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also - "their data" is public information anyways (or at least should be) - is basic crime statistics
by misiti3780 13y ago
also - "their data" is public information anyways (or at least should be) - is basic crime statistics
- sliverstorm 13y agoI'm not claiming it's secret information that they own. But this is like the FOIA. Some smartass comes along, hears about FOIA, and declares "Well they should just digitize the entire archive, make it available in a queriable SQL database, and be done with it". The problem is, while the public has a right to the information, the representation, the storage of that data has issues. Digitizing millions of pages of records is not an afternoon's work (triply so if you want OCR). The reason we don't have such a database is not because John Spook is too lazy to spend thirty minutes doing it. When you put hundreds of thousands of man-hours into digitizing an archive, there's essentially a cost/value-add. If there wasn't a value-add, why would you want this hypothetical database anyway? The crime information is public, why don't you just go compile it yourself!