Nixon Tape To Reveal Secrets at Last?

jonerik writes: "As part of its inevitable 30th-anniversary-of-Watergate coverage, ABC News has this article on the National Archives' search for someone who can recover part or all of the missing 18 ½ minutes of President Nixon's Oval Office tapes, whose existence had been unknown until the Watergate hearings. The famous tape - recorded on June 20th, 1972, three days after the Watergate break-in - was last examined in 1974, but Nixon tape archivist Karl Weissenbach is hoping that nearly thirty years of technological progress can make the difference this time, saying 'We have decided that the time is right and appropriate to determine whether that conversation can be retrieved or recovered.' Stephen St. Croix, one of several forensic audio experts who is interested in taking on the job, says 'You never completely erase a tape. You think you do, but you really don't.'" There's another article in Wired on this quest as well.

Comments

Audio Archaeology

[Hatter]

Here is a previous story on this topic. St. Croix sounds like a pretty paranoid guy, tinfoil hat. A quote from the article I linked above:

St.Croix agreed to let me visit him, but because of security concerns, I was told to come to his house, not the office.... He gave me precise instructions for the cabby. I was told to get out at the end of a certain cul-de-sac. "Then wait for the cab to leave," he said. "I'm serious. And after you're sure the cab's gone, walk down the driveway to the left. Don't come to the front door. Just keep walking. You'll set off the lasers in my woods. I'll know you're coming and come out to meet you."

Interesting guy. Here's a link to his company's webpage.

Re:Never erase

[JabberWokky]

I'm interested in seeing how this concept works on video tape, I imagine the process is probably a lot more in-depth than this, so kudos to them if they pull it off.

Little too early - these were reel to reel audio tapes, iirc.

That said, digital data can be recovered even when written over a few times. Analog data is probably significantly more difficult, as you can't look for up or down "ghost echos"... you kinda have to try and clean up a faint signal scattered in a noisy medium. Some impressive algorithims cleaning up "random noise" have been popping up lately - don't ask me how they work, though. Some Deep Magic lies in that field.

And yes, getting overwritten data is tremendously expensive, requiring that you peel apart the media and run it through a physical magnetic scanning device. There are several private companies you can approach, with basic consultation (no recovery) starting at ten or twenty thousand dollars. They have pretty good track records, and I know a couple financial institutions that used their services. I'm sure there are some people in the NSA who are just as good (I'd imagine that the private companies and spooks are pretty much the same pool of people and experts).

--
Evan