White House Email Follies

Presto Vivace forwards a link detailing a recent House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearing on the White House missing emails mess. David Gewirtz's report, carried in OutlookPower and DominoPower (in 6 parts, keep clicking), makes for scary reading. "If, in fact, the bulk of the White House email records are now stored in bundles of rotting PST files, all at or above their maximum safe load-level, that ain't good in a very big way... I object to using the inaccurate and inflated claim of excessive cost as a reason to avoid compliance with the Presidential Records Act."

Comments

What?

[palegray.net]

all at or above their maximum safe load-level What exactly is the safe load level for a PST file? If you're talking about stuff that's not reliably archived, the answer is "there isn't one." I recall reading a story a while back about a debacle wherein several thousand emails were "inadvertently" deleted... what the hell is so hard about implementing a sane backup policy? It's email, not terabytes of images or anything.

Re:What?

[cridanb]

the safe load level of a pst is around 2gb , after that it is subject to corruption
as to the amount of data , email systems are the largest systems on earth these days encompassing tens of terabytes of data in their live stores and tens of petabytes on tape

and yes they should have an archiving system not just doing tape back up tape

p.S if they used an enterprise email system like lotus domino this would not be a problem after all thats what the CIA uses

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

the safe load level of a pst is around 2gb , after that it is subject to corruption

Depends. Starting with outlook 2003, there is a new format of .pst file which doesn't have size limits. Prior to that, 2 gig was the limit.

and yes they should have an archiving system not just doing tape back up tape

Well, that depends if you want your email to be subpoenaed/leaked or not! G.W. Bush is on the record saying he deliberately doesn't use email for that reason.

p.S if they used an enterprise email system like lotus domino this would not be a problem after all thats what the CIA uses

There are lots of enterprise email systems that can archive email, including exchange. I think this case is more of a deliberate choice not to archive, or plausibly deny archiving.

Re:What?

[aeschenkarnos]

after that it is subject to corruption

This is the Bush Administration. It started subject to corruption.

Lost

[arigram]

They just need some excuse for "losing" dangerous email messages...

PST files for archiving

[call-me-kenneth]

Really, that's an accurate write-up - click past a couple of pages to get to the technical details. It'd be hilarious if it weren't so tragic.

After all, it's not like there aren't answers to the question "how shall I archive my user's email for legal and regulatory purposes?" (Disclaimer- I work for a player in that market, but we're not on the first page of results for that search. So I don't feel too bad. Oh, wait - )

digitally signed and time stamped archive

[wkk2]

Given all the convenient archival problems, every executive branch email should be archived as a PDF and digitally signed and time stamped by a secure server with the private key in protected hardware. The archive needs to be outside of the executive branch.

The real question

[WindBourne]

is why are the dems allowing the White house off? They should be paying to have all the PST's restored. By now somebody has told them that the white house lied about the costs of the PST files. The need to go after them for perjery as well as getting the emails.

What really bothers me is that not this white house makes nixon and reagan look like boy scouts, but that the dems PROMISED to go after them, and really has done nothing.

Re:The real question

[Stanislav_J]

What really bothers me is that not this white house makes nixon and reagan look like boy scouts, but that the dems PROMISED to go after them, and really has done nothing.

Politicians making promises and then failing to keep them? I'm shocked....SHOCKED...

wow

[grasshoppa]

Here I am, some lowly line level system tech for a smallish town, and I'd be handed my marching orders were I even a quarter as incompetent as the white house staff seems to be. Which leads me to suspect:

1) Either they are that incompetent, and it's just a symptom of big government not knowing it's ass from it's face
OR
2) These people are purposefully appearing this inept.

Either option isn't pleasant, and both lead to a serious problem with our government where there will likely be no repercussions from this.

But then, we all knew that already, didn't we?

Re:wow

[laird]

The problem, I believe, is that the Presidential Records Act has no enforcement provisions or penalties for non-compliance. Thus, if the White House prefers to ignore it, there's no risk in doing so. So if the value of non-compliance is higher than the value of compliance, which is the case right now, the PRA loses.

This is not simply a case of incompetent IT staff setting up a system badly. The White House had an email system that by all accounts worked very well, archiving everything properly, and it was shut down and the staff let go, and the new system was set up by someone over-ruling their own IT staff in order to make sure that it couldn't work properly. That means that someone made the decision to spend a lot of time and money to eliminate a system that worked properly, to replace it with a system that didn't, over-ruling the recommendations of their own IT staff, which can only have been done intentionally.

What would be ideal would be for the PRA to be given real teeth so that the cost of violating it becomes clearly higher than the cost of not hiding whatever it is you want hidden. Given the extremely high value of keeping embarrassing or illegal behavior secret, the penalty needs to be extremely high as well, as it is for destroying evidence. That is to say, courts should presume that the records that were destroyed were incriminating. Judges take destroying evidence of a crime quite seriously.

Re:wow

[postbigbang]

While there's no seeming penalty, civil or criminal, there is a bigger penalty: ongoing confidence in government. The hubris and arrogance has become intolerable. This is just one symptom of a government gone berserk. Vetoing a bill on torture was another. Sliming the US House of Representatives because it won't pass a bill allowing the telcos to violate the very tenets of liberty in the constitution is another. The list is long. The list is sad. These are evil days, my friends.

Re:Strangling kittens

[Entropius]

Elsewhere in the world destruction of evidence is taken as guilt. Is that not the case in the USA?

In the USA, it matters a whole lot who you're talking about whether or not XYZ counts as guilt.

Re:Delete the White House

[dpilot]

> operates at all near the level of minimum performance required

We should be so lucky to see such a high standard.

> Anyone still think all this incompetence that always protects Bush and his team is some kind of accident?

I would rather. The alternative explanation is EVIL and probably treasonous.