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Whitehouse Emails Were Lost Due to "Upgrade"

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the upgrading-to-orwell dept.

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "We now know how the Whitehouse managed to lose about five million emails. It seems that they 'upgraded' their Lotus Notes system, which had an automatic retention and backup system, for Microsoft Exchange, which did not support the automatic system. So they changed it to a manual process, where aides would manually sort emails one by one into individual PST files, which they call a 'journaling' archive system. They're still building a replacement for the retention system. Right when they had one finished, the White House CIO complained that it made Microsoft Exchange too slow, so they hired yet another contractor to build another one, causing a senior IT official to quit in protest. So they still haven't completed the project after almost eight years, and rely on humans to sort millions of emails."

10 of 482 comments (clear)

  1. This is a classic case of... by FuzzyDaddy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Strategic Incompetence"

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    It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
    1. Re:This is a classic case of... by Chris+Burke · · Score: 5, Insightful

      (Such amazing IQ swings we see. Genius! Moronic! Brilliant! Ape-like! Bing-bam-boom! Sometimes several flip-flops in one day! One would almost wonder if the problem lies in the observers, rather than the observed.)

      The problem lies in this ridiculous line of thinking where someone can only ever have one adjective applied, and that adjective must apply to everything they do.

      Here's the dope: The Bush White House is quite adept at playing politics -- genius when Rove was involved -- including yes the ability to make apparent incompetence into a strength. They are skilled at making the organizations they control work for them, producing the information they want to hear, and failing to find or losing the information they don't want anyone to hear, to support their political goals. When it comes to actually executing policies outside of Washington, they're terrible failures because in reality you can't get rid of facts you don't like and keep only the ones you do.

      What's so contradictory about that? I'm "brilliant" with computers, I'm "moronic" with cars. To think that one precludes the other is idiotic. But then again, so is the whole "flip-flop" figure of speech.

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      The enemies of Democracy are
  2. These days... by neokushan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's getting harder and harder to tell the difference between subterfuge and sheer incompetence.

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    +1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
    1. Re:These days... by Frosty+Piss · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's getting harder and harder to tell the difference between subterfuge and sheer incompetence.
      Because the bullshit is so deep?
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      If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
  3. Re:yes it is. by SatanicPuppy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Not to defend microsoft, but COME ON! Who do they have doing their tech support? Is Bush doing it himself?

    I find this frankly impossible to believe, and insulting on top of that.

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    ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
  4. Re:These days? by Shinmizu · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.

  5. The dog ate my incriminating evidence by Reality+Master+201 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Seriously, this is the least bullshit excuse the could come up with? If ANY corporation in the US tried this kind of thing, the wrath of SARBOX would rain down on them like you wouldn't believe.

    Even given the staggering incompetence of the Bush administration in nearly all aspects, this just doesn't pass the laugh test.

  6. Seems like a market for e-mail archiving... by metoc · · Score: 4, Insightful

    1) To bad the Whitehouse isn't using an e-mail system like millions of other people. Wait they are. Like it or not MS Exchange is everywhere.
    2) To bad the requirement for e-mail archiving and retention is unique to government. Wait, most publicly traded companies have legal and compliance requirements to do so.
    3) To bad there is no market for software to archive and retain e-mail on one of the most common e-mail platforms. Wait, there is, and its huge.
    4) To bad nobody has nobody has developed technology for this market. Wait, there are dozens of solutions.

    To bad no one is getting fired, imprisoned or impeached over this one.

  7. Re:Six P's by Jeremi · · Score: 5, Insightful
    This shouldn't be taken as a Micr$oft bash as much as an example of poor planning.


    Or perhaps an example of really good planning. If I was planning to make sure a few million potentially incriminating emails never found their way into the public eye, that is how I might do it. Certainly if I had spent a number of meetings discussing how and when Americans should torture people I would be motivated to do so.

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    I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
  8. Re:These days? by Danse · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Once you get to a certain level of incompetence, it's really indistinguishable from malice. In this case, the incentives are all there for them to want to keep this "problem" in place. It lets them conveniently lose any incriminating email and blame it on "them dang computers". Everyone's lost some files at one time or another, right? Ok, so maybe you didn't have your own IT department in charge of running the communications for the most powerful government in the world...

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    It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer