Slashdot Mirror
White House Says Hard Drives Were Destroyed
wanderindiana brings us an update on the White House missing emails mess, which we have discussed before. It seems the hard drives of many White House computers are gone beyond the possibility of recovery. Is it unusual in your experience for, say, a corporate IT department to destroy hard drives by policy? "Older White House computer hard drives have been destroyed, the White House disclosed to a federal court Friday in a controversy over millions of possibly missing e-mails from 2003 to 2005. The White House revealed new information about how it handles its computers in an effort to persuade a federal magistrate it would be fruitless to undertake an e-mail recovery plan that the court proposed."
What did they do with the harddrives? And why aren't there any backups? The IT staff either is malicious or highly incompetent.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
If they are arrested now, they can (and likely would be) pardoned.
Much better to wait a year, when a new administration is in office, and then go after the lawbreakers.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
I would certainly hope that any Whitehouse hard drive that is decommissioned is utterly destroyed.
The real question is why secure backups of email aren't part of the IT infrastructure.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
For many governmental entities destroying of an old hard drive when upgrading a system/replacing a computer/etc.. is not only common it is mandated. While you and I might think that there is ill intent involved, this is clearly not the case. The place I used to work with would make several holes through the drive with a hammer and screw driver after the drive was wiped clean. The intent was to make sure that no one was able to recover sensitive information from the dive. And just in case you are wondering, these rules/laws were enacted by DEMOCRATS.
This issue wreaks of unbelievability, but it is possible that deleting the emails was not intentional. I've watched seconds from disaster enough times to know that the seemingly impossible is possible.
I wouldn't like loosing my complete email history every three years. I guess most users would react the same. According to the article,
"Some, but not necessarily all, of the data on old hard drives is moved to new computer hard drives"
I cannot imagine a somewhat competent IT department having a hardware upgrade policy that would consistently result in loosing your documents or your email. So that would mean the emails should still be there - on the newer computers.
"Money is a sign of poverty." - Iain Banks
This is the US you're talking about. I'm not trolling but I've been surprised by the lack of protests and resignations over such failed policy. A war based on false information, falling dollar, weakening economy, information getting destroyed, Katrina, etc. In old Europe, where I am from, governments would resign and write out new elections after such disastrous events. If they don't write out new elections they would be forced by countless protests from the public. In the US however people seem to fear being questioned about their patriotism when they publicly protest their government.
I work in IT in the banking industry and I can tell you that not only do we destroy hard drives we are basically required to do so by regulators.
There is a recycling company that does it in our area and they work with a large number of banks and hospitals, etc.
This may not be the reason for the lost emails, but I think destroying drives it a lot more common that many might think.
"Luke, I am your node.parent();"
Here's the problem: The people who would be doing the prosecuting are the very same people who told the guy to press the button.
We're unfortunately in a bit of a bind. The branch of government designated to enforce our laws has no regard for them, and the only other branch of government that could do something about it is too spineless and fractured by party politics to lift a finger.
The current administration is trying real hard to out-do Nixon as the most criminal Presidency in our nation's history, and if anyone were to actually do some investigation into it, we may even find that it has been a success.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
"millions of missing emails"
My believability barrier just snapped.
I believe the word "criminal" is all to apt for this administration.
Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
Is it unusual in your experience for, say, a corporate IT department to destroy hard drives by policy?
Can't speak for the White House, but I did work for a pharmaceutical company and they are very paranoid about information security.
Any time we replaced a hard drive in anyone's computer, the old drive was wiped according to US Department of Defense clearing standard DOD 5220.22-M. This is a rather intensive operation, and plenty of old hard drives didn't survive it. Any drive that failed got chucked into a 55-gallon drum that sat next to the wiping station. When the drum was full it was taken to a scrap yard and two company employees watched as each drive was fed into a metal shredder, one drive at a time.
I'm sure that anything capable of shredding a hard drive is very impressive to watch, but it's probably much less impressive after the 200th time you've seen it.
Never approach a vast undertaking with a half-vast plan.
There is a law related to the preservation of all presidential records, however, that should supercede any 'standard' policy. For more information, search for "Presidential Records Act."
This offered excuse does not hold water and should finally put an end to the question about whether or not to prosecute the executive. This is no simple 'mistake.' It was willful and intentional destruction of evidence. And let us not lose sight over what this ultimately comes down to. If you consider yourself to be a patriotic citizen of the U.S., you should be outraged and infuriated at the thousands of U.S. lives wasted at the hands on this administration brought on by an illegal and deceitfully based war. It is no trivial matter to send even a single soldier to face his or her death. And it is certainly no trivial matter when even a single person dies because this president has lied to congress and entered us into a war. Forget that this war has harmed the global economy and the U.S.'s standing in the world and all other fall-out.
If there were justice to be had, it would be in the form of "demoting" our commander-in-chief down to a foot-soldier, put a rifle in his hand and let HIM fight his damned war in person.
This is all I ask: that Bush doesn't serve a third term.
He can't anyways. This is his second term, and that's all the President of the United States gets. Congress saw to that a long time ago. Now if they would just apply term limits to themselves, this country would be a much happier place.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I spent nearly a decade working for local government as the IT Director of a County. The long and short of this is that yes, this does happen as a matter of policy quite often and across many industries. I have noticed that so far many of the posts here treat data classifications with very broad strokes, however when you are working with in the government every bit of data has a classification and is part of what is called a retention schedule. Once the data has reached the end of it's retention schedule it can be destroyed, and no this is not destruction of Government Property or Data as somebody previously posted. It is more akin to tossing out the spoiled milk in the fridge than anything. However some data never expires, but if we had to keep every shred of every piece of data collected through normal day to day operations every tiny municipality in the nation would require multi-terrabyte storage arrays. Plain and simple house cleaning is required from time to time. I'm sure I might pick up a flame or two for that, but the point is if any data is past it's shelf life you can't get pissed or cry foul if it is purged. Now I am not saying that is the case here at all, because I doubt that myself very much, I'm just laying out the framework.
Now for the physical destruction of hard drives, yup did it all the time. Granted 99% of those were workstation drives and not server hardware unless all of the data had been migrated. Our general policy though was that no drive ever left us intact. Equipment that was later donated came sans hard drives. The drives were usually disassembled and the platters destroyed. It was much more easy on the man hours than sitting there watching a drive over write to Government specifications. The same was done for backup tapes that had physically failed, those were melted down, others stored in vaults untile the data expired and then they were destroyed.
Except when there is explicit law to the contrary.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
So at what point does the silliness of excuses stop and we start calling "destruction of evidence"?
When the next administration need something to distract the public from their own nefarious deeds.
As for the 3-5 year old backup tapes that were taped over, I can see how that was pure incompetence. I'm not saying that there was no malicious intent, but I could certainly see how a simple mistake could be responsible. I've worked at places where placing a box of backup tapes on the wrong shelf was all it took to get years of data wiped out. And TFA mentioned that the White House email system was archaic, so it seems that no one thought getting the system working right was a priority until now. Again, I'm not saying there was definitely no malicious intent, I'm just saying we shouldn't underestimate human stupidity.
Hell is other people's code.
There isn't a law to the contrary. The law you're speaking of requires data be saved. If they didn't save it before the drives were sent off for destruction, shame on them, but they still had to be destroyed.
Violence is like duct tape. If it doesn't solve the problem, you didn't use enough.
National Security supersedes the Presidential Records Act. There was likely e-mail on those drives that could've had a massive negative effect on the President and his administration, thus it is in our national security interests to see that those records were destroyed.
Given the amount of security-sensitive or financially-sensitive documentation on the computers, OF COURSE they should be destroyed, or else wiped beyond recovery.
Read your regulations. HIPPA (medical record) regulations alone require the destruction of any data like that using national-security level tools. Either you break the drive itself, you push it through one hell of a magnetic field a certain number of times, or you use one hell of an overwriting tool that makes 16+ passes on the drive to ensure that traces of previous data are completely gone.
This is a non-story, and the only reason it's being pushed time and again is as a kludge to try to attack Bush. I'll admit there are a hell of a lot of reasons to attack Bush (the bribery and scams over illegal immigration/amnesty alone!), but this one isn't it.
Look, the DOJ will not investigate as they are republicans (total corruption within the party), so it is up to dems to do this. If they really wanted to investigate, they would call in Sibel Edmunds and put her before the senate or the house or both. But ALL of congress is trying to keep this quiet. Waxman and Clinton PROMISED her that if the dems took control of congress that they would help her. They lied (IMHO, this is why clinton is the weakest of the 3 candidates ). Apparently a number of dems promised her that. ALL OF THEM LIED. NONE HAVE DONE A DAMN THING. This shows that because we have allowed laws that pretty much limit this to a 2 party system, that nothing will happen. Currently, I do not see the dems as being as corrupt as the pubs. But the fact that they are giving a sham investigation into this WH's doings, says that they are wanting a "get out of jail free" card for future use. So, yeah, the old timer dems are not that much different than all the republicans.
Is it any wonder that Americans are picking up on a man who says that he will change things while the old timer dems and nearly all of the pub party dislike him.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Except that companies have data retention policies that say when data can be destroyed, and increasingly often, when data must be destroyed.
Now think about this context: you have very sensitive data (I wouldn't be surprised if this is TOP SECRET by aggregation even if no single piece is more than CONFIDENTIAL), with, say, daily incrementals and weekly full backups. And each item has to be labeled, numbered, inventoried, audited and stored in an expensive and bulky safe.
Or shredded when it gets old.
Sure enough, it gets shredded.
What about the backup copies? They _have_ to have backup data somewhere. Let's just hope that whoever finds it is willing to leak them :)
What if the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program backfired and accedently wiretapped the White House? Then the NSA would have that data!
> They surpassed Nixon in that regard years ago.
-nod- Nixon only illegally wiretapped one hotel, not the entire nation.
25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
Nixon tried that argument, too.
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
The other end of the trade show there was a company showing containers of metal shards. They had a shredder for disk drives. They have security clearances that allow them to shred drives with classified data. I have no direct knowledge of the drive disposal policy at the EOP, but I would expect that the NSA would require this as a matter of course. It is smart IT management.
But the argument over the drives is somewhat irrelevant as we know for a fact that members of the administration were using the RNC mail servers to transact government business, specifically to avoid leaving a paper trail. In the process they directed emails containing the most secret, most confidential government discussions through the machines of a small company that has no security clearance, does not even have a security policy and used the same network resources and mail servers for other customers.
The company concerned received the contract for the 2004 RNC convention. They would therefore have been an espionage target in any case. I would think that it is almost certain that multiple foreign powers have copies of the emails. Why don't we just call up the Iranian embassy and ask them nicely if they will share?
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Data retention policies that mandate the destruction of data after a certain amount of time are generally implemented for legal reasons, not to save on storage costs or costs of safeguarding the data (although those are nice bonuses). The problem comes when the data is subpoenaed as evidence in a court case and the data is found to have been deleted. If the court decides you deleted the data in order to prevent the court from seeing it, you are in a WHOLE lot of trouble. But if your lawyers can show you have a policy of always deleting this kind of data in this kind of manner, it shows you didn't delete just this data with the specific intent of hiding evidence, and you're off the hook.
I do not see how this is a debate. If the IT policy dictates that the data is within a recoverable period, then produce the data. If you cannot, then whoever is responsible for said recovery is guilty of "Failure to obey a lawful order or regulation", Article 92, and "Noncompliance with procedural rules", Article 98, of the UCMJ. Plain and simple.
The admin maybe guilty of "Dereliction of Duty" if the drive was destroyed to early, but the CIO is responsible for the data retention policy.
So, this policy violates data retention laws that THIS ADMINISTRATION pushed through. Also, it violates the presidential records act. But, I'm guessing this will be yet another thing John Q Public ignores because they're too busy watching Dancin with the Stars and American Idol to care - bread and circuses.
I personaly have every email back to 2003, I find it very useful to be able to go back and search them for things.
These are White House emails, I would think they would be kept much longer.
Also most emails are so small in size, they can be kept very easily for long periods of time.
I could almost fit 1 million emails of 5-10k on my keychain flash!
I see no reason at all to delete them if they are of any importance at all, NO!
I sorry to say, very sorry to say, that you guys & gals down there have a rotten, infested and putrid governmental system and incumbents.Cr0vv.
But here's the thing I'm seeing over and over again in all of this; It doesn't matter what the politicos do, there simply isn't any agency through which the public can enact a change. How do you impeach a president? How do you put a Cheney in prison? Which government agency do you call to arrest the government? Only the densest and/or most deeply committed evil-doers will defend this government, so why is it still in power?
The congress does nothing, which implies that they either don't want to do anything, or they cannot. There are many reasons for this, but the fact that we've watched a fraudulent election take place, among numerous other crimes suggests that they are locked up. Black mail. Stupidity. Evil. Whatever, that avenue clearly doesn't work.
Which leaves what? A Washington city cop making an arrest on Whitehouse property?
In the end, we're talking about a government which is little different than some tin pot dictatorship. People keep waiting for somebody to do something and it keeps not happening.
And everybody is too scared to pick up a rifle and start shooting politicians because they know what will happen after that. --All semblance of order instantly lost, and what remains of society catching fire. Nobody wants that. Anything but that. And so we keep hoping that somebody will do something. --And look! We have a promising election coming up! We can focus on that, and ignore the FACT that we KNOW the electoral process is corrupt. We KNOW that the military industrial complex still holds power over everything, and we KNOW that the same people and agencies who killed Kennedy are moving in the bushes. But we'll put up with that false hope because anything is better than the alternative.
Maybe this time. Maybe!
-FL
In a word, "no".
To quote a bumper sticker, "No one died when Clinton lied."
There is absolutely no way to compare "a cock-sucking" with "causing the deaths of 4,000 America heroes."
But, since we're a perverted little Puritanical society, the former is ever-so-much worse...
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
The 1978 Presidential Records Act expressly forbids it. In fact this admission that they intentionally destroyed hard drives just adds to the evidence of criminal wrongdoing in the current administration. These crooks were also using Republican National Committee servers to conduct official Whitehouse business in order to skirt the record keeping requirements of the act. http://www.motherjones.com/washington_dispatch/2007/03/white_house_emails.html
But the congress is gonna let them slide again, when they should impeach the bastards.
-- QED
I'm fairly sure that a lot of damaging info to the current administration would be found on those drives.
Privacy for ordinary citizens is a right, but our officials that WE ELECT, their job is our business and we should have the right to know what they do. If they've done nothing wrong, then why hide anything. This does not apply to citizens on ordinary, routine matters e.g. we should not have to voluntarily have our cars searched cause we're innocent.
We elect our officials - they work for us, and therefore need to have accountability.
..........FULL STOP.
I haven't been screaming for Bush to be impeached since 2000, dittohead. I disliked him from the start, but I was willing to give him a chance.
By this point the only people who *are* Bush supporters are your blind partisans. Including yourself, evidently.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
If it was "policy" then why couldn't they have come out and said so on the very first day?
Why has it taken them so many months to come up with this excuse?
No sig today...
Employees whose salaries are paid from an appropriation for the Executive Office of the President have looser constraints on their participation in political activities than other federal employees (c.f. 5 USC 7324). However, this participation requires that costs associated with the activity not be paid for by funds derived from the United States Treasury.
Thus sending partisan political communication through an external server is hardly in defiance of the law, but rather in compliance with the law. There is nothing wrong with that - the only problem is the improper use of outside email for official business.
The solution is very simple - Congress can either amend section 7324 to allow the use of White House email addresses for such activity (while prohibiting the use of external addresses) or it can require that all such communication be "carbon copied" to a White House email address for archiving.
The reason that this is a huge issue is that the destruction of presidential records is illegal. The Presidential Records Act mandates that all records from the President and Vice President are owned by the public, and that the President is not allowed to destroy any records without specific authorization from the Archivist of the United States stating that the records do not have any historical, informational, or evidentiary value.
There is a great desire on the part of many Americans to impeach Bush for his part in prosecuting the disastrous $2 Trillion+ debacle, the Iraq War, which is currently sinking our economy. Nixon wss easy to impeach because he left a lot of evidence in the form of tapes for his prosecution, but Bush and Cheney are not making that mistake -- they have both had very "convenient" situations where their records regarding among other things the Iraq War planning that have been "accidentally" destroyed.
If the American people were to have more evidence about White House activities, there would be many more people joining Scooter Libby in jail, and we would find out more about things like "ex" gay prostitute Jeff Gannon's entries and exits at the White House .
The IT director says we're going to be rolling out a deletion policy for files. I don't think there's anything inherently evil about it, the rationale is more ass-covering. The logic goes like this:
1. If you have no data retention/deletion policy, opposing council in a lawsuit has a reasonable expectation that you will be able to produce documents requested. They could ask for something from ten years ago and demand you produce said evidence.
2. If you have a deletion policy in place, say everything after 18 months, you only have to provide documents up to that point. Not being able to produce something from two years ago does not mean you are playing coy.
3. Without a deletion policy in place and properly enforced, opposing council could argue that you are withholding evidence.
It seems like a reasonable bit of ass-covering, just like making sure our licensing documentation is up to date if the BSA comes calling.
Since the lawyer wasn't around, I couldn't ask all the questions I had. The one that immediately comes to mind, if I were hit by the RIAA saying I was file-sharing and they demanded I turned over my hard drive, if I smashed it and smiled at them pretty-like they would slap my ass with obstruction of justice and destruction of evidence. So if I said I had a personal policy of reformatting my hard drive every week and could produce documentation to prove it, would I be able to get away with it? I don't think so.
I think if it were any small company facing this same line of questioning, lady justice would be strapping on the assault-dildo and sharpening the spikes. If this were a major multi-billion dollar business, they would just brazen it out and probably get a fine that is small compared to the size of the crime committed. And since this is the White House, they'll be able to tell the law to fuck off and get away with it. I don't see anything to convince me otherwise.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
"National security" does not in any way supersede the Presidential Records Act. In fact as federal law, passed by the Congress and signed by the President, the Presidential Records Act defines national security with respect to presidential records.
I hope that was a troll because if not, I'm feeling pretty depressed about my country right now. We're supposed to be a nation of laws.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
First off, you're implying that the Presidential Records Act has no provisions for National Security. That's completely wrong. It does have those provisions. It already has a number of procedures in place for either disseminating that information or restricting that information from becoming public.
And by far, the most important part of the act is to ensure that future Presidents have access to that information in the future. National Security demands that a current President be aware of the past official actions and the past official emails of his predecessors. The entire security of our nation often depends on the successful transition of our government between different people. So if a National Security-related email is sent/received under one President, it stands to reason that any future President must have access to that same email for those same National Security reasons.
If you don't do this, then it would mean that a past President, now an ordinary citizen could be more knowledgeable about some National Security matters than a current President. And in my mind, that would be completely unacceptable, a current President needs to know everything (or at least in theory, have access to everything).