Reply to post: Not your data anymore

A floppy filled with software worth thousands of francs: Techie can't take it, customs won't keep it. What to do?

x-IBMer

Not your data anymore

I worked for a national Gov department of statistics whose charter included a clause about data privacy, basically any data that came into our possession was immediately 'classified' and could not be released in an un-redacted form via any means other than our proper channels. One day we received a tape from another government agency containing some data that would go into our processing and eventually form part of one of our published reports. Later that same day, a courier arrived from the other agency with a request to have a copy of the tape just submitted made and returned to them - their original had become damaged somehow. Unfortunately we could no oblige, as the data had already crossed our threshold and was now beholden to the legislation under which we operated. We could not give back a copy of the data to its original owners. Never found out what they did without their own data in the end...

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