U.S. District Court Judge Paul L. Friedman on April 9 reaffirmed an order that he had handed down in October 1997, maintaining that it had been "flagrantly violated" by the National Archives. Stemming from a lawsuit brought against the Archives by Public Citizen, the American Library Association, and other groups, the original ruling required the Archives to issue a plan for the retention or disposal of electronic records before erasing them permanently.
Though directed at the Archives, the order only prevents the White House and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative from purging their computer files, because they were named in the original suit. Friedman has directed the Archives to come up with a permanent plan by September 30.
The government maintains that the judge's action may mean that "many government computer applications will grind to a halt or crash entirely" from file storage overload.
Posted April 13, 1998.