(no subject)

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

FBI To Cut Up Unabomber Papers

X-Acto knives in hand, FBI employees are poised to manually redact a mountain of documents--20,000 pages of which are handwritten--that were seized from the Montana cabin of Ted Kaczynski, the convicted Unabomber.

I can't read this at work so I don't know if the answer is in the article, but F-ing WHY!? What's to redact? It's not like he knew any state secrets that can't be revealed. Just because you don't like what he said or did doesn't mean you need to permanently destroy it. It's historically useful at a minimum. Frakkin' stupid gov't.

Comments

[mrsilence.livejournal.com]

Protecting the personal details of the Unabombers victims and their families is make-work?

[debergerac.livejournal.com]

such details are already out there. ever heard of the internet?

http://www.francesfarmersrevenge.com/stuff/unabomber/victims.htm

[mrsilence.livejournal.com]

Which details?

I don't see any home addresses, lists of families members including those who were unaffected, friends whom they're meeting, daily comings and goings or a host of other personal details which the unabomber probably would have recorded.

Are those details out there on this "internet" of which you speak? Are they really?

Look, a federal judge, familiar with the actual content of the documents has ordered it redacted in order to protect those affected and their associates. Is it possible some of that information is out there already? Of course. But obviously not so far as the judge knows, and so the action to remove that information is highly principled and reasonable under the circumstances.

How would you feel if the state knowingly sold all your most personal details and those of your family, as recorded by some bastard criminal who tried to blow you up? And then wanted to compensate you using the remuneration from their sale?

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

I don't see any home addresses, lists of families members including those who were unaffected, friends whom they're meeting, daily comings and goings or a host of other personal details which the unabomber probably would have recorded.

And why would those documents be sold in the first place?

[sealwhiskers.livejournal.com]

These documents *are* being sold, they are just modified before they get sold, so that these facts are taken off them. Basically the Unabomber archive is auctioned away, minus restricted information that they contain - which is in agreement with archival law of confidentiality.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

Missing the point, you are.

[sealwhiskers.livejournal.com]

well, if you wonder why they sell the documents whether they are "intact" or not, then I would say that the judge's reason is the only one (to collect money for the victim families), if you mean why the documents *are* being altered, then that would be the law (and the reasons for the law are plenty), if you think that there are documents that could merely be taken off the whole collection and not sold (instead of going in and altering a paper), then I would say the reason for FBI to do that would lie in the manner of which the Unabomber records were created. Usually, when restricted records are made public in this manner (cutting text), it is because names and personal information of victims are so weaved into the text, it would be the only way of releasing them, without either breaking the law, or not releasing them at all.

[debergerac.livejournal.com]

the fbi should just pay the survivors the amount of money they'd be wasting in lost man-hours and get back to doing fbi work.

[debergerac.livejournal.com]

are those details out there on this "internet" of which you speak? Are they really?

yes.

and the unabomber was holed up in a cabin. why would he need all those "personal details"? all he needed was a home or work address to mail his bombs.