> how they intend to secure this "vault" against the current government
Definitely a concern, if they want to harass Harvard and the other universities they could, but I don't think they'll bother. They know the data will be backed up, that's not the point.
Taking it off of data.gov accomplishes two things:
1) Makes it look like they're doing something, playing to the base. Easy to do
2) Delegitmize any insights the data might have. "Sure you have 'data', is it official data? I don't see it on data.gov. How do we know its not fraudulent?" It makes it harder to use it to justify policy changes. It adds one more tool to the denial crowd.
Definitely a concern, if they want to harass Harvard and the other universities they could, but I don't think they'll bother. They know the data will be backed up, that's not the point.
Taking it off of data.gov accomplishes two things:
1) Makes it look like they're doing something, playing to the base. Easy to do
2) Delegitmize any insights the data might have. "Sure you have 'data', is it official data? I don't see it on data.gov. How do we know its not fraudulent?" It makes it harder to use it to justify policy changes. It adds one more tool to the denial crowd.