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Congressman Asks NSA To Provide Metadata For "Lost" IRS Emails
An anonymous reader writes in with news that the IRS lost email scandal is far from over. Representative Steve Stockman (R-TX) has sent a formal letter to the National Security Agency asking it to hand over "all its metadata" on the e-mail accounts of a former division director at the Internal Revenue Service. "Your prompt cooperation in this matter will be greatly appreciated and will help establish how IRS and other personnel violated rights protected by the First Amendment," Stockman wrote on Friday. The request came hours after the IRS told a congressional committee that it had "lost" all of the former IRS Exempt Organizations division director's e-mails between January 2009 and April 2011.
You have a very high opinion of government IT. Myself, having encountered the BOFH's that run government IT I can say with all seriousness it's entirely likely the entire email server for the IRS division was stored on a second hand laptop sitting in some closet without any backups whatsoever.
Government pays so shitty I wouldn't expect any "qualified" IT people in the IRS. Hell they still use mainframes from the 70's to process taxes because every time they've tried to replace them they've failed miserably and they've blown their entire IT budgets for years trying.
So no, I think it's completely and totally believable that all the email was stored in some non-backed up second hand PC running exchange. I'd be surprised if that wasn't the case. It'll never cease to amaze me how Republicans run up and down screaming about how incompetent government is but when they display that incompetence they run around screaming conspiracy.