Trying To Find White House Missing E-mails

Gov IT writes "On Wednesday a federal court ordered all employees working in the Bush White House to surrender media that might contain e-mails sent or received during a two and a half year period in hope of locating missing messages before President-elect Barack Obama takes over next week."

Comments

Contempt of Court

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no way in hell the emails disappeared without the act being intentional (and thus in violation of the law). George Bush needs to be held to account for this.

Re:Contempt of Court

[jlarocco]

Important data is deleted by accident all the time. In other words, "real" IT people get it wrong all the time. You're expecting government IT people to get it right? Let's just say government employees aren't typically known for their competence.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending Bush and the gang, but either possibility (purposely deleted or accident) seems equally likely to me.

Re:Contempt of Court

[PhreakOfTime]

It is?

Maybe in your company it is, but believe it or not, there are places where that just isnt true!

For example, for me and my domain of users, an important file may be deleted by accident by someone. But that is why we have backups where the oldest file is no more than 12 hours old.

To try and claim that this much EMAIL went missing, when it is so trivial to accomplish that even a govt employee could do it with their eyes closed, is a bit too much slack to give.

"Real" IT people DONT get it wrong all the time. In fact "Real" IT people dont get it wrong at all.

I feel sorry for you if your environment has led you to believe that level of competence is normal. I wish you the best of luck in your quest to find a place to work at that shatters your surroundings of incompetence

Re:Contempt of Court

[djupedal]

> George Bush needs to be held to account for this.

Yes, sure, but... What makes you think anyone in the Bush administration is going to be held any more accountable than Bernie Madoff, who is walking around when he should be in jail?

Re:Contempt of Court

[sumdumass]

Why would he need to? There are no penalties over the deleted files. At best, they can lecture them and maybe get some sort of contempt of court punishment if a judge gets irate enough. However, I doubt they would even go that far because if there truly is no way to recover them, then those punished for no doing so in that manner will have some good grounds for a lawsuit.

Re:Contempt of Court

[carlzum]

I would argue it takes more effort to wipe out all traces of email and files than find a backup. I call shenanigans if the White House claims any email was "lost" and can't be recovered.

Re:Contempt of Court

[innocent_white_lamb]

Madoff hasn't been found guilty yet. Why should a "presumed innocent" person be in jail, whether he is Madoff, or you, or me?

Re:Contempt of Court

[PhreakOfTime]

Like I said, Im sorry that you also are in an environment where you think this is normal.

Personal attacks aside, the point is that 700 days of email server records dont just vanish. If your job is to make backups and ensure data integrity, then that is your job. Period. Its quite easily doable, and there are options available other than 'tapes'. It all depends on your personal cost/benefit profile.

If you arent willing to do what it takes to ensure your data integrity, then it isnt very important data. It is not wise to apply your life experiences to the rest of the world. What you are describing sounds like some backwards office in a strip mall. Im just guessing here, but I would think the requirements for U.S government duties when it comes to backing up and insuring integrity of data are spelled out pretty clearly in a law somewhere. I wont quote Title/Section for you, as Im sure you can look it up yourself if you so desire.

I liked this line the best;
"A lot of times, this doesn't go back further then 6 months because it is expensive to keep large volumes of unneeded data sitting around"
Unneeded data? Your choice of words betrays your mindset, as it applies to your understanding of the subject at hand.

Re:Contempt of Court

[JackieBrown]

Or the fact that people seem to think that Bush is the dumbest guy there is yet able to circumvent whatever backup and security precautions are in place.

I never no which Bush people are talking about -the evil mastermind or the bumbling idiot.

Bush is gone soon. Quit bitching and move on like we have done for Clinton and Carter and the rest

Re:Contempt of Court

[dbIII]

I was reading some tapes from 1982 the other day. With respect Sir, you may be very skilled in other areas but you really do not have a clue how easy it is to archive data. That normally wouldn't be a problem, but you are ranting in your ignorance at someone that does have a bit more of a clue and leading casual readers astray.

I really do not care if you are trying to find an excuse for your hero's behaviour. Surely you can find another that makes a little more sense.

Re:Contempt of Court

[mOdQuArK!]

At certain levels of decision-importance, it is no longer sufficient to use incompetence as an excuse to escape punishment.

If you allow people who are involved with such matters to use incompetence to escape punishment, then they can easily use the facade of incompetence to cover both honest mistakes and malicious activities, plus there is no incentive for them to try and improve their competence.

Once the decision-making power reaches a certain level of importance, then if you want your leadership to behave in a competent manner, then you MUST punish them for screwing up, regardless of whether they made a mistake or whether they were deliberately misbehaving.

Re:Contempt of Court

[sumdumass]

Yes, competence abound. In *real* IT, though, tapes, once written, are marked and sent to an offsite storage. They are never recalled from there for "rotation" - the only reason to request your old backup is because you want to restore it.

In real IT, the people doing the backups know that Tapes degrade and can't just sit in Storage off site somewhere. After about 5 years or so unless your in extremely ideal conditions (read not), you will have break down of the binders holding the magnetic particles, you have to rewrite the information to them or you start running a serious risk of loosing information permanently. Simply dropping tapes that are older then 5 years can be enough to make then inaccessible. And don't get me started on the UV filters for the lights that managment always thinks is over kill. Sure, costly procedures can probably be done to recover the data but it can't just sit there. This should have been one of the first things you learned about backups. You simply cannot take a backup tape and toss it in a room and expect it to be usable with all the information on it 5 or more years down the road. It might be accessible but then again, it probably won't be, at least not in it's entirety.

I can understand if a liquor store owner can be too cheap to write once and archive the tape. However I think the US government can afford a few tapes, and if not it is negligent in its duty.

There is a lot more involved with writing once and archiving the tap. First, tapes are made daily, in most cases multiple times a day, those get rotated and generally only one tape a week or month or so gets archived. Even then, the archived tapes need to be taken care of in ways that are more then just putting it on a box or on a shelf. The taps are generally bar coded with a long serial number because they go in robotic tape drives that record everything and the barcode it easier to read for the robot. Right there alone can be a source of lost data, someone screws up the loader and erased the stored codes and restores from an archived list that doesn't have the old drives on it, then you end up with 65 or more tapes for those years that don't correlate with anything for each machine being backed up. Supposed 10 servers, one tape a week plus a monthly a six month and a year end tape is backed archived, that's 66 tapes per machine per year.

Now, it has been my experience that the government can screw things up worse then the corner liquor store. Look at the state of Ohio who just a few years ago lost the information on millions of people because their backup policy was to take the tape home with the last person to leave. You can't just assume that the Government will always do things right. I mean hell, Katrina should be an example of that, government on three levels fucked up severely, local state and federal.

It's always nice when people point out a problem and then immediately offer a good solution :-) How many employees will it take to copy tapes? Probably one tech will be too many: insert tape A, insert tape B, press the button. If you use LTO or T10000 WORM tapes then they can't be erased accidentally. Also, LTO tapes are rated for 15 to 30 years, plenty of time to copy them on our future X-Ray 100 PB storage crystals.

The really nice thing is that you actually expect that your going to get 15-30 years from an LTO tape stiting in storage. This is what I was talking about. You will only get that if you do everything perfect. You have to control the UV light around the tapes, the temp, the humidity, protect them from shock, vibrations and people dropping them. You have to do everything perfect and ideally to get the 15-30 years life from one sitting around. Guess what, I seriously doubt that you even paid attention to that so in 7 years, you will probably pull a tape out that has been archived and find that it doesn't work.

Re:Contempt of Court

[witherstaff]

If it was a server glitch, HD crash, incompetent admins, normal IT problem then sure I could easily understand. Giving 88 white house people separate email accounts, non .gov domain names, and going through the RNC computers instead of the normal white house computers is just too fishy. Read the summary of findings found by oversight committees and you won't help but see it wasn't an IT fault it was a deliberate skirting of the laws. This is as bad as Cheney making the claim that the office of the VP isn't part of the executive branch so he doesn't need to give records to the national archives.

Re:Contempt of Court

[PhreakOfTime]

In most real life situations, the data older then 6 months generally gets purged from the system... This generally mean Email goes

And herein lies the root of problem. Your level of experience is so incredibly lacking, that you think 6 months is a long time.

About a year ago, I was involved in some work regarding a contract arbitration case. Records were successfully pulled form 5 years before, that specifically related to this case, and a settlement was reached out of court.

But please, tell me again how important your data is that you wipe it out after 6 months? Why are you even backing it up in the first place? If you handle even a single piece of financial data, I would HIGHLY recommend that you do not admit to your backup methods in public anymore, as YOU will be the one held accountable when it goes missing. Because guess what, there's a backup of your words in this thread freely admitting to such. Wouldnt that be irony?

Have a nice day.

Re:Contempt of Court

[Civil_Disobedient]

Unfortunately, the laws mandating archival are relics themselves. For a local example, here in Maine they keep lists of campaign contributions made to various local politicians. But they are only required to hold two years of records, which is basically useless for determining any historical patterns of contributions.

The laws need to be updated to reflect changes in technology. With the price of storage these days, there's effectively no reasonable difference between archiving 2 years of data and archiving 20 years. We (the people) simply have to decide it's important enough to update the rules. Because you know the politicians have no incentive to suggest such legislation themselves.

Re:Contempt of Court

[drsmithy]

Now tapes get mixed up and over written all the time, someone doesn't realize what's on them and thinks it's just something that can be rotated in or someone thinks the information is in another place and the tapes are redundant or something. Next thing you know, they are gone and no one know why.

No. Tapes go offsite to a secure facility once they have been used and are physically modified so that they cannot be overwritten. This is something even wet-behind-the-ears junior sysadmins understand. For records of such high importance, I would expect no less than 3 off-site copies are kept, in well-separate geographical locations (and probably more like two or three times that number, stored both within the US and internationally).

The problem comes from backup media being expensive plus it degrades over time. Almost all magnetic media starts losing it's luster after about 5 years and needs refreshed from time to time so it isn't like throwing them into a box and forgetting it forever actually works.

Rubbish. Decent tape media lasts for decades, especially if properly stored.

There are only two possible reasons such a large amount of such important data could have gone "missing" - deliberate action to destroy (or avoid keeping) it, or incompetence of nearly unimaginable proportions. "Accidentally" doesn't even pass the laugh test.

Re:Contempt of Court

[sgtrock]

This environment is called the IT industry. One that you obviously don't participate in much. Shit goes wrong all the time. People who know better get complacent and don't do what they are supposed to. This all adds up and you cannot say that it has never happened in your company unless it is 2 months old of something. Give it 8 years or more and you will sing another tune.

Excuse me? If this is really what the IT industry is like, then I must be imagining all of the data retention laws that require my company to retain all electronic records for all of our registered traders (stock brokers and the like) for up to 7 years. Not just email, either. We also have to retain copies of all texts as well.

I must also be imagining the $12 million fine that we were slapped with 5 or 6 years ago when just one case of WORM media got accidentally destroyed by our external records storage vendor that unfortunately contained emails related to a civil suit that a former employee got us embroiled in. The Justice Department, the OCC, and the SEC have no sense of humor about this stuff. (Before you ask, yes, it was a real accident. Settling the suit itself cost us less than $1 million. You think we wanted to put ourselves in a position to risk that kind of fallout over such a small legal issue?)

BTW, you ever heard of Sarbanes-Oxley? Have you ever tried to tap dance your way out of an audit by claiming that you just "lost" some files that were more than a few months old?

I'll go further and assert that not even the most incompetent Federal organization is so bad that they accidentally lose that much email. This is about the most routine IT task imaginable. Solutions for automated, multi-level backups of email have been around for literally decades. There is simply no conceivable reason to assume that the Feds haven't implemented such solutions at every level and in every branch. The fact that you regard this as SOP simply highlights just how little you really know about what IT means in the context of large corporations and governments.

Re:Contempt of Court

[Random BedHead Ed]

700 days' worth of email are missing. I think you'd have to work pretty hard to "accidentally lose" that. You might neglect a backup or two. To do it for two years ... well, Bush can just isue himself and his staff pardons to cover it.

Indeed, you've hit upon the core point of the matter. This was either (a) an accident, or (b) a deliberate subversion of law in an attempt to avoid the public finding out what people in the executive branch (you know, our employees?) were doing. Both of these possibilities are extremely bad.

The latter possibility should have had people on both sides of the aisle calling for an independent investigation. But even if it were "merely" an accident, where was the high-level firing of IT personnel? In my company if two years' worth of e-mails were lost, a few IT people would be out the door in a heartbeat. Who got fired from the White House IT staff as a result of what most people would consider a serious calamity?

And then what?

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Prosecute an outgoing President?

I don't like Bush as a President at all. But the job of the President is to make tough decisions and along the way he will make lots of enemies. However, just because a person is my enemy, it does not mean that he made those difficult decisions with anything but his best intentions and the country's best interests at heart. So it would be petty and irresponsible for us "enemies" of the current President to pursue this type of vindictive hounding because 4 years from now those same tactics will be used against a President I support.

Respect the office.

Re:And then what?

[TubeSteak]

So it would be petty and irresponsible for us "enemies" of the current President to pursue this type of vindictive hounding because 4 years from now those same tactics will be used against a President I support.

A) You seem to be lumping partisans who hate Bush alongside citizens who believe that public officials should follow the law.
B) If Obama pulls the same bullshit I sure as hell hope that he gets endlessly hounded for it.

Respect the office.

The office means jack shit if the President doesn't respect the law and the constitution.

Re:And then what?

[ucblockhead]

As someone who voted for Obama, I sure hope to hell if he does a tenth of the illegal crap Bush seems to have, he is vindictively hounded out of office a lot sooner than 4 years from now.

Re:And then what?

[Jeff DeMaagd]

That's the thing, over the decades, Congress has given the Executive branch so much power, either through legislation or the lack of actually standing up for themselves to assert their own authority that President of the United States is creeping on becoming a Caesar-like position. For example, signing statements shouldn't have been enshrined in precedence, and we had a president that decided to invalidate or water down any law or provision that he doesn't like but can't veto.

Re:And then what?

[bledri]

Prosecute an outgoing President?

If Bush didn't like the conditions of employment, he should not have taken the job. Same goes for Obama.

because 4 years from now those same tactics will be used against a President I support.

I supported Obama. If his administration fails archive communications as required by law, then I will support a lawsuit to try to correct the, um, oversight.

I suspect that the information is "lost." And that really sucks. Not from a standpoint of trying to prosecute anybody, but from the standpoint of developing and growing as a nation. The administration is suppose to support the archives, not hide from them as if this is some sort of childish game. Eventually, based on time, future presidents and security issues, the information is suppose to become available. Then we get to learn from our mistakes.

Every effort should be made to recover the current administrations communications. Furthermore, we need to improve the laws and processes so that future administrations can't so easily skirt them.

Re:And then what?

[Tassach]

To paraphrase Dick Cheney [washingtonpost.com], if the president has the power to unilaterally launch a nuclear strike and wipe out the human race, he has the power to have water poured in someone's face.

FAIL. The Constitution explicitly names the President as the commander-in-chief of the armed forces (Article 2, section 2). As commander-in-chief, he can order the use of any weapon in the arsenal against any enemy that Congress has authorized him to attack. This is a legitimate, explicitly enumerated power granted to the president by the president.

The use of cruel and unusual punishment is EXPLICITLY FORBIDDEN by the Constitution. As it is an amendment, it supercedes anything in the main body of the Constitution that might be interpreted as giving the President this power.

Constitutional authority aside there is a simpler answer to this: we are the good guys. We don't do that.

Re:And then what?

[drmitch]

And what exactly is it when a person does not give you the information you want, so you torture them? A birthday present? It's "punishment" which is not equal to "justice". I say that anyone that says what is done is not torture should have to endure it. Take that military guy that was voluntarily water-boarded for something like 18 seconds. He said he still is afraid, and that anyone who has it done WILL say it's torture. How can you argue with that? Try it first, then say it's not torture.

Cut GW some slack

[EmbeddedJanitor]

So they trumped up bogus evidence to started a bogus war that killed many thousand people and put a severe economic drain on the country.

Is that really so bad?

It's not like he got a blowjob or anything!

Re:Cut GW some slack

[yndrd1984]

... killing something that isn't alive ...

Ignoring your self-contradictory use of the English language, your assertion that there's a stage between "sperm and egg" and "adult" where animals are non-living is absurd. Next time simply state "I don't believe that the killing of human fetuses is morally objectionable", and avoid using falsehoods to rationalize your moral stance.

Re:Cut GW some slack

[yndrd1984]

I believe that since it has unique human DNA, it should not be killed

I find this moral stance quite odd - it would suggest that the deliberate destruction of the only surviving tissue sample of a deceased person should be treated as a murder.

Oh hey, look, in the distance, that ship...

[gorehog]

...it's sailing away!

Really people this is over.

I'm a serious lefty. I hate war criminals because I am Jewish. I marched in Manhattan against the war in Iraq the February before it started. It happened. The crimes have been committed. We blindly followed zealots and morons into domestic and foreign policies that have ruined our nation morally and economically.

My question is, what new things do you expect to learn? Is there any reason to read these emails? We know what they did and who is responsible. Maybe we don't have every gory detail. I doubt we need them. We could already try the major players.

But what punishment would be appropriate? The point of investigating these actions would have been to stop them and we did not do enough, as the American Citizenry, to stop them. WE EVEN RE-ELECTED the criminals.

We won't hang the offenders as is appropriate (Nuremberg anyone?), we won't hand them over to the victim nations. We didn't stop the crimes and as members of a democracy that makes us complicit.

Imagine a parent who gives their kid a case of beer and the keys to the car. The kid gets drunk and drives the car through the neighbor's house. What would the neighbor think if all the parents did was ground the kid for a few weeks?

Re:Oh hey, look, in the distance, that ship...

[Mashhaster]

It's important for us to know every gory detail, if only for historical posterity; not that we're likely to be able to recover any of these emails at this point. After all, they likely contained incriminating evidence, and were destroyed for that reason. However, I still feel it's important for historical accuracy, and as a warning to all future presidents, that every last piece of dirty laundry of this administration be made public, and finally when that's all said and done, and the office of the presidency is muddy, bloody and dishonored, then we prosecute the criminals for their willful disregard of the rule of law, to the full extent of the law. If we do not take these steps, we are inviting future chief executives to do exactly the same thing as BushCo did. Not to mention the million innocent Iraqi souls who would still be alive if not for the pointless war we've waged over there; they deserve justice, as much as BushCo deserves to be brought to it.

Re:Oh hey, look, in the distance, that ship...

[Mashhaster]

Saying that the truth won't necessarily prevent the past from repeating itself is a weak argument against fighting for the truth in the first place, in my opinion.

If nothing else, full disclosure of the activities of this administration would force the American public to see the truth of the past eight years, and would likely result in at least some high profile convictions of the outgoing administration.

Just because we can't see to it that they get as good as they gave, doesn't mean we should let them ride off into the sunset unmolested.

Re:Oh hey, look, in the distance, that ship...

[gorehog]

And how does that relate to White House emails and the crimes of the Bush administration?

Alright, I'll address it anyhow.

1)Israel was being attacked by rouge elements of Hamas that the Palestinian government was unable or unwilling to control. How many Israeli citizens do you think should have died before they went in there and stopped the Palestinians from building and firing rockets?

2)I am Jewish by heritage and am acutely aware that some people would kill me for the shape of my nose and texture of my hair (see some of the other replies to the parent post if you question that.) I have no religion and question the wisdom of dying for "Holy Land". You may call me an atheist if you need to label me.

3)If the Israelis DO commit war crimes then yes, I do hope that the authorities are held responsible before the public eye.

Re:Oh hey, look, in the distance, that ship...

[Phantom of the Opera]

Now, it doesn't matter whether Bush oversold the war or not. In fact, he probably lied. All Presidents lie. You can't goad people honestly into war or tell the truth as to why you have them. War is as much an act of statecraft and politic on the national stage as any other and honesty in war making is arguably detrimental to national security.

The crime isn't that he lied. The crime was that he lied when he took the oath of office to uphold the constitution. I know a lot of people don't care about civil liberties and regard the constitution as just a piece of paper that sometimes gets in the way of their goals. I don't. Its sacred to me as much as anything could be; I know that is silly, but I don't care.

Also, he was a dumb ass that really hurt the US, but there is no specific law against that.

Re:Oh hey, look, in the distance, that ship...

[gorehog]

Not asking for a prize. Just explaining my perspective. I was raised to be seriously offended by war crimes and genocide.

As for political persecution look at the Clinton impeachment. You guys did it first.

You are also correct in that there will never be enough support for criminal proceedings against Bush, and even if there were there would never be enough support for an appropriate punishment.

Congress gave him approval, but based on false information that he provided. That's a crime right there.

As for "Yeah he lied, they all lie, he had to lie" argument...it's weak. Even if it's true then he is responsible to lead us into war competently and should be held responsible for doing it badly.

You final paragraph is weak rhetoric. Congress was given lies and failed to call Bush on it. but guess what? It was a Republican controlled Congress and Bush was head of the party, so again, the responsibility lies at his feet.

Now. Go turn off Fox News and stop listening to Rush Limbaugh. Time to go get your own thoughts.

Re:Oh hey, look, in the distance, that ship...

[symbolset]

Faith in the nonexistence of the Divine without proof is also religion.

Re:Oh hey, look, in the distance, that ship...

[Phantom of the Opera]

The constitution has a certain spirit that is violated by the intrusion of conversations, is violated by the banning of arms from citizens, violated by giving money to church organizations.

The constitution was written to be vague in details, but specific in meaning and in spirit. Bush's policy of making 'free speech zones' (http://www.amconmag.com/article/2003/dec/15/00012/) is enough to convince me he is no guardian of American ideals.

Re:Oh hey, look, in the distance, that ship...

[AK Marc]

All he had to do to quell the dissenters was release a single piece of paper and yet he provided what is unarguably a falsified document.

Unarguably? Then why are you arguing it is false when he asserts it isn't. That's an argument. And that makes your statement false. So why should we listen to anything else you say when you base the whole argument from lies? Have you seen any evidence that he was born anywhere else? Where is his birth certificate from the other place? Why do you think it false when you have no evidence it is false other than your apparent hatred of the man?

Oh hey, but Obama should have his Blackberry

[Anonymous Coward]

Because Obama will be sure to properly archive all of his emails...and SMS messages...

Your people?

[Phantom of the Opera]

Your people? __Your people__?

My people are humans. Humans are fucked up. Of course my people are doing wrong.

In Dafur.
In Isreal.
In Palestine.
At Guantanimo.
In Abu Grahib.
In the wilds of Uganda.
In the jungles of South America.
In China.
In Russia.
In Burma.
In Afghanistan.

Re:Finding Stuff

[The Master Control P]

Come on in, folks! Come on in, it's the epic Battle of the Stupids. Which is stupider? Come and see!

In this corner, moonbats claiming that Trig isn't actually Palin's son.

And in this corner, wingnuts who claim Obama hasn't released his birth certificate despite the Hawaiian government having released it.

FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!

Dick Nixon showed the way

[SL Baur]

The only way this will change is if someone is held to account for it.

Dick Nixon was held accountable and all successive Presidents have learned from that lesson.

Re:Your an idiot.

[sumdumass]

Your an idiot if you think this is anything new. It isn't. Clinton lost documents that was logged in record, he lost emails too. Before that Bush and Reagan had some of the same problem. Everything you said is still true with them and it fucking happened. But no, you want to look at your NAS that has been running for 10 years (year right) and assume that everything in your little rosy life is the way it is everywhere else. The problem is that the government doesn't hire the best or the brightest people. so your ideal world probably couldn't exist it you wanted it to anyways.

But let's not look at fucking reality. Lets all just live in your little perfect world and see everything through your rose colored glasses and ignore the realities of life.

Nothing to see, move along

[SL Baur]

Personal attacks aside, the point is that 700 days of email server records dont just vanish.

Of course not, but as the Clinton administration proved, it is not punishable - "no controlling authority". The Obama administration which is already starting out with corruption will do the same. Status quo.

They started to impeach Dick Nixon over too many records kept and the only reason it didn't stick was that he resigned first.

In a few years we'll be talking about missing emails from Obama's White House. Nothing to see, move along.

When you have not had an honest President since Taft over a century ago, it is in NO ONE's best interest to have accurate records.

Re:Nothing to see, move along

[Cheech Wizard]

as the Clinton administration proved, it is not punishable - "no controlling authority". The Obama administration which is already starting out with corruption will do the same. Status quo.

Citation (other than tin foil hat links) needed.