The Sunlight Foundation points out that the US Government has set a bad example for data retention laws.

Yesterday, in a major victory for open government and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (CREW), a federal judge ruled against the Bush Administration latest attempt to keep secret the identities of White House visitors and declared the White House illegally deleted Secret Service computer records.

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At the direction of the White House, the Secret Service was deleting visitor records from the beginning of the Bush Administration until October 2004, when the deletions were discovered when open government activists attempted to get access to them.

Apparently the administration’s tactic was to drag the lawsuit out until Bush could leave office. Bush’s actions made it very tricky to tell companies to follow the law, since he had a record of doing the opposite. He was never clearly breaking them, but very very adept at finding loopholes and getting out of town before the prosecutors could catch up to him.