This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
they are on a format that NSA no longer has the ability to view or digitize,” the NSA FOIA office said in a follow-up. “Without being able to view the tapes, NSA has no way to verify their responsiveness. NSA is not required to find or obtain new technology (outdated or current) in order to process a request.”
In short, "we don't want to".
Which also gives them another idea on how to deny FOIA request?
It is true that they could resurrect the tapes if they had a compelling reason to do so. Denying the request indicates that they don't believe the reason to be sufficiently compelling to warrant the extra expenditure of resources. That is subtley different from "we don't want to", which implies a level of capriciousness.
Government departments get FOI requests all the time and they take resources to fulfill. FOI is not intended as a way to have taxpayers fund people's pet projects. That's why FOI law doesn't require your government to spend (even more) money to acquire technology they don't have or need for anything other than the FOI request itself. Rather, something that requires that kind of extra effort and expenditure should be submitted as a research request, normally with its own funding.
The NSA mission is to spy on people and help American corporations create a worldwide hegemony, they ain't got no time to be wasting on pet projects for total losers.
"Jesus H. Christ, how is this gonna help us against the Russkies, Larry? I ain't spendin' one red cent on this ancient history nerd bullshit. We got commies to catch! Or, uh, whatever the Russkies are nowadays. Throw that FOI shit in the fuckit bucket, goddammit."
