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Judge Demands Information About Missing White House Emails
Lucas123 writes "A District Court judge has ordered the Executive Office of the President to tell the court by May 5 whether any e-mail server backup tapes were kept for a period from March to October 2003 to cover controversial issues such as reasons for starting the war in Iraq, the release of a former CIA operative's name and the US Department of Justice's actions. The White House has been working for months trying to fend off a lawsuit filed last May in federal court in Washington by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics. The judge cited what he called an apparent contradiction by White House CIO Theresa Payton as to whether backup tapes had been preserved. He also recommended that White House employees be ordered to turn over any flash drives or other portable media that may contain e-mails. The White House missing email scandal has been developing for some time now."
Why not just ask AT&T, the NSA, and all the telecoms that got their hands (or other appendages) caught in the cookie jar (data-pipe). They probably have some copies running around somewhere 8-/
Greg Palast already published many of these emails in his last book Armed Madhouse. The whitehouse sent them to whitehouse.org instead of whitehouse.gov who then forwarded the mails to Palast. Check out the book and read them yourself. Why the U.S. Congress seems completely unaware of this book's existence is beyond me, but that one student who was tazered at the Kerry rally had one.
The longer they manage to keep the law at bay the greater chance that whatever "evidence" remains is distorted, manipulated or just outright deleted.
The Long Now Foundation
it was 99% spam
At least it's good to know a government is willing to go a long way to keep you from knowing if they fucked up.
Privacy is terrorism.
It's fairly obvious that the tapes have been misplaced (misplaced into the shredder next to the giant electro-magnet and then shot into the sun). There's really no hope of seeing them again. If a copy turns up, it will only be because of a sudden outbreak of morality on some stooge's part, not because a court orders it.
That being said, what can we do to ensure this doesn't happen again? One obvious method would be to have each branch of government actually run the backup for another branch. For example, the Judicial would backup the Legislature, the legislature would backup the Executive, and the Executive the Judicial.
I know this has flaws; how do we keep everybody from peeking into the backups, for example. I'm sure the Legislative branch wouldn't want the Executive branch to be flipping through its emails, and vice-vice-versa for the other branches.
In any backup scenario, those that could be incriminated by the backups, should NEVER be allowed to manage them. An independent organization should be tasked with managing the IT behind the scenes, it should not be left in the hands of the administration. Someone like the library of congress, the secret service or some agency that is not directly under each branch's control would be vastly superior.
Let's figure out which scape-goat will be ritually sacrificed for this screw up, then move on to a real solution that makes this sort of thing a whole lot more difficult in the future.
This one's tricky. You have to use imaginary numbers, like eleventeen... --Hobbes
Keeping backup tapes for more than 2-3 years including housing all corporate email on worm drives has been a common practice at large companies for years now. Those practices obviously don't apply to the White House. Of course the CIO will likely take the fall, get fired and be rewarded with a post as the new CIO at Exxon.
It's not the entire U.S. government that's the problem. Usually the government keeps pretty good records. The problem is this administration believes itself above law and order. It also has infected large portions of other parts of the government with it's political appointees whose only quality is loyalty the administration. Whatever was on those e-mails was likely to be more damning the "hand slap" they're getting now for erasing, er "losing" the e-mails. I suppose it could have been an innocent mix-up, but if the administration is so incompetent that they can't make back-ups of data they're required to, I suppose it's no suprise they've failed miserably in just about every other enterprise they've attempted in the last seven years (except of course, smearing their opponents, they're rather good at that).
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
... might just come out. This instead of focusing on this distraction of, and excuse used, for invading iraq.
Hint: Wrongful World Stock Market Manipulation
Follow the money winners and losers, Dot com boom and bust, worldcom, enron, etc..
9/11 WTC building #7 containing SEC investigation evidence..... Building #7 intentionally destroyed.
Nobody "credible" will dig, and those who demand that digging be done will merely be ridiculed as crazy. Which I guess is true; you'd have to be crazy to think that the truth (whatever it might be) will come out on this, but you'd have to be stupid to think that on this one particular issue this administration is at all trustworthy when they've been caught brazenly lying about pretty much everything else they've ever done since they took power - and it was taken, not given. This is no different. Just because I don't know and can't prove what happened doesn't mean that I have to accept as gospel the words of the biggest bullshit artists of them all.
Oppressing an entire population is never cheap.
--Jeckler (/. Beta IS GARBAGE!)
I can perfectly understand Iraq was all about securing oil reserves for the future. Same for Afghanistan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Afghanistan_Pipeline.
Butwhat's wring about being honest about is, instead of coming up with lame excuses like "terrorism", "W's of MD" or "suffering people".
Just say "Hey, we need to get rid of Sadam because we need his oil and he wouldn't let us have it". I'm sure we'll understand and see the reason in that.
After all. Camels don't run on oil, so why would they need it anyway?
Privacy is terrorism.
Here it is:
a) We short circuited the whitehouse email by using GOP addresses
b) There was stuff we didn't want anyone to know in there
c) We deleted it all and trashed the server storage just in case
Does that answer your question?
1 in 4 Maine children in struggle with hunger.
In my mind, the amusing thing is that this has happened before... under the Clinton administration. Remember Travelgate? Remember the lost emails that the White House couldn't find? You would think someone would learn. Or should I believe that maybe Democrats and Republicans have something to gain from poor email archives?
You'd have to go quite far to convince someone to kill himself and a load of innocent passengers in order to protect your own damning evidence though. How on earth would anyone pull it off?
Starbucks, Harbuckle of Breath.
It's the government! Do you really expect gov't to be efficient or do things correctly?
The Social Security has administration costs less than 10% of the average retirement fund. Yes, the government is 10 times better than private practice. Also, schools (when you exclude administration and things private schools don't do like transportation) are more efficient than private schools. The USPS will get my letter cross country for less than any other option. The organizations made by the government and falling under the government that are insulated from elections and such are quite efficient. It's when you have politicians involved that the government fails (elected school boards make problems, not solve them). If you could find a way to govern a democracy without elected officials messing it up, then you will have found the perfect government. But don't blame "government" for the problems that politicians make.
Learn to love Alaska
A challenge for many record retention policies, especially with email, is to prevent the proliferation of copies and avoid "unplanned retention." Many (most) of the emails being sought in this case were long iterative threads with large cc lists. When you factor for network distribution mechanisms and the variety of personal practices (use of various POP clients, personal folder management, people who still insist on printing stuff, desktop archive and cache settings, etc.), it is quite humorous and implausible to believe that the emails are gone. In fact, you can't practically make them go away.
You can, however, wipe the server and make the "Backup Tape" go away, and then try to keep people focused on that.
No, the rabbit really isn't in the magician's hat, and no, the rabbit didn't really disappear.
The sickening party lie, that somehow it is acceptable today because someone from another political party did it a decade ago but not quite so bad is just a disingenuous lie.
All those absolutely corrupt idiots who fail to demonise any corrupt official often have their snout right in the trough with them.
Quailty government is all about the continual audit and review of every action of government and where applicable, the public disclosure of those actions so that htye can be publicly debated and based upon those debates, far more sensible choice about who you should elect.
It is the standard lie of the politically corrupt to claim all politicians are corrupt whilst they and the slimy cronies cook elections to ensure the worst and most criminally politicians of the lot get elected. So why mod idiots who say do nothing, idiots who look at failures a decade ago while ignoring what is going on today, or disingenuous idiots who would allow their own country to fail as long as they profit.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Well said John :) If I had the points I'd deffinitely mod you up. All these idiots who are currently demonizing the Bush admin seem to have been born in 2001. Either that, or their memory is so faulty that they've forgotten all the scandals of past administrations.
Either that, or they don't buy the "But they did it too!" argument you typically hear from children on the playground.
People who criticize the Bush admin are not necessarily idiots. There are plenty of legitimate reasons to do so and these data retention "problems" are definitely one of them. And no, no one has forgotten past administrations' scandals, it's just that past administrations' scandals do not legitimize the actions and practices of this administration.
Come on, that's just starting to stink of loopy conspiracy.
If there really was a conspiracy to destroy a whole bunch of documents, you're seriously telling me the simplest, easiest plan they could come up with was "Let's find and finance a bunch of nutjobs to fly planes into buildings - and make sure that two of those buildings are the towers of the WTC"?
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode44/usc_sec_44_00002201----000-.html
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode44/usc_sec_44_00002207----000-.html
States that Vice Presidents' records are included in the Presidents' records and archived with them unless the archivist agrees otherwise.
This would presumaly include election fundraising.
It's getting to the point that it is the entire US government that's the problem. Where are the congressional hearings about this, demanding answers as to why laws are not being followed? Where are motions to at the very least censure the Bush admin for failing to follow the Presidential Records act? As far as I know, only Kucinich has publicaly mentioned the impeachment process (Only to table the idea a few months ago)
Our 3 sections of government are supposed to watchdog each other. When one of them messes up royally, the others should at least make some noise about it.
this administration believes itself above law Lay off the kool-aid, dude. At least this administration hasn't had the FBI files of the opposing party "somehow" appear in the White House.
Are you seriously comparing the stupid Clinton "Filegate" scandal to the Bush Administration's abuses of the justice system, which includes selective prosecution and actual imprisonment of people based on their political alignments? Even as Bush listens to your phone calls, monitors your financial activity, and records every web page you visit, with your open acquiescence?
I personally dislike the Clintons but the Whitewater Independent Counsel found in 2000 that there was no evidence of criminal activity or impropriety in "Filegate", nor was there evidence that anyone in the White House had actually requested any of the files. There was no hit on Vince Foster either.
Huh? It's the government! Do you really expect gov't to be efficient or do things correctly?
I guess we should just shut the government down if you idiots are too ideologically handicapped to run it.
That's because Social Security isn't really investing your money in anything. They're just taking money received from current workers and redistributing it to retired workers.
That's a lie. Well, or maybe you were hoodwinked by liars to where you think that's the truth, but it isn't. They take in money, invest it, and pay out some. They take in more than they pay out. They have all the functions of a mutual fund, plus some, and function below the cost of a mutual fund. There is no shorfall in Social Security. They do invest your money (though it isn't earmarked with your specific name on it) and they pay out money. These are the functions of a mutual fund, and performed for much less than the cost of a private mutual fund.
If a private company could "manage" a retirement fund without having to mess with the whole business of actually researching, buying, and selling stock and bonds, heck yeah it could do it a lot cheaper.
The Social Security Administration does buy and sell bonds. That you think otherwise indicates that you have no idea how it functions. Listen less to conservative talk radio and learn on your own. It isn't a Ponzi scheme. In fact, your link says that people call it that but it doesn't actually fit the definition. Why not? Because the payouts are the same to the first person to join and the last, it isn't a pyramid that pays off the man at the top more than the last joiner. Also, the SSA does have assets in the form of T-bills. Yes, it's one branch of the government buying from another, but it's still a gain for the SSA and an actual investment held by many other investors. With a couple minor tweaks (very minor) SS could be made to be fully funded. It would take at least another generation or two, but making it fully funded is easy. Just mandate it. However, no politicial wants to touch it. That's why it is efficient with the money, politicians do not want to be associated with it at all. End it and you will be sentencing many seniors to death via starvation/neglect. Fix it properly (fully funded with opt-out private savings) and you are a communist trying to take more money from the working class (because getting it fully funded will cost more in the short term). Also, fully funding a fixed benefit plan is a probability game that many compnaies saw fail with the dot-com burst. Given enough time, fully funding a fixed-benefit program will necessarily result in failure. Making the payout variable will harm those that depend on a steady stream of income.
Fixing it is easy, it's just impossible.
Learn to love Alaska
For your loopy conspiracy thinking.
First you start with manipulating the world stock market and you proceed with draining southeast Asia, including 88% Muslim populated Indonesia.
you have put together a deal that requires investors to put in 1 billion just to get in and they have to stay in for 3 years.
Once you start having a very draining effect on the south east Asia economy and persistently ignore any effort of communication on those you are draining from and finally get a sign that you have drained them as much as you can via formula comming up wrong persistantly, and then offered them interest bearing loans thru the world bank whioch only pissed them off more.....and they make one attempt to take down the WTC but fail...
You have managed to set up the "loopy conspiracy"
Of course there are American investor losers in the deal too, such as enron worldcom and some califorina power company....etc...and this helps take suspicion off of your conspiracy motives. But you then buy the WTC with its asbestos sickness and insure it from terrorist attacks for way more then you are paying for it. And as you proceed to remove the deteriorating asbestos you also plant demolition explosives in the main shaft. As you know that there will be another attack, as the NSA has told you and its agreed upon to have the military not available during this inevitable attack. To of course let it happen.
Of course the SEC is investigating the dealing of this world stock market manipulation deal and ironically have the documentation under investigation in building seven. So the attack happens and damages some building worse than others but the worse continue to stand where the less damaged building seven was evacuated and intentionally taken down.
In summary and in full support of your "loopy conspiracy theory" It really was all about destroying some paperwork. And of course the paperwork had to first be created.
So it wasn't about a trillion dollars or draining south east asia economically or even about indonesia being by CIA reports 88% Muslim, but all about distroying some paperwork. For the sake of creating a "loopy conspiracy"
But that doesn't explain why the pentagon was hit and what some think was also a target "The White house"
There is no way it could all be based upon human greed, simple human greed.
I suppose the anthrax was a much bigger conspiracy, as it certainly couldn't have been done by some one person with enough authority and knowledge to access the anthrax store without being questioned and do this themselves. One person doesn't qualify as a conspiracy, but any fool could easily guess how the political parties would respond to this. But that doesn't support conspiracy theories, certainly not your loopy one.
There is no way it could possible be a retaliation of a wrongful world stock market manipulation that would backed by politically controlled military where our own NSA knew enough to assist by not doing anything to circumvent it. Greed figures out how to make a profit in loss they know will happen.
The reality is that the bulk of the money goes to pay current recipients, and only the leftover invested (and prior to the government separating it from the general fund, it wasn't even invested, it was simply used for other purposes with an IOU left in its place). If it were all held and invested, it'd be impossible for it to go into a shortfall -- after all, the original money plus interest would still be there. The only reason it's set to become a problem is because it's mostly not invested, it's used to pay current recipients. And when the payments to recipients exceeds the receipts from current workers, the system starts to fall apart.
The only way to fix it is for the government put in enough new money into it to offset all the people who got paid out of it without paying into it (complete and partial). At that point the system would have zero past debt and the money you put into it would be held for your retirement. Unless you do that, you're essentially shuffling $1000/mo into a savings account then immediately cashing out $900 of it to pay past debts, all so you can claim "I'm putting aside $1000/mo for retirement."There are some issues with the random nature of death and uncertainty of duration of payout, but as you say those are tweaks. I don't have a problem with a socialized retirement net per se, but it's in no way comparable to a fully privatized personal retirement account in how it's administrated.
You know, you make this point as if it actually validates your post. Bit of a sad thing that it actually doesn't.
The government is as much a 'regulated industry' as for example the financial world (in which you *have* to keep 7 years of backups of ALL your data, including email, RTPs, databases and everything pertaining to your functioning). This is not optional, this is not something you can make your own policy about, it's quite simply the law.
Now. The law states that all communication within the government that is not explicitly marked top secret should be available to the public. Having a retention period after which this information gets deleted instead of archived is once again, simply against the law.
If you make local retention policies, you better be *very* sure you're not destroying material that you should keep by law, since your company will really not survive a serious audit or lawsuit based on those materials (the penalties for not obeying these parts of the law are really rather severe)
Coz eternity my friend, is a long *ing time.