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

[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

[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.

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]

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.

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.

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: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.

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: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.