and Arizona, with plans to expand nationwide, then worldwide. Whether the indexing provides “personal growth” to inmates as LDS claims, or not, LDS has been mostly tight-lipped in providing many details about the indexing and noting the exact locations where LDS has contracted prison indexing.

In my research, I’ve found that five jurisdictions in Utah currently have contracts with LDS to have inmates index records: Box Elder County, Cache County, Duchesne County, Kane County, and Summit County, as I note on the “Documents received” sheet within my “FamilySearch and prisons” spreadsheet. Sevier County presumably also has a contract, but I have not received documents from them. The most recent one I received, for Box Elder, shows that FamilySearch is all in on the inmate indexing as it was signed earlier this year by Stephen Valentine, who is the Senior Vice President of FamilySearch International!

From my requests I also learned that there are genealogy programs in Idaho prisons, but they reportedly have no policy related to the program. The same is the case for the Utah Department of Corrections. I also received redacted emails from the Washington Department of Corrections showing communications about Mormon volunteers coming to the state’s prison facilities. Otherwise, I learned that Beaver and Washington counties have volunteer programs but reportedly do not have records of that program.

In order to do these requests, I’ve been using MuckRock, which allows you to submit freedom of information requests to any governmental agency within their databases and keep all of the interactions public, or even private. Unfortunately, it has been somewhat costly to do this work, costing $5.00 per record request, making it hard for those without adequate financial resources to make these record requests and hopefully receive documents which can become public, even if they are heavily redacted. Where I work, the National Security Archive, has the same goal, but on a much larger scale, with various projects and experts on certain subject areas.

As I continue my research, with the impending end of requests to county jails in Utah, I’ll be trying to find out more about this program beyond Utah, to other states. I’ve done this a little with requests to counties in Wyoming, Arizona, Nevada, and other states such as Colorado and Arkansas. Although I’m not sure what I will learn about this indexing program going forward, and how widespread it is, I am confident that it will remain a learning experience which will inform people, particularly archivists and librarians, about those who index the public records which are used on a daily basis. Hopefully, it will also encourage a push for a larger NARA budget, so that more digitization of their records can be done in-house rather than contracted out to FamilySearch or for conditions be put on the next agreement to prohibit indexing by inmates.

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Archivists on the Issues: Restrictions and the Case of the University of Michigan

Archivists on the Issues is a forum for archivists to discuss the issues we are facing today. Today’s post comes from Steering Committee member Samantha Brown, an Assistant Archivist at the New-York Historical Society.

As archivists, we are constantly weighing the rights of record creators and donors against the needs of researchers. Sometimes balancing these differing needs can lead to a struggle that puts archives and libraries in the middle. We can find an example of this in a recent news story involving the University of Michigan’s Bentley Historical Library.

The Bentley Historical Library’s story begins with the John Tanton Papers. The finding aid for the collection describes Dr. Tanton as an environmental, population control, and immigration reform advocate who has held leadership positions with the Sierra Club, Michigan Natural Areas Council, Wilderness and Natural Areas Advisory Board, Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore Advisory Commission, Little Traverse Conservancy, and the Environmental Fund [1]. What makes him a controversial figure was his work with the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) and NumbersUSA. While working with these organization, Dr. Tanton worked to reduce both legal and illegal immigration and opposed bilingualism in public schools and government agencies [2,3]. In addition to this work, Dr. Tanton also created a publishing company called The Social Contract Press which notably published The Turner Diaries which was a race war fantasy novel that is seen as a key work for members of the American white supremacist movement [2].  

Part of what makes this collection newsworthy is the fact that half of the collection is sealed. While boxes 1 through 14 are open to researchers without any special restrictions, boxes 15 through 25 are sealed until April 6, 2035 [3]. This presents a problem for Hassan Ahmad, a Virginia-based immigration attorney, who is trying to gain access to the whole collection. Mr. Ahmed believes that the collection could contain materials that show the relationship between anti-immigration groups and white nationalists as well as the influence that some of groups that Dr. Tanton has worked with are having on the White House [4]. The link between Dr. Tanton and the White House may very well exist. President Trump’s senior adviser Kellyanne Conway, transition aid Lou Barletta, policy adviser Julie Kirchner, and immigration advisor Kris Kobach all have ties to FAIR, an organization that Dr. Tanton founded and was a chairman of [1,4].

Believing that the sealed parts of the collection could hold important information and should be part of the public debate, Mr. Ahmed filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the University of Michigan in December 2016 but the request was denied as was the request to appeal the decision [3,5]. Both the original request and the appeal were denied on the basis of Dr. Tanton’s donor agreement with the library [3]. After being denied his FOIA request, Mr. Ahmed sued the University of Michigan to gain access to the restricted parts of the collection [3]. When the case was brought before a judge, the University of Michigan filed for a motion to dismiss the lawsuit based on the fact that parts of the collection were sealed due to the collection’s donor agreement [5]. While information about the donor agreement was disclosed in court, information about the donor agreement was not included in the collections finding aid [1,5]. The judge, Stephen Borello, ruled that since the collection was a private donation and not being used for a public purpose, the University of Michigan could not be compelled to open the collection [3]. Mr. Ahmed proceeded to appeal this ruling as well and is arguing that the university can’t use donor agreements to keep documents sealed. As of right now, he is scheduled to appear in court again in late September or early October when a ruling on his appeal will be made [3].

If Mr. Ahmed wins his appeal, the results could have a massive impact on archives and researchers. Without the ability to guarantee that parts of a collection can remain restricted, archivists may not be able to persuade people to donate or house their collections in an archive which will make it harder for the materials to be preserved and accessed. Access doesn’t just mean that someone can use the materials for their research but also that they can find the materials. A private person may have a collection that is helpful to someone’s research but a person looking for those materials may never be able to find it if an archive can’t create a way for those materials to be found. The work of archivists to arrange and describe collections plays a crucial role in a collection’s findability. If donors are too worried about giving their materials to archives because archivists can’t provide the donors with any guarantees then researchers lose out as well.

While this case holds risks for archives and archivists, it also teaches us something as well. Finding Aids need to be more than just a list of items and folder titles, they need to give researchers a preview of what the collection holds. One of the reasons that Mr. Ahmed wants to access the restricted materials is because he doesn’t know what is there. The finding aid’s description for the restricted materials only includes series and subseries titles with very little other information. If there was a way to know what could be found in the unrestricted  parts of the collection as compared to the restricted parts and what differentiated those parts of the collection then maybe there could be a way to work with Mr. Ahmed so that he could find what he is looking for in a different way. Other members of the organizations that Mr. Ahmed is interested in may have unrestricted collections at other institutions. Otis L. Graham Jr., another founding member of FAIR, for example, has some his collections housed at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The best result for both the researcher and archive, in my opinion, would be to find a way to help the researcher with their request without breaking the donor agreement. If this isn’t possible then I wonder why a box and folder list is even provided for the restricted materials. Why tell people that you have something if you’re unwilling to tell them about it? Without more information in the finding aid or speaking to the staff at the Bentley Historical Library and investigating their policies around arrangement and description, it’s difficult to know why the collection has been handled in this particular way. For now, we, as archivists, can look at this situation and use it to change how we both deal with collections and researchers.

 

Works Cited

  1. John Tanton Papers Finding Aid. University of Michigan, Bentley Historical Library, 14 Jun 2013, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/b/bhlead/umich-bhl-861056?view=text
  2. “John Tanton” Southern Poverty Law Center, www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/john-tanton
  3. Peet, Lisa. “Attorney Sues for Access to Tanton Papers in Closed Archive.” Library Journal, 18 Sept. 2018, https://www.libraryjournal.com/?detailStory=180918-Tanton-Papers
  4. Frazen, Rachel. “Why Is the University of Michigan Fighting to Keep an Anti-Immigration Leader’s Papers Secret?” The Daily Beast, 3 Sept. 2018, https://www.thedailybeast.com/why-is-university-of-michigan-fighting-to-keep-anti-immigration-leaders-papers-secret
  5. Warikoo, Niraj. “University of Michigan Oct.  Blocks Release of Hot-Button Records of Anti-Immigrant Leader.” Detroit Free Press, 28 Oct. 2017, https://www.freep.com/story/news/2017/10/17/university-michigan-blocks-release-anti-immigrant-records/732133001/

 

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Research Post: Archiving Accounts of War Crimes–Preserving History, Protecting Victims

I&A Research Teams are groups of dedicated volunteers who monitor breaking news and delve into ongoing topics affecting archives and the archival profession. Under the leadership of the I&A Steering Committee, the Research Teams compile their findings into Research Posts. Each post offers a summary and coverage of an issue. This comes from the General News Media Research Team, which monitors the news for issues affecting archivists and archives.

 Please be aware that the sources cited have not been vetted and do not indicate an official stance of SAA or the Issues and Advocacy Section.

 

The Syrian and Iraqi civil wars spotlight two archival problems faced by countries experiencing or recovering from war. The first problem centers on the protection of a country’s archives and cultural landmarks. The Islamic State has looted, smuggled, and destroyed ancient monuments, artifacts, and manuscripts in Syria, most infamously in Palmyra.[1] The Islamic State has also destroyed pre-Islamic and Islamic manuscripts in Mosul, Iraq, which Mosul citizens, not surprisingly, view as an attack on their heritage.[2] The second problem centers on capturing and preserving materials that document war crimes, such as videos, photographs, court transcripts, surveillance files, and a variety of other materials that prove torture, extrajudicial punishments, and repression have occurred. Individuals often face serious risks acquiring and preserving such materials due to the destruction caused by war, along with the aggressors’ desire to escape justice. Sound and Image, a group operating in Syria and Turkey, maintains records of the Islamic State’s crimes (the Islamic State has targeted and killed some of its members).[3] Hadi al Khatib and Jeff Deutch, who live in Berlin, created the Syrian Archive, which focuses on video footage of war crimes in Syria, regardless of the perpetrators’ affiliation. Syrian Archive members catalog the videos and assign metadata.[4]

Countries recovering from war benefit from archivists’ preserving both historical materials and contemporary documentary evidence. Historical manuscripts, photographs, and other records express the cultural heritage of ethnic groups and nation states, which can serve as a source of unity. Evidence of war crimes aids the pursuit of justice, restitution, and healing. The United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner succinctly stated the latter point in the recent Rule-of-Law Tools for Post-Conflict States: Archives:

When a period characterized by widespread or systematic human rights violations comes to an end, those who suffered under the previous regime or during a conflict will particularly seek to fulfil their rights to the truth, justice and reparation, as well as demand institutional reforms to prevent the recurrence of violations. To meet these demands States use a variety of approaches: investigations and prosecutions, truth-seeking activities, reparation initiatives, and institutional reforms to reduce the possibility that repression or conflict will recur. Every one of these processes relies on archives.[5]

Archivists operate under enormous strain, however, when attempting to preserve materials in countries with ruined infrastructure, political instability, and few financial resources. An archives’ existence is often at stake under these circumstances. Still, the United Nations argues that sensitive records ought to stay in the countries of origin and that only copies should be deposited in archives located in other secure countries.[6] The National Archives of Finland, for example, recently accepted “digital copies of documents that have become endangered due to the Syrian Civil War.” The archives had previously accepted documents concerning the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacres in Lebanon.[7] The Nile River Museum in Egypt also houses artifacts collected for a future museum of South Sudan, which declared its independence in 2011. The country is attempting to build a national archive, museum, and theater to preserve the cultural heritage of the new country’s 10.5 million citizens. While artifacts are in Egypt for safekeeping, archival documents still remain in Juba, the capital city, amidst a new civil war. Many of the archivists there fled to refugee camps when the conflict began, but staff member Becu Thomas stayed in the capital. Thomas thought that his country never learned from its past. He now works diligently to arrange and digitize South Sudan’s historical documents.[8]

France provides another example of the relationship between archives and countries recovering from war. The French government declassified over 200,000 records in December 2015 that document the Vichy government’s collaboration with the Nazis. The records may shed light on arrests and executions previously shrouded in secrecy, allowing researchers, family members, and others to come to terms with a difficult past. The French government, however, decided not to declassify documents relating to the country’s occupation of Algeria.[9] Algerians fought a bloody war for independence from France between 1954 and 1962. Materials relating both to war crimes and torture that occurred during the war, as well as cultural materials from pre-colonial Algeria, remain in French archives. Abdelmadjid Chicki, who serves as the director of Algeria’s national archive center, argues that records produced on Algerian soil belong to Algeria. Members of the French national archives argue that France owns materials that French citizens collected. France has offered to share copies of the Algerian materials with Algeria[10], a reversal of the previously mentioned position that the United Nations holds. Algerians have resorted to buying Ottoman-era documents at French auctions in order to develop an extensive collection of historical materials from their country.[11]

While France refuses to return records to Algeria, French archivists are attempting to develop a complete archival record that incorporates materials from former colonies. The French National Archives started Le Grande Collecte, a project to acquire and preserve materials from West Africans who lived under French rule or who migrated to France.[12] The French government also strongly supports a UNESCO fund to restore ancient sites and archives in places like Syria and also to find “safe havens” for endangered items. Some nations are worried about losing control of their cultural heritage.[13]

Archivists must balance the sometimes competing goals of protecting records and respecting the rights of record creators, owners, and subjects. Moving and storing records around the globe may aid preservation but not access for those who need them most. When these records are associated with crimes and torture, there may be other motives besides preservation behind the relocation of materials. A repository outside London, for instance, houses records that document the torture of people in 37 former British colonies, including Kenya, who fought for independence. The records’ existence remained a guarded secret from the rest of the world until recently, even as victims of violence sought justice for years.[14] Such records must be preserved and made accessible so that restitution and accountability can occur, and so that countries recovering from war can move forward.

 

 List of Further Readings

The I&A Steering Committee would like to thank the General News Media Research Team, and in particular Audrey Lengel and Sean McConnell, for writing this post. The General News Media Team is: Courtney Dean; Lori Dedeyan; Audrey Lengel; Sean McConnell; and Daria Labinsky, team leader. If you are aware of an issue that might benefit from a Research Post, please get in touch with us: archivesissues@gmail.com.

Sources Cited

[1] “Alarmed at destruction in Palmyra, Security Council reiterates need to stamp out hatred espoused by ISIL,” UN News Centre, January 20, 2017.  http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=56013. Accessed April 17, 2017.

[2] “Rubble, Ash Left in Mosul Museum Retaken from IS,” Voice of America, March 8, 2017. http://www.voanews.com/a/rubble-left-mosul-museum-retaken-islamic-state/3756042.html. Accessed April 18, 2017.

[3] “Syria: Witnesses for the Prosecution,” Al Jazeera, November 19, 2016. http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/specialseries/2016/11/syria-witnesses-prosecution-161115091502071.html. Accessed April 18, 2017.

[4] “Syrian Archive catalogues war atrocities online,” Deutsche Welle, December 29, 2016. http://www.dw.com/en/syrian-archive-catalogues-war-atrocities-online/a-36945803. Accessed April 18, 2017.

[5] United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner, Rule-of-Law for Post-Conflict States: Archives (New York and Geneva, United Nations, 2015), 1.

[6] Ibid., 10, 40.

[7] “Endangered Syrian documents taken into safekeeping at the National Archives of Finland,” Ministry of Education and Culture, February 12, 2016. http://minedu.fi/en/article/-/asset_publisher/endangered-syrian-documents-taken-into-safekeeping-at-the-national-archives-of-finland. Accessed April 18, 2017.

[8]Strochlic, Nina. “Can Archivists Save the World’s Newest Nation?” National Geographic. November 3, 2016. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/11/south-sudan-archives/. Accessed April 22, 2017.

[9] Danny Lewis, “France is Making Thousands of Vichy-Era Documents Public,” Smithsonian.com, December 29, 2015. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/france-making-thousands-vichy-era-documents-public-180957661/. Accessed April 19, 2017.

[10] Christian Lowe, “Algeria, France tussle over archives 50 years after split,” Reuters, July 4, 2012. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-algeria-archives-idUSBRE86307L20120704. Accessed April 19, 2017.

[11] Abdul Razak bin Abdullah, “Algeria obtains Ottoman-era documents at French auction,” Anadolu Agency, March 4, 2017. http://aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/algeria-obtains-ottoman-era-documents-at-french-auction/787097. Accessed April 19, 2017.

[12] Alison Hurd, “France adds African perspective to colonial period archives,” Radio France Internationale, November 21, 2016. http://en.rfi.fr/france/20161121-france-adds-african-perspective-colonial-period-archives. Accessed April 21, 2017.

[13] Erin Blakemore, “New Fund Pledges to Protect Cultural Heritage from War and Terror,” Smithsonian.com, March 21, 2017. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/new-fund-pledges-protect-cultural-heritage-war-and-terror-180962616/. Accessed April 21, 2017.

[14] Marc Perry, “Uncovering the brutal truth about the British empire,” The Guardian, August 18, 2016. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/aug/18/uncovering-truth-british-empire-caroline-elkins-mau-mau. Accessed April 21, 2017.

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Police-Worn Body Camera Footage: A Public Record? Part 2

Archivists on the Issues is a forum for archivists to discuss the issues we are facing today. If you have an issue you would like to write about for this blog series or a previous post that you would like to respond to, please email archivesissues@gmail.com. Please note that opinions expressed in Archivists on the Issues posts do not indicate an official stance of SAA or the Issues and Advocacy Roundtable.

This post, written by Rachel Mattson, is part two in a two-part series regarding the debate regarding police body-camera footage’s classification as a public record. Part 1 is available here.

BWCs: The Wild West of Records Requests
Requestors seeking access to police-worn body camera footage nationwide have encountered a diversity of other obstacles. Indeed, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP) recently called police body cam footage “the Wild West of open records requests,” noting that obtaining access to these records “is proving to be an uncertain and challenging endeavor.”[1] One justification that agencies often use for the withholding of footage is its sensitive nature. BWC footage raises serious concerns about privacy, security, and confidentiality. But as RCFP’s Adam Marshall notes—and as video archivists who work with human rights documentation have long known—there exists a wide range of tech and policy strategies that can make video available to the public while protecting individual privacy and security.[2]

Possibly the greatest threat to the public’s ability to access BWC going forward may be the efforts currently underway in many states to pass legislation that would exempt BWC footage from public records laws. In July 2016, North Carolina made national news when governor Pat McCrory signed a bill declaring that “body camera and dash camera footage are not public record[s].” Similar bills are currently being considered in Michigan, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Louisiana, and California, among other states. In Utah, one lawmaker has even proposed a bill that would officially classify all footage as “a private government record” if it depicts any “images of nudity, death, or gruesome events.” Who determines if an image is gruesome? “Something’s gruesome if police say it is.”[3]

In the view of many observers, access to police BWC footage, especially of fatal police shootings, is “crucial” to both “the public’s ability to hold police responsible for their conduct” and officers’ ability to exonerate themselves when wrongly accused of misconduct.[4] And the potential privacy and security concerns that these records raise remain separate from the question of whether these videos should be officially classified as public records. Indeed, many confidential and sensitive records, including federal intelligence records, are classified as public records under law. Body camera footage is not more sensitive than these kinds of records, and should not treated as such.[5]

It may be the case, as several activist groups have claimed, that equipping the police with cameras is the wrong strategy for addressing the larger problems of police accountability and racial justice. A broad base of community and activist groups have critiqued the practice of equipping police with BWCs. For instance, We Charge Genocide, a Chicago-based group working toward restorative justice solutions for police misconduct, suggests that “when police control the cameras, those cameras are at the service of police violence.” In fact, they observe that one body camera manufacturer “actually uses the slogan ‘Made by Cops for Cops. Prove Your Truth.’” The recent “Vision for Black Lives” Statement put forth by the Movement for Black Lives likewise includes a demand to “End the Use of Technologies that Criminalize and Target Our Communities (Including IMSI Catchers, Drones, Body Cameras, and Predictive Policing Software).”[6]

Nonetheless, the calls for and deployment of police-worn body cameras increase every day. As more local policing agencies equip officers with BWCs, we have a responsibility to engage with challenges that these government-generated records present. Indeed, as professional archivists and records managers, some of us may soon manage BWC footage as part of our official responsibilities. As we have learned recently, making this video a public record will not in-and-of-itself put an end to police murder of black and brown people. In order for that to occur, access to documentation will have to be coupled with mechanisms that make it possible to hold public servants accountable for their actions. But for BWC footage to be used in the pursuit of accountability and justice, it has to be a public record first. [7]

SAA and BWCs
This fall, I will work to start a conversation about BWCs among SAA members and hope to put forth proposal to the Society of American Archivists’ Committee on Public Policy (COPP) that SAA take a public stand supporting policies that, at a minimum, ensure that police BWC footage be officially classified as a public record.[8] I hope you’ll support—or join!—this conversation and effort. On its main webpage, COPP heralds the power of archival records to “ensure the protection of citizens’ rights, the accountability of organizations and governments, and the accessibility of historical information,” noting that the SAA “believes that archivists must take an active role in advocating for the public policies and resources necessary to ensure that these records are preserved and made accessible.” As BWCs gain widespread usage by U.S. police departments, the footage they generate will become an ever-more pervasive part of the criminal justice system. Ensuring that videos remain public records is something that, as an archival organization committed to “the public’s right to equal and equitable access to government information found in archives,” we should support wholeheartedly.[9]

Rachel Mattson is a Brooklyn-based historian and archivist. She currently works as the Manager of Special Projects in the Archives of La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club and is a core member of the XFR Collective. She previously volunteered for I-Witness Video, a group that used citizen video and archival strategies to oppose police misconduct. Mattson holds a PhD in U.S. History from NYU and an MLIS from UIUC. Her writing has appeared in publications including Radical History Review, the Scholar and the Feminist, Movement Research Performance Journal, and in books published by Routledge, Washington Square, and Thread Makes Blanket Press.

Citations
[1] Adam Marshall, “Police Bodycam Videos: The Wild West of Open Records Requests,” rcfp.org/bodycam-video-access.
[2] Marshall, “Police Bodycam Videos: The Wild West of Open Records Requests.”
[3] “North Carolina Keeps Public From Seeing Police Camera Video,” Winston Salem Journal, July 11, 2016; Sophia Murguia, “More States Set Privacy Restrictions on Bodycam Video,” rcfp.org/browse-media-law-resources/news/more-states-set-privacy-restrictions-bodycam-video; “Police Bodycam Footage is a Vital Public Record; Don’t Restrict It,” the Utah Standard-Examiner, February 12, 2016.
[4]“Police Bodycam Footage is a Vital Public Record; Don’t Restrict It,” Standard-Examiner.
[5] I thank Eileen Clancy for reminding me of this fact. For more on the parameters of the federal records laws, see e.g. Douglas Cox, “Burn After Viewing: The CIA’s Destruction of the Abu Zubaydah Tapes and the Law of Federal Records,” Journal of National Security Law and Policy, Vol. 5, 2011, pp. 131-177.
[6] We Charge Genocide, “Statement on Cops and Cameras,” http://wechargegenocide.org/statement-on-cops-and-cameras; The Movement for Black Lives, “A Vision for Black Lives, Policy Demands for Black Power, Freedom and Justice,” policy.m4bl.org/end-war-on-black-people/. See also Caruso, Burns, and Converse, “Slow Motion Increases Perceived Intent,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113 (33) May 2016, pnas.org/content/113/33/9250.full; and Williams et al., “Police Body Cameras: What Do You See?” New York Times, April 1, 2016.
[7] For a critical analysis of the complexity of the issues at hand and the kind of work that needs to be done to address them, see Kimberle Crenshaw and Andrea Ritchie’s indispensible report, “Say Her Name: Resisting Police Brutality Against Black Women,” African American Policy Forum, 2015.
[8] The proposal is currently in development. If you wish to contribute or add your name to the list of supporters, please email keepbwcfpublic [at] gmail [dot] com.
[9] SAA Public Policy Agenda, archivists.org/advocacy/publicpolicy/saapublicpolicyagenda#.V6UTso7OlqA; Committee on Public Policy webpage, archivists.org/groups/committee-on-public-policy#.V6Y3N47OlqB

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Research Post: Is the Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Torture a Federal or Congressional Record?

I&A Research Teams are groups of dedicated volunteers who monitor breaking news and delve into ongoing topics affecting archives and the archival profession. Under the leadership of the I&A Steering Committee, the Research Teams compile their findings into Research Posts for the I&A blog. Each Research Post offers a summary and coverage of an issue. This Research Post comes from On-Call Research Team #2, which is mobilized to investigate issues as they arise.

Please be aware that the sources cited have not been vetted and do not indicate an official stance of SAA or the Issues and Advocacy Roundtable.

Summary of the Issue

Report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency’s detention and Interrogation Program (Senate Report 113-288), also referred to in the media as the “Senate Torture Report” was sent to President Obama, the Director of National Intelligence, the Director of the CIA, the Attorney General, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State, the Director of the FBI, and the CIA Inspector General on December 10, 2014. This report was an extensive five year Senate investigation of the CIA’s secret interrogations of terrorism suspects. It lays bare the extreme violence, severe tactics, and brutality against the suspects as well as the government’s dishonesty to cover that up.

Dianne Feinstein and Patrick Leahy wrote to the U.S. Attorney General and the Director of the FBI on November 5, 2015 and expressed disappointment that the Department of Justice (DOJ) was citing a still pending FOIA case (ACLU v. CIA) as justification for not allowing Executive Branch officials to read the full 6,700 page report. They were also concerned that personnel at NARA said they would not respond to inquiries on whether the report constitutes a record under the Federal Records Act because the FOIA case was pending, based on guidance from the DOJ. On April 28, 2016, members of various open government, human rights, civil liberties, and media organizations wrote a letter to the Archivist of the United States, David Ferriero. This letter justified their stance that Ferriero should use his statutory authority to determine that the report is indeed a federal document. Many in the general public are concerned that the report could disappear if it is not deemed a federal document and that it may thus never be made available. Developments on this issue include Richard Burr, who replaced Feinstein as Committee Chair, writing to agencies who received the report and requesting they return all copies back to the Senate. He also wrote to the White House and instructed them not to enter the report into the Executive Branch system of records, which was contrary to Feinstein’s instructions when the report was released. The ACLU filed an emergency motion in their FOIA suit and all agencies have committed to retaining their copies of the full report during the pending litigation. However, the CIA acknowledged that it destroyed its only copy of the report, “by mistake.”

bibliography of coverage of the issue:

January 21 2016 (updated) “Senate Torture Report – FOIA” American Civil Liberties Union
https://www.aclu.org/cases/senate-torture-report-foia

February 18, 2016 article “The CIA torture report belongs to the public” Al Jazeera America
http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2016/2/the-cia-torture-report-belongs-to-the-public.html

February 29, 2016 interview “Is the torture report a public record? An interview with the National Security Archive’s Lauren Harper” Melville House Books
http://www.mhpbooks.com/is-the-torture-report-a-public-record-an-interview-with-the-national-security-archives-lauren-harper/

April 28, 2016 Letter to Archivist on Executive Branch copies of Senate torture report
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B03viEiWh0qWYnl0UGtleEdSY2M/view

May 2, 2016 article “Will the Senate Torture Report Disappear?” Bill of Rights Defense Committee
http://bordc.org/news/will-the-senate-torture-report-disappear/

May 3, 2016 article “Feds Urged to Preserve ‘Torture Report'” Courthouse News Service
http://www.courthousenews.com/2016/05/03/feds-urged-to-preserve-torture-report.htm

May 5, 2016 article “National Archives’ Refusal to Ensure Preservation of CIA Torture Report Alarms Rights Groups” AllGov
http://www.allgov.com/news/top-stories/national-archives-refusal-to-ensure-preservation-of-cia-torture-report-alarms-rights-groups-160505?news=858766

May 6, 2016 post “Archivist won’t Call ‘Torture Report’ a Permanent Record” Federation of American Scientists blog
https://fas.org/blogs/secrecy/2016/05/archivist-record/

May 13, 2016 article “Appeals Court Declines to Release Full ‘Senate Torture Report,” ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/appeals-court-declines-release-full-senate-torture-report/story?id=39101136

May 13, 2016 article “American Public Is Not Entitled to See Full Senate Torture Report, Court Rules” Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/senate-torture-report-full_us_573622e3e4b08f96c1832750

May 16, 2016 article “CIA Watchdog Accidentally Deleted Lengthy Torture Report” Government Executive
http://www.govexec.com/management/2016/05/cia-watchdog-accidentally-deleted-lengthy-torture-report/128342/

May 17, 2016 article “Will the CIA Disappear the Senate Torture Report?” Bill of Rights Defense Committee
http://bordc.org/news/will-the-cia-disappear-the-senate-torture-report/

March 17, 2016 article “Judges Consider Release of Full CIA Torture Report” U.S. News & World Report
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-03-17/judges-consider-release-of-full-cia-torture-report

May 17, 2016 article “Senate Report on CIA Torture is One Step Closer to Disappearing” World News Daily Information Clearing House
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44678.htm

May 20, 2016 article “‘Urgent’ action needed to preserve CIA torture documents, groups warn” Yahoo News
https://www.yahoo.com/news/urgent-action-needed-to-preserve-cia-torture-165007608.html

May 20, 2016 article “Why Federal Agencies Must Still Preserve (and Should Finally Read) the SSCI Torture Report” Just Security
https://www.justsecurity.org/31197/federal-agencies-preserve-and-finally-read-ssci-torture-report/

June 3, 2016 post “FOIA Ombudsman’s Departure Worrisome, Archivist Will Not Call Torture Report a Federal Record and More: FRINFORMSUM 5/12/2016” National Security Archive blog
https://nsarchive.wordpress.com/2016/05/12/foia-ombudsmans-departure-worrisome-archivist-will-not-call-torture-report-a-federal-record-and-more-frinformsum-5122016/

The I&A Steering Committee would like to thank Rachel Seale for writing this post, and Steven Duckworth, Dave McAllister, Rachel Seale, and Alison Stankrauff for doing key research on the issue.

I&A On-Call Research Team #2 is:

Alison Stankrauff, Leader
Katherine Barbera
Anna Chen
Steven Duckworth
David McAllister
Rachel Seale

If you are aware of an issue that might benefit from a Research Post, please get in touch with us: archivesissues@gmail.com.

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Steering Share: Jeremy Brett

Steering Shares are an opportunity to find out more about the I&A Steering Committee. This Steering Share is from Steering Committee member Jeremy Brett.

How did you get involved in archives?

I’ve always been fascinated by history and the documents and objects that make up its record. When I entered library school, I originally was planning to work in public libraries; however, very quickly I realized (being a double major in history) how exciting it was to actually handle and work up close with primary documents, to be “touching history”, as it were. I switched over to concentrate on archives, because I wanted to be in a position to work with, protect, and make accessible those documents.

Why did you get involved with the Issues & Advocacy Roundtable?

I am a big believer in the idea that archivists can no longer be neutral custodians. We have a responsibility to understand how important the records we protect are in documenting the evolution of human culture and civilization and in preserving the documentary record of our rights, responsibilities and duties in a democratic society. I think more archivists need to be aware of this crucial responsibility of ours and to make their societal value more obvious to the general public. The Roundtable, as an instrument of encouraging awareness (and occasional necessary outrage), is a very important part of SAA for this reason, and I wanted to be a part of any group that would take on this vital professional duty.

What is an archives issue that means a lot to you?

I am quite concerned with the growing (and worrying) tendency of politicians and public officials to avoid documenting their activities, their tendency to stonewall FOIA requests, or their use of the increasingly threadbare excuse of ‘security’ to escape public scrutiny. One of the fundamental tenets of our society is and should be our right to know what our government is doing in our name, and one of our responsibilities is to hold our elected officials accountable for their actions. How can we accomplish the latter unless we have a full understanding of what they’ve been up to? As archivists, we need to stand together and push for as open a records environment as we can get (allowing, of course, for personal privacy).

How would you define advocacy?

To me, ‘advocacy’ is distinct from the concept of ‘outreach’, in that the latter refers to our attempts to publicize our institutions and our collections. Advocacy, rather, to me, is a more expansive set of behaviors that incorporates active agitation for logistical-based outcomes such as increased funding or more political influence for one’s institution, as well as proactive action concerning records-related issues as a whole (i.e. access, FOIA, fair use, etc, etc.)

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