Re: Has anyone looked at digital archiving?

[Brad Judy <Brad.Judy () COLORADO EDU>]

It's funny that you mention the Rosetta Stone since the Rosetta Project
(http://www.rosettaproject.org/) was faced with the challenge of a
near-permanent (i.e. thousands of years) archive of all of the languages
of the world.  They selected micro-engraving in a metal disk since
optical magnification will likely be a technology that any society would
have or create.  It would be interesting to hear what they are doing
with their electronic language database.  Of course, I doubt any of us
have that kind of retention goal.  :)

Brad Judy 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Stewart, Ian [mailto:istewart () UMASSP EDU] 
> Sent: Thursday, April 13, 2006 8:06 AM
> To: SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU
> Subject: Re: [SECURITY] Has anyone looked at digital archiving?
>
> Don't forget the Rosetta Stone and film.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: stanislav shalunov [mailto:shalunov () INTERNET2 EDU]
> Sent: Wednesday, April 12, 2006 6:14 PM
> To: SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU
> Subject: Re: [SECURITY] Has anyone looked at digital archiving?
>
> Jim,
>
> Just some random notes first:
>
> * Digital signatures with today's security levels will likely be quite
>   useless in 40 years.
>
> * Error-correcting codes are a storage space optimization technique
>   (you can always just have multiple copies), and storage space
>   typically is not a problem, so they have little or nothing to
>   contribute here.
>
> * No electronic storage medium is known to physically retain the bits
>   for 40 years.  CD-Rs last for 2--5 years after being burned.  DVD-Rs
>   are shorter-lived.  Tapes vary widely and depend on the tape type.
>   Regular hard disks might last about 10 years on the shelf.
>
> * The only format that exists today that has a claim on having been
>   around for 40 years is plain text.  Even there, the changes have
>   been no less significant proportionally to the complexity of the
>   format than in other formats; it's just that the format is so
>   trivial (just a sequence of letters, each represented with a
>   fixed-sized block of bits, with special values for space and newline
>   and so forth) that recoding is just as trivial (character set
>   changes, byte size changes, newline and other special character
>   encoding, etc.).
>
> My best solution being able to read a Word document in 40 
> years would be to print it out in a few copies on a 
> black-and-white laser printer making sure the paper is 
> alkaline (you can test that with a $5 device---I use 
> something called Abbey pH pen, which is just a marker with a 
> solution of chlorophenol red instead of a dye) and the fusing 
> is done at high enough temperature and the finish is 
> compatible (that's easy to check with a regular eraser: if 
> adhesion is poor, you'll be able to make the characters 
> fainter or even erase parts of them; with good adhesion, an 
> eraser will have no effect until it starts ripping paper).  
> Then store it in your library and in another library.  A 
> simple and cost-effective way to store a collection of 
> documents in another good library (but only assuming the 
> documents are not meant to be highly proprietary) is to 
> register your copyright and submit a bound copy of the 
> collection to the Library of Congress (the fee for indefinite 
> storage is about $30---a real bargain).
>
> If for some strange and irrational reason it is desirable to 
> keep archival documents exclusively electronic, then one 
> would have to keep multiple copies, keep them in constant 
> rotation, updating media and formats and never letting 
> anything sit for more than a few years.
> Keeping all the versions (e.g., Word 6, Word 7, Word 8, ... Word 55,
> etc.) is probably advisable.  Using the simplest possible 
> formats is also good.  Plain text beats anything else for 
> simplicity.  The worst would be proprietary, frequently and 
> incompatibly changing formats such as DOC or PDF.  Things 
> like DVI, HTML, and XML would be in the middle.  I would not 
> trust PDF/A at all (too young, far too complex, and not at 
> all implemented).  For integrity checking, one might compute 
> one-way cryptographically secure hashes using the strongest 
> technology today (so, SHA512 for now and probably something 
> else, perhaps substantially algorithmically different, 20 
> years from now) and keep files of these hashes around for 
> each directory.  I'd really, really want to print all these 
> out, but conceptually, one might compute a SHA512 on those 
> files and keep higher level files around and so forth and 
> only keep secure copies (written down, printed out, 
> memorized, whatever) of a few topmost levels of the hierarchy.
>
> -- 
> Stanislav Shalunov            http://www.internet2.edu/~shalunov/
>
> Just my 0.086g of Ag.