NSA Blames Its "Antiquated" System for Lack of Keyword Search

Shaun Waterman, reporting for the Washington Times in a story July 24, 2013 about an unsuccessful effort by ProPublica to get internal email records from the National Security Agency (NSA), wrote: 

"It is standard practice at most large organizations — not to mention a standard feature of most commercially available email systems — to be able to do bulk searches of employees’ email as part of internal investigations, discovery in legal cases or compliance exercises."

Mark Caramanica of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press is quoted, “This is an agency that’s charged with monitoring millions of communications globally, and they can’t even track their own internal communications in response to a FOIA request.”

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jul/24/nsas-archaic-email-hinders-keyword-searches-offici/#ixzz2a4NVujfh 

Everybody who believes NSA's excuse, please raise your hand.  Hmmm, don't see any hands.  Whether or not this particular excuse is valid, it is beyond question that agencies, state and federal, are slow in adopting emerging technology that would make agency records more easily available to the public.  It is equally certain that Congress and state legislatures aren't doing much to help.