IRS Recycled Lerner Hard Drive

phrackthat (2602661) writes The Senate Finance Committee has been informed that the IRS recycled the hard drive of Lois Lerner, which will deprive investigators of the ability to forensically retrieve emails which were supposedly deleted or lost in a "crash." This news comes after the IRS revealed that it had lost the emails of Lois Lerner and six other employees who were being investigated regarding the targeting of conservative groups and donors.

Comments

White collar prison

[Anonymous Coward]

More people need to go to prison for "white collar" crimes. The brash disregard of the law has turned into an epidemic because everybody with an ounce of clout is let off the hook with a slap on the wrist.

Re:White collar prison

[Anonymous Coward]

More people need to go to prison for "white collar" crimes. The brash disregard of the law has turned into an epidemic because everybody with an ounce of clout is let off the hook with a slap on the wrist.

Who would go to prison though, the person who ordered the mail to be deleted, or the IT admin who received an order from above to do something that he thought shouldn't be done (just like nearly every other order he gets from management)?

Re:White collar prison

[Joel Cahoon]

More people need to go to prison for "white collar" crimes. The brash disregard of the law has turned into an epidemic because everybody with an ounce of clout is let off the hook with a slap on the wrist.

Who would go to prison though, the person who ordered the mail to be deleted, or the IT admin who received an order from above to do something that he thought shouldn't be done (just like nearly every other order he gets from management)?

You seem to be implying that it would be unjust for the IT admin, who was "only" following orders, to suffer consequences for his illegal actions. I do not agree, but you have raised a crucial point; let's follow this course of thinking to its logical end.

If the lowly peon isn't held accountable for his direct actions, then the next time management asks him to do something wrong or illegal, there's one less reason for him to refuse. If he refuses, he can be assured of repercussions from management, but experience has shown him that threat of legal consequences is low if he complies; the path of least resistance is clear.

But, if you do hold him accountable for his direct actions, this has some interesting indirect effects, aside from the obvious direct consequences. The next time he or someone else is asked similarly to do something wrong or illegal, he's got to weigh the consequences on both sides. These concerns can be raised to the manager making the request as a reason (that would be less likely to result in repercussions for the IT admin) not to comply. Even if the threat of legal repercussions alone is not enough to deter the IT admin from complying with an illegal request, his moral or ethical views coupled with this threat may be enough to change his actions. The manager will have a harder time finding an IT admin to perform unlawful acts on his order. The threshold of reasons to even request such acts will be raised.

Let's not forget that the primary reason laws exist is to shape societal behavior; punishing or "rehabilitating" individual deviance should come secondary, as means to this end. If laws are not enforced, in this particular case if we let people off too frequently for "just following orders," then the laws can never have their intended effect: to prevent this whole stupid fiasco from happening in the first place.

That being said, let's not forget that overly broad interpretation and overzealous application of laws can result in witch-hunts which can be just as harmful, for reasons not entirely unrelated. Balance.

Re:White collar prison

[operagost]

You're presuming the IT guy even had any idea that something untoward was going on. That's unlikely. Many of us here are admins or have been on the past. When disabling accounts following a termination, have you always known why that person was terminated? I often didn't know when it was an involuntary dismissal.

Re:White collar prison

[idontgno]

If the lowly peon isn't held accountable for his direct actions, then the next time management asks him to do something wrong or illegal, there's one less reason for him to refuse. If he refuses, he can be assured of repercussions from management, but experience has shown him that threat of legal consequences is low if he complies; the path of least resistance is clear.

What you're advocating is that the IT puke be arrested, tried, convicted, sentenced, and punished for... working an anonymous hardware ticket in the IT task management tool. Probably one of dozens added to the system in any day.

I'm sure you're envisioning IT minion being called into Big Bad Evil Bureaucrat's office and being told "This hard drive contains crucial evidence which will destroy every Great and Evil thing I have worked for so long to accomplish. You must destroy it... use the Impractically Slow Hard Drive Destruction Machine in our Sea of Japan secret volcano base."

In practice, I'm sure it was the IP weenie going "Huh. A hardware decommisioning ticket from Remedy. A dozen hard drives."

Yeah. There's individual moral responsibility. But while we're at it, let's imprison undertakers for destroying murder evidence in cases where the murder isn't uncovered until after the burial.

Re:White collar prison

[sjames]

All that does is put a bunch of people between a rock and a hard place. Go after the person who gave the order.

Besides that, it is likely that the person who recycled the HD didn't know and perhaps didn't have the authority to know that there was anything on it but a virus laden copy of Windows. The IRS is big enough that the PC guy and the mail admin might not know each other.

Shit already rolls downhill, it doesn't need the force of law added to it.

Re:White collar prison

[thetoadwarrior]

It's not that hard to figure out. The one that ordered it should go to jail and if the IT admin who deleted knew the history then he knowingly destroyed evidence and should also go to jail.

Re:White collar prison

[AK Marc]

And what if the illegal act was the result of a legal order?

They "recycle" thousands of drives a year. The manager knew this one was more "interesting", but the IT worker didn't and couldn't. It'd be like throwing a mail-man in jail because a letter he delivered contained a threat or orders for a terrorist cell.

Re:White collar prison

[Yakasha]

If the lowly peon isn't held accountable for his direct actions, then the next time management asks him to do something wrong or illegal, there's one less reason for him to refuse. If he refuses, he can be assured of repercussions from management, but experience has shown him that threat of legal consequences is low if he complies; the path of least resistance is clear.

What you're advocating is that the IT puke be arrested, tried, convicted, sentenced, and punished for... working an anonymous hardware ticket in the IT task management tool.

No. He is advocating said puke be arrested for violating known data retention laws. The same way you and I are held responsible for violating any other law.

But while we're at it, let's imprison undertakers for destroying murder evidence in cases where the murder isn't uncovered until after the burial.

If there is a law requiring said undertaker to keep the body on ice for 3 years before burial, and an entire government agency dedicated to the sole purpose of ensuring that all bodies are preserved for 3 years before disposal according to a well-known, published policy that is disseminated to all undertakers, and he says "Durp, I got 10 bodies to dispose with that request so I just up and did it", and cremates the body before the 3 year period is up, then ya, arrest him too.

Re:White collar prison

[shutdown -p now]

All that does is put a bunch of people between a rock and a hard place.

They should be, when their actions are contributing to an injustice.

Re:White collar prison

[Joel Cahoon]

No, I'm not advocating that at all. My post was in response to:

...IT admin who received an order from above to do something that he thought shouldn't be done...

Emphasis added. I'm advocating some sort of consequence for someone who knew their actions were, at very least, against policy. I'm not suggesting we crucify someone for following an order that they believed was legitimate. In your example, if the poor weenie had a legitimate decommissioning ticket and carried it out faithfully, that doesn't call for any sort of punishment. If, however, the ticket was obviously suspicious, or he knew it wasn't compliant, but carried it out anyway (whether due to malice, laziness, or carelessness), then he absolutely deserves to suffer the consequences of failing to do his job.

This is not to say that the individual, as an easy scapegoat, should be dragged through the mud over a minor infraction simply because it affects such a serious issue—that would likewise be counterproductive, and also reduce the chances that those with real culpability be subject to appropriate action. The consequence should fit the infraction, and be applied with a grain of common sense to take into account extenuating circumstances. No, there's no fine line defining where moral and ethical responsibility begin and end, but on a case-by-case basis, you can usually get reasonably close.

Re:White collar prison

[sjames]

Only if whistleblowers are MUCH better protected than they are now AND they have a broad enough view to know what is going on.

In most organizations, recycling a desktop isn't unusual since the mail and important documents are on servers. I doubt whoever actually wiped it had no idea whose it was before or had any reason to wonder.

Re:White collar prison

[shutdown -p now]

Well, yes. It all depends on the details of this case. I was referring specifically to the case where people do know that their actions are contributing to some nefarious scheme (or if they're otherwise illegal in and of themselves), but do them anyway and then claim "I just followed orders".

Re:White collar prison

[UnknowingFool]

You seem to be postulating a lot of "if"s on a lowly IT tech who replaced a HD. Possibilities:

1) IT tech gets a ticket that said "Computer not working." It was diagnosed to be a failing HD. After trying to recover the data and failing, the HD was replaced. Old HD was recycled/destroyed. This does not violate any data retention policies as no data was likely to be recovered.
2) IT tech colluded with Lerner to destroy a HD that had damaging emails 2 years before a scandal erupted.
3) Lerner with great technical expertise manages to fake out a IT Tech in thinking a HD was bad and making it impossible to recover.

I would think Occam's razor favors #1.

Re:White collar prison

[doccus]

"We lost it in a crash" ok "we didn't lose it but it was unretreivable" ok "maybe it was retreivable but we threw it in the recycle bin" ok "it was fully retreivable so we got rid of it as fast as you would a triggered grenade.. and no more of that sodium pentothal, please!"

Re:White collar prison

[cwsumner]

After World War 2, the surviving Nazi death camp guards pled not guilty because they "were just following orders". It was ruled, and generally agreed, that this was not a valid defense. I saw the videos (films) of some of the trials.
I believe it is still so today. But check with a lawyer if you really want to know...
But that does not mean that the boss should get away.

Re:White collar prison

[jwhitener]

The manager knew this one was more "interesting"

The article doesn't make clear any sequence of events. Are we even sure that the manager and IT knew anything about the drive when it was recycled? Had the investigation been started, and had Lois Lerner been named as a person of interest, before the hard drive was recycled?

How deep is the rot in Washington?

[pastafazou]

The politicization of the IRS should be the biggest scandal ever. How many other institutions are being used to pursue a political agenda instead of their true function?

Re:How deep is the rot in Washington?

[Oligonicella]

Hatch (R) and Leahy (D) both disagree with you and they're in a better position to judge than you are.

Re:How deep is the rot in Washington?

[msauve]

Selective enforcement is a violation of the Constitutional guarantee of equal protection.

Re:How deep is the rot in Washington?

[bill_mcgonigle]

How many other institutions are being used to pursue a political agenda instead of their true function?

All of them.

Except that is their true function. Don't mistake the window dressing for the window.

Re:How deep is the rot in Washington?

[footNipple]

The politicization of the IRS should be the biggest scandal ever.

This scandal would have been. Heck, it would have knocked the Earth slightly out of it's orbit if the situation was inverted. That is if the IRS was targeting leftist groups under a republican administration.

Re:How deep is the rot in Washington?

[amosh]

You... you know the actual story, right? Not just the fox news version?

This isn't an issue of "politicization". The IRS was finally DOING ITS JOB and reviewing the applications of groups applying for tax-exempt status. They thought it would save time to, rather than investigate, just assume that groups with certain key words in their name - among them "tea party" and "occupy" - were engaged in political activity which should deny them that status. Amazing how Fox never reports on any groups OTHER than their chosen ones having had problems due to this, isn't it? Well, it's much easier to change the facts to match your preconceived notions than to change your notions to match the facts. And yelling about impeaching Obama is just so durned much fun!

In any case, the whole issue is about two things - 1. It's bad to profile people, anyone, anywhere, and 2. There is a strong group in Washington that doesn't want the IRS to be doing ANY kind of job, let alone stopping people from improperly receiving tax breaks for influencing elections. The ability to pretend it's some type of political cover-up is just gravy.

Re:How deep is the rot in Washington?

[stenvar]

Another ignorant fox watcher. We've covered many times how the IRS enforcing Tax Law and ensuring that nonprofits file for nonprofit status under the proper section of law is NOT ILLEGAL and NOT A SCANDAL.

It's illegal if they do it selectively based on the political preferences of the current administration. That is, it's not the "enforcing the law" that is illegal, it's the failure to enforce it consistently.

Furthermore, the law itself is a scandal. The IRS simply shouldn't be in a position to make these kinds of decisions. Non-profits should be allowed to engage in political activities freely.

Another ignorant fox watcher.

Amazingly enough, many conservatives and independents don't watch Fox at all. Personally, I read the Huffington Post, the WP, and Mother Jones, just to keep up with the idiotic ideas "Liberals" and Obama fans get in their heads.

Re:How deep is the rot in Washington?

[_KiTA_]

The politicization of the IRS should be the biggest scandal ever. How many other institutions are being used to pursue a political agenda instead of their true function?

Maybe because the politicization of the IRS is a fake scandal that even Newsmax and Fox News aren't covering anymore?

Seriously, it turned out that the IRS was actually covering Liberal Groups more than the Tea Party groups, something we would have known earlier except the GOP intentionally limited the audit to GOP groups. Oh, and the IRS is required by law to "harass" (read: investigate) Non-Profits in order to prevent the very thing that the GOP is freaking out about -- rich people like the Koch Brothers using fake non profits as a political machine. Note that the GOP isn't freaking out about people doing this, they're freaking out that they might be caught.

In other words, the real scandal is that the IRS somehow DIDN'T notice the Koch Brothers are breaking several dozen federal laws by astroturfing tea party "chartiies" in order to push anti-science, anti-climate change, and anti-worker agendas across the entire US.

All of this is due to the guy handling most of the GOP's fake scandals, Darrel Issa. He's got his thumbs in pretty much every fake scandal plaguing the Obama administration, in something that has come to be known as the Paula Jones Technique - make up fake scandals or inflate existing ones in hopes that your opponent (in this case, President Obama's Administration) can't do anything but react to the scandals.

Re:How deep is the rot in Washington?

[Megol]

So you like to ignore that nothing indicates that this was "selective enforcement" in any relevant way? That there seems to be _no_ political bias involved (given the equal focus on liberal groups)?

BTW selective enforcement is used all over the world, the selection is mostly random though.

Re:How deep is the rot in Washington?

[Luckyo]

By this logic, you should be complaining that every single crime investigator is guilty because he's going after most likely suspects instead of just investigating everyone even remotely involved. That makes no sense.

Re:How deep is the rot in Washington?

[LynnwoodRooster]

No illegal actions, no scandal. Then I guess there was no reason for the IRS Commissioner to apologize for the targeting of Tea Party groups. Good to know! He's not just incompetent about data retention rules, but about the actions and culpability (or lack thereof) of his own organization! Great to know that he represents the quality of people the President appoints...

Re:How deep is the rot in Washington?

[LynnwoodRooster]

Great, so that's why the IRS Commissioner apologized. Why he said what happened was wrong. Because they were just doing their job, nothing really was wrong, and nothing happened worth apologizing for...

Look, the IRS ITSELF (via the Commissioner) and the Inspector General BOTH are on-record as claiming these actions happened, they should not of happened, and they are, at the very least, the result of gross incompetence. Your trying to spin it as "nothing was wrong" simply goes against the statements of all the actual players in the game. Even President Obama states that "the misconduct ... is inexcusable".

But I'm glad to know you are much more knowledgeable about the IRS Scandal than the commissioner, the Senators, the Inspector General, the President, and all the other Government and political participants who have come out and plainly stated what happened was wrong.

Re:How deep is the rot in Washington?

[LynnwoodRooster]

The President disagrees with you.

Re:How deep is the rot in Washington?

[pastafazou]

Wow, you clearly aren't following the facts in this story at all, or you're wearing your Democrat polarizing glasses. First, I don't watch fox news because I don't get fox news. I live in Canada, and don't subscribe to your fantasy world of Democrats good - Republicans bad. They're all politicians, therefore they're all liars motivated by self-interest. That being said, there's no doubt that the IRS has been steered to target potential Republican funding sources. Lerner pleaded the 5th for a reason. You don't need to do that if you didn't do anything wrong. But please, just for the record, explain why the IRS did nothing wrong, this is not a scandal, but Lerner needed to plead the 5th anyway.

Re:How deep is the rot in Washington?

[amosh]

I'm not sure where you see me saying "And this is all okay." Or suggesting that they didn't happen. It's obviously NOT okay, and I don't think I was unclear on that. It's a gross violation of equal protection, and it was stupid to boot. But there's a difference between stupidity and a scandal.

Re:How deep is the rot in Washington?

[sjames]

Apparently it wasn't selective, it's just that nobody is shouting about the non Tea Party groups that the IRS questioned.

Re:How deep is the rot in Washington?

[msauve]

You say that, but much of the evidence which might clarify the reality has now gone missing.

Re:How deep is the rot in Washington?

[LDAPMAN]

Equal focus? Over 190 conservative groups were being stonewalled. By the most favorable reports, 7 liberal groups were somehow involved. How is that equal?

Re:How deep is the rot in Washington?

[ArmoredDragon]

What you claim doesn't appear to be true. It seems Fox had this tidbit covered around the same time as the rest.

http://www.foxbusiness.com/gov...

Notice that story is even 12 days older than this one:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06...

Re:How deep is the rot in Washington?

[frank_adrian314159]

Sounds "fair and balanced" to me.

Re:How deep is the rot in Washington?

[AK Marc]

Were you hoping nobody read the link? There's nothing in it that disagrees with the OP.

Re:How deep is the rot in Washington?

[AK Marc]

Neither looks to be "disagreeing" but have issued knee-jerk political responses. At least the OP's post had cites and the cites had specific names and actions. Not the generic "conservative orgs were treated worse, so we blame the Dems" statements.

Re:How deep is the rot in Washington?

[AK Marc]

No, it is not. "Discretion" is a right of enforcement that trumps the Constitution. The police have sued many times for that, and have won sufficiently.

Re:How deep is the rot in Washington?

[AK Marc]

It wasn't about the numbers being investigated, but the numbers being registered. Why are there 190 new conservative groups? When there are spikes that high in new registrations, doesn't that signal alerts? The "normal" rate is quite low. The fact that there were enough to get all "OMFG OVER 190!!!!!1!!!" about is proof enough to those that investigate fraud that something "interesting" was happening.

Re:How deep is the rot in Washington?

[AK Marc]

Idiot assholes like you are the reason nobody apologizes anymore in the USA. An apology isn't a confession. He apologized for "bad service" not for "targeting conservatives" as he still holds that didn't happen.

Re:How deep is the rot in Washington?

[Oligonicella]

Bullshit, read my other references to quotes from those two.

Re:How deep is the rot in Washington?

[david_thornley]

Was it done according to political preference? We hear loads more right-wing than left-wing groups, but I don't know how many applied. If the IRS just picked out the suspicious-looking ones, it could be that there were far more right-wing than left-wing groups. Or they may have messed up on their criteria. We know the IRS screwed up, but was it actually illegal? They legally should investigate applications.

I disagree with you about non-profit groups and politics, but that really doesn't matter to the IRS. The law is what it was, not what you or I might wish. The IRS has to enforce the law, and that means the IRS is in the business of figuring out who's over the non-profit line and who isn't. It's a big advantage to be non-profit, and so any large group that is doing anything may want to apply. Since the main disqualifying reason is politics, this means that political groups will apply in the hope of getting approved. The IRS is legally required to check this out. Do you want the IRS disobeying the law?

Re:How deep is the rot in Washington?

[david_thornley]

How do you know Lerner needed to plead the Fifth, or, if she needed to, what the need was? If pleading the Fifth were considered evidence of guilt, it'd be completely useless.

Re:How deep is the rot in Washington?

[AK Marc]

I read them, and they are guessing and repeating rumour. Neither presented a single fact.

And they are comments on the supposed cover up, not on the alleged act that is being covered up.

Re:How deep is the rot in Washington?

[Vitriol Angst]

They are apologizing for CORRECTLY doing their jobs. There are a lot of politically active astro turf groups hiding out as 501C organizations.

How did dumb ass Tea Baggers take over the moderation system of Slash Dot? WTF is going on that their Kung Fu is better? What needs to be investigated is not only these fucking Tea Bag groups, but why asshole comments by douche bags thinking the IRS should not have shut down these Tea Bag astro turf playgrounds yesterday has any credibility.

Yes, I've been drinking. And I'm having a hard time restraining the truth and how pissed off I am, that these fuckers are even given the time of day. You are idiots, your whole concept of "let billionaires run everything -- whats the worst that can happen?" is fucking myopically ignorant on an epic scale. Railroads -- the Irish potato famine. The only thin that makes the USSR look like a Utopia is the unfettered capitalism of America.

I apologize for my outburst, and hope it doesn't affect my future employment. Somehow idiot Tea Baggers have all the great jobs and government kick backs.

Re:How deep is the rot in Washington?

[Vitriol Angst]

From your link:

“I do not believe that partisanship motivated the practices of the people described in the IG report,” Miller said. “I think that what happened here was that foolish mistakes were made by people who were trying to be efficient in their work.”

This seems to corroborate what the GP is saying - some IRS folks were looking for organizations abusing the tax-exempt policy and felt that looking for keywords would be an efficient way to do that.

You know, like INTELLIGENT people might assume that "Liberty" and "freedom" have been co-opted by crooks, so it might be a good place to start a search. They exactly caught a bunch of charlatans, and since those people are funded by powerful deep pockets, their sponsors complained, and then the media being owned by these same billionaires pretended any of this made sense.

The world is exactly as corrupt as we think it is, and what we saw was the natural result of a Kleptocracy in power. Then they penalized people doing the right thing -- as we can expect from a banana republic.

Re:How deep is the rot in Washington?

[infinitelink]

Just a thought, but the Communist party is still designated a totalitarian subversive organization. That may have something to do with "issues" they are a having--and that classification DOES hinge on their own writings, histories, consequences of Communism being disastrous and rights-destroying globally...

Re:How deep is the rot in Washington?

[CodeBuster]

Selective enforcement is a violation of the Constitutional guarantee of equal protection.

Tell that to President Obama, he does it all the time.

Re:How deep is the rot in Washington?

[stenvar]

Was it done according to political preference?

Given that the IRS actually apologized for the targeting of Tea Party groups, yes.

The law is what it was, not what you or I might wish. The IRS has to enforce the law, and that means the IRS is in the business of figuring out who's over the non-profit line and who isn't

And it is a scandal if they abuse their power for the political interest of the administration.

Re:How deep is the rot in Washington?

[dywolf]

yes. spout some facts, and get modded Flamebait. stupid mods

Re:How deep is the rot in Washington?

[Sarius64]

Mmm. Yeah. Um. Racists!

Re:How deep is the rot in Washington?

[Sarius64]

They're obfuscating any criminality because in some fantasy land, it's okay as long as the conservative boogeymen get screwed.

Re:How deep is the rot in Washington?

[Sarius64]

Could you provide a log of the prayers your members recite, the dates, and if the prayers are used to further emphasize any political views? Seriously.

Re:How deep is the rot in Washington?

[pastafazou]

You know what the 5th is, right? From Wikipedia: The Fifth Amendment protects individuals from being forced to incriminate themselves. Incriminating oneself is defined as exposing oneself (or another person) to "an accusation or charge of crime,"
Your conclusion that " If pleading the Fifth were considered evidence of guilt, it'd be completely useless." is wrong. Clearly, by it's nature, the 5th is an indicator of a wrongdoing.

Re:How deep is the rot in Washington?

[stenvar]

I retain all the records that I am required by law (including the IRS) to retain, otherwise I'd get thrown in jail. I think the same rules should apply to government officials. For some reason, you seem to think that government officials should be allowed to flaunt their own laws and regulations.

Re:How deep is the rot in Washington?

[_KiTA_]

Did you read your first reference? Or are you just some kind of special stupid?

Did you read my first reference? You are citing Darrel Issa's report, and my first source is all about pointing out that Darrel Issa's report is full of bad data. He lied. Made it up. Misled the American people. Intentionally. There is no scandal here and everyone not a Tea Party nutter knows it.

Re:How deep is the rot in Washington?

[Sarius64]

The IRS claimed they needed the prayers logged these groups' members privately used in their prayers to God. If that's not overstepping the First Amendment what is?

Re:How deep is the rot in Washington?

[eric_harris_76]

Any federal agency that can make life hell for a person or business, without having to actually prove anything, and that faces no consequences for being wrong.

That's a bit redundant. I'll try again.

Any federal agency.

right-wing spin

[Anonymous Coward]

They targeted groups for their anti-IRS activities, not because of their conservative politics. That is a typical Tea Party spin of this story. Even if they were targeting conservatives, it wouldn't be any less fair than the FBI/NSA targeting liberals, which it did for decades.

Re:right-wing spin

[poetmatt]

Open source = anti-IRS?

Re:right-wing spin

[Anonymous Coward]

BULLSHIT!!!!

A bushel of Pinocchios for IRS’s Lois Lerner

In the days since the Internal Revenue Service first disclosed that it had targeted conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, new information has emerged from both the Treasury inspector general’s report and congressional testimony Friday that calls into question key statements made by Lois G. Lerner, the IRS’s director of the exempt organizations division. ...

The Pinocchio Test

In some ways, this is just scratching the surface of Lerner’s misstatements and weasely wording when the revelations about the IRS’s activities first came to light on May 10. But, taken together, it’s certainly enough to earn her four Pinocchios.

FWIW, "four Pinoocchios" is as bad as it get when it comes to lying.

And that was over a year ago, before 12 months of foot-dragging culminating with seven cases of "the dog ate my hard drive."

Re:right-wing spin

[thaylin]

Which law?

Re:right-wing spin

[msauve]

44 USC Section 3101 et seq, for one:

3101. Records management by agency heads; general duties

The head of each Federal agency shall make and preserve records containing adequate and proper documentation of the organization, functions, policies, decisions, procedures, and essential transactions of the agency and designed to furnish the information necessary to protect the legal and financial rights of the Government and of persons directly affected by the agency's activities.

Re:right-wing spin

[thaylin]

That is not the situation he was talking about. He was saying their actions in questioning the groups.

Re:right-wing spin

[operagost]

So you're OK with people being persecuted by the government as long as it's done equitably?

Re:right-wing spin

[stenvar]

Even if they were targeting conservatives, it wouldn't be any less fair than the FBI/NSA targeting liberals, which it did for decades.

There, in a nutshell, you have the problem in Washington: "it's OK for Obama to violate the Constitution and abuse his power because, hey, Republicans do it too".

I don't give a f*ck about either Democrats or Republicans. I want a president that operates within the law and stops abusing his power for political gain.

And I'm sad to say that Obama has turned out to be one of the most dishonest and destructive presidents in recent history, and that's quite an achievement given the jerks who preceded him.

Re:right-wing spin

[sstamps]

And here we see extremism in its final stage. Kill those who disagree with you.

FTFY

Not like lunatic conservative nutjobs haven't said the same fucking thing over and over for years.

Though, I have to say, if those nutjobs (of either stripe) come around looking to shoot anybody, I will be glad to bury their corpses in my lime pit after I am done with them.

Re:right-wing spin

[Richy_T]

The IRS serves at the whim of the people, it has no remit to target "anti-IRS" groups even were the tea party such. Its job is to collect taxes.

Re:right-wing spin

[Sarius64]

... says as he defends the party that created the KKK. Any citations on that claim?

whistling

[rmdingler]

I am sitting here trying to imagine the look on a judges face as I explain the same type of personal misconduct....

yeah, that's right, the Do you think I'm stupid? look.

Re:whistling

[L4t3r4lu5]

The question to ask is: Did the drive get destroyed prior to a retention order being issued?

If so, then that's SOP; Dead hardware is recycled.

If not, someone goes to jail.

Re:whistling

[Anonymous Coward]

It may be SOP for the physical drive itself, but is there not an IRS policy in place mandating that data be retained for some minimum number of years? If they were not certain there was another backup of information covered under this policy, is it not misconduct regardless of the timing of a retention order?

Re:whistling

[Oligonicella]

I would say the question would be where are the computers that were on the receiving end of those emails? Perhaps they were the other half dozen that "failed" as well? If the smell of bullshit is overwhelming, you don't actually need to find it to know it's there.

Re:whistling

[Anonymous Coward]

I am sitting here trying to imagine the look on a judges face as I explain the same type of personal misconduct....

yeah, that's right, the Do you think I'm stupid? look.

You're forgetting how openly corrupt the DOJ and court system currently is. I remember a couple of years ago (2012) when the white house was threatening the Supreme Court to say the Obamacare fines were Constitutional, or else. And they came up with that BS excuse of "it's not a fine it's a tax". This is a much bigger scandal than the missing 18.5 Nixon minutes, and yet no one seems to be even considering impeachment. In fact I predict that *NOTHING* will be done to those involved, even though destroying government Email is a crime, especially if it is covering up criminal behaviour. This will be in the news for a few weeks and then just disappear, no one will be punished. Someone might be asked to resign but there will be no prison time.

Re:whistling

[Charliemopps]

The question to ask is: Did the drive get destroyed prior to a retention order being issued?

If so, then that's SOP; Dead hardware is recycled.

If not, someone goes to jail.

The recycling of the hardware isn't a question in my mind. Of course they recycle hardware...
No email archiving? really? Of an IRS director?
All of her emails were really stored in a local PST file, with no backup what-so-ever?
And after that hard drive failed, with no backup, you then destroyed the drive?

Now that is a series of coincidental incompetence that I just cannot accept.
It's fathomable yes, but the Republicans certainly have the right to turn this into a full on circus.
Nothing Bush ever did was this obviously corrupt and he was up to all sorts of evil.
I always thought of Obama as similar to Jimmy Carter. I disagree with his policies, he's failing miserably, but his hearts in the right place.
Now I see him as more of a Nixon.

Re:whistling

[alen]

if they used MS Exchange then you can have email delivered to the pst file which means it will be deleted from the server after a few weeks and probably won't be in any backup. or you can configure deleted mail to be deleted automatically and not sit in the hidden location for a month.

Re:whistling

[L4t3r4lu5]

I know of at least one Russell Group university which archives email into local PST files. I suppose I should expect more from a government department, but then I remembered it was a government department ;)

Re:whistling

[asylumx]

Sure you *can* configure it that way, but I think most of us would not expect the IRS to configure it that way.

Re:whistling

[bill_mcgonigle]

No email archiving? really? Of an IRS director?

Kinda, sorta. This story has more details than any of the others I've seen.

It does appear that the IRS retention policies were in violation of the Federal Records Act. Maybe they'll fire some leaf-node IT guy over it.

Re:whistling

[oodaloop]

I smelled used-car-salesman sliminess on Obama when I first heard of him, and I was surprised how many people fell for his great sounding but deliberately vague speeches. The man came from Chicago, the most corrupt political system in our country. And I voted for Nader in 08, so I'm no Republican.

Re:whistling

[ScentCone]

All of her emails were really stored in a local PST file, with no backup what-so-ever? And after that hard drive failed, with no backup, you then destroyed the drive?

It's worse than that. The investigators also want to see the correspondence involving six other people whose activity could shed light on the matter. And what a surprise, those six other people also had storage failures, and their records have also been lost. Shocking, huh.

Re:whistling

[mrjimorg]

Nixon? Yea, right. If this was Nixon he would have handed over the tapes and resigned - LIKE HE DID. If Nixon was an Obamite he would have just said 'sorry, those tapes are gone. It happens. Nothing you can do now. Suck it'. We're reaching new lows every day.

Re:whistling

[stenvar]

It's not OK to destroy evidence just because you haven't received a judge's order yet.

In this case, since she is a government official, and a high-ranking one at that, her data is automatically subject to retention and scrutiny; it should never have been destroyed under any circumstances.

Re:whistling

[Talderas]

Nixon is overshadowed by Watergate but he had some significant triumphs during his presidency. The largest of which was the opening of US-Chinese foreign relations and he also helped get the Clean Air Act passed. I can say that the US's foreign relations were better off after he left office than compared to when he took it. I cannot say the same of Obama thus far. Aside from a few more toppled regimes I've not seen anything of substance. Israel feels more isolated and that's certainly not at all helpful to obtaining a lasting peace in the middle east. China's been acting more and more beligerent towards Japan. Russia seemingly is attempting to restore it's empire's boundaries. What I see is a raising of tensions and a President that is seemingly doing nothing to cool them.

Re:whistling

[skydyr]

This isn't the first time the Redskins trademarks have been revoked. The previous case started in the late 90s and ended on appeals in maybe 2009 with the finding that the plaintiffs didn't have standing to bring the case, as I recall.

Re:whistling

[AK Marc]

A lot of places have 3-year recycling rules. Computers are wiped between XP and Vista/7. The IRS has an email server everyone "should be" using, so why are so many employees having issues? Did they have a 20M box limit and piles of 19M attachments running around? I've worked places (recently) where I hit my email cap within a week of starting. "here read this to get up to speed" and a few attachments later, I'm archiving all mail, including new mail.

I personally had to deal with the IRS a few times, every time I was told it was "illegal" for them to use email, and they used mail or phone exclusively. Maybe they have different policies for different departments, but I've tried, mutliple times, and have never seen an email from an IRS employee.

Re:whistling

[AK Marc]

Nixon handed over the tapes, after they were wiped. If this were Nixon, the drives would have been there, with the incriminating emails deleted. And Nixon resigned only after impeachment started, and it looked like the votes had him beat. He was a coward to ran.

Re:whistling

[hondo77]

No email archiving? really? Of an IRS director?

Do you know what the data retention policy/rule/law is for an IRS director? Not what you think it should be but what it actually is?

Re:whistling

[Belial6]

Describing how to commit an illegal act does not make it legal.

Re:whistling

[quantaman]

The recycling of the hardware isn't a question in my mind. Of course they recycle hardware...
No email archiving? really? Of an IRS director?
All of her emails were really stored in a local PST file, with no backup what-so-ever?
And after that hard drive failed, with no backup, you then destroyed the drive?

Now that is a series of coincidental incompetence that I just cannot accept.
It's fathomable yes, but the Republicans certainly have the right to turn this into a full on circus.

It's deserving of an investigation but it's too early to jump to conclusions.

How widespread were these poor data retention practices? Is this something that affected only Lerner and the other investigated officials, or is it part of a wider problem in the IRS of managing email records.

Nothing Bush ever did was this obviously corrupt and he was up to all sorts of evil.
I always thought of Obama as similar to Jimmy Carter. I disagree with his policies, he's failing miserably, but his hearts in the right place.
Now I see him as more of a Nixon.

There's no evidence that Obama has actually done anything. Even assuming Lois Lerner is guilty she was in that position since '06 and there's no evidence it went above her.

Surely you can see the difference between a president caught on tape in a criminal conspiracy and an IRS manager whom may not be guilty of anything more than incompetence.

Re:whistling

[omnichad]

I personally had to deal with the IRS a few times, every time I was told it was "illegal" for them to use email, and they used mail or phone exclusively. Maybe they have different policies for different departments, but I've tried, mutliple times, and have never seen an email from an IRS employee.

I'm sure they're most concerned with internal emails. It's no surprise the IRS wouldn't rely on email as a primary official communication, but that's not the same thing.

Re:whistling

[Sarius64]

Too funny. You're pathetic comprehension of American history should invalidate your posting privileges.

Re:whistling

[jwhitener]

That doesn't mean much to me. I'd like the investigators to target 10 IRS employees at random and see if they have email from the same time period. Maybe 90% of all IRS employees don't keep email after X years or months. Has anyone determined that?

In other articles the IRS states that it has been their policy for a long time to only maintain 6 months of email backups. After that, it is up to the client to retain more. What percent of IRS employees keep 2 years of email without fail? (How long ago were the investigators seeking emails from? unclear).

Ditto with the hard drive. What percent of IRS employees have hard drives older than X time (whatever time period the investigators are searching for).

Recycled Hard Drive?!

[TaoPhoenix]

See this is where the news gets varying degrees of surreal.

In 2014, you "recycled" a hard drive with important emails on it?! Really?!

So then we're faced with that famous Dr. Who trick of whether the Media is accurately reporting an astoundingly senseless event, or if the Media got it wrong.

Oh look, this time it's the IRS. What's with agencies magically losing data when it suits them? Snark aside and all that, why is it that only HIPAA medical records get taken remotely seriously at least with lip service? What possibly produces a result like "ho hum, let's recycle this person's hard drive and damn any data that happens to be there in the only copy with no backup?!"

Re:Recycled Hard Drive?!

[SpzToid]

Conspiracy theory, much? Really? This is the U.S. Federal Government we're discussing and the taxpayer is kind of a legacy concern of theirs. No one was considering preserving anything on that particular hard disk, and presumably another part of the government I.T. dept. was responsible for backing up the emails, (and another part of the government was responsible for a verifiable audit trail, ...and at some point the hard disk did what hard disks due in such circumstances), while yet another department merely wanted to re-use the %$#!@! hard disk.

Because of the gravity of the situation, someone did track all that down and there you have it. ...p.s. This is Slashdot and it is full of admins just doing their job to pay their rent. I'm not saying the situation is Kosher, but just so long as we can all agree on what is exactly Kosher well then, fine; otherwise everything is anyone's guess.

P.S. Whatever happened to G.W. Bush's Exchange server backups and recovery? That was a priority with a budget if I recall correctly.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...

Re:Recycled Hard Drive?!

[UnknowingFool]

Unfortunately there are no details of this recycled drive on Fox News, that's not surprising that they spin it like the IRS suddenly destroyed a HD. Politico has much more detail.

As part of the investigation, the GOP has asked for all media that Lerner may had used like old hard drives, thumb drives, etc. This is fairly normal. The hard drive in question was in Lerner's computer until summer 2011. It had crashed and IT staff replaced it. The GOP wanted the hard drive so that tech experts could try to recover the data. But IT has long recycled that drive as it was no longer functioning. Personally I don't know of many IT staff that keep broken hard drives for 3 years.

Re:Recycled Hard Drive?!

[Oligonicella]

"Personally I don't know of many IT staff that keep broken hard drives for 3 years." - Or make the attempt to recover the only copies of governmental correspondence contained within? Nixon's secretary accidentally erased 18 minutes too, you know.

Re:Recycled Hard Drive?!

[squiggleslash]

Stop spouting facts, they have no place in this lynching! Next you'll be pointing out that the IRS targeted OWS groups too...

Re:Recycled Hard Drive?!

[SecurityGuy]

No, the sensible version of this would be that the drive failed, so they recycled it. That's completely reasonable. Happens all the time. The UNreasonable and unbelievable part is that those emails existed ONLY on that hard drive. If that really happened, there should be lots of documentation including who got fired for it.

Good point, though, in anything I've been involved in that got reported in the news (nothing work related, I'm thinking of a climbing accident that happened while I was in the park) the first details reported in the news were astoundingly wrong.

Re:Recycled Hard Drive?!

[dywolf]

Fox is acting like its big news, but really, anyone whos had to deal with government computer networks shouldnt be surprised by any of this.

Government computers die all the time. Cause they suck. Old peices of trash. Horrible software bloat too, things required to run in background for security. And government IT's solution nearly always the same: Wipe it and reimage it, or "here, have a new(ish) computer. the emails arent even stored on the personal issued computer anyway, they're on the server. And those serves go down a LOT. The backups frequently dont work, or get lost; I cant tell you how many times I've lost stuff on the server drive. Plus employees all the time ignore protocols that get in the way of productivity ("must scan now" "must backup now" "dont turn off" are frequently met by "end task sucker, i got work to do"). Much like any large business.

All in all: non-scandal

Re:Recycled Hard Drive?!

[dywolf]

I'll pull that back slightly:
All in all: the only real scandal is how poorly managed and enforced government IT is.

Re:Recycled Hard Drive?!

[Capt James McCarthy]

. Whatever happened to G.W. Bush's Exchange server backups and recovery? That was a priority with a budget if I recall correctly.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...

It truly baffles me to no end when people use the wrongs of the past to somehow justify the wrongs of today.

So I guess we just say F' it and let our elected officials get away with whatever they want. Justice was overrated anyways.

Re:Recycled Hard Drive?!

[UnknowingFool]

And how do you know that they didn't? Most times when a HD crashes, IT tries to recover the data; however, they aren't experts at this. If a basic attempt does not work, they give up on it. They could send it out to an outside company that does it for a ton of money. But like all things, maybe there wasn't anything on the drive that was so important as to spend the money. You are reading the lack of evidence as evidence of a conspiracy.

Re:Recycled Hard Drive?!

[SpzToid]

While my Presidential document archival reference might baffle you, I did clarify that particular disk/document recovery referenced in TFA was actually *funded* and prioritized soon enough, at least in theory. Not all government hard disks are treated with such respect for their former contents, and in fact most are discriminated against as they get their contents securely wiped.

Re:Recycled Hard Drive?!

[msauve]

"Personally I don't know of many IT staff that keep broken hard drives for 3 years."

How many do you know who are required by law to preserve the records stored on those hard drives?

Re:Recycled Hard Drive?!

[mrchaotica]

Conspiracy theory, much? Really?

When it's the user's hard drive and the contents of the mail server and the backups of the hard drive and the backups of the mail server and the user seems reluctant to tell the truth about what the emails actually say and there are allegations of misconduct involving said emails and (as far as we know) the IRS isn't also missing a whole bunch of non-related emails, only "coincidentally" the potentially-damaging ones... then maybe it really is a fucking conspiracy!

Re:Recycled Hard Drive?!

[mrchaotica]

Personally I don't know of many IT staff that keep broken hard drives for 3 years.

Sure, that's reasonable... if that's the only issue and if you know you have functioning backups.

The problem is that it starts looking a lot less reasonable in the context that every other place the emails were stored was also "lost."

Re:Recycled Hard Drive?!

[jeffmeden]

It truly baffles me to no end when people use the wrongs of the past to somehow justify the wrongs of today.

So I guess we just say F' it and let our elected officials get away with whatever they want. Justice was overrated anyways.

No need to be baffled. You are seeing his statement backward. He is not saying this case is excusable because it happened before, he is asking why this case is being treated with such fervor while the previous one wasn't. After all, this thread is metanews about the reaction to the scandal, not any reflection on the actual happenings at the IRS/Treasury.

Re:Recycled Hard Drive?!

[SpzToid]

Good point.

Re:Recycled Hard Drive?!

[ScentCone]

Stop spouting facts, they have no place in this lynching! Next you'll be pointing out that the IRS targeted OWS groups too...

Yeah, facts like six other failures of storage for emails for six other people's mail the investigators want to read? What a crazy coincidence. But facts are facts, right?

And please provide a list of hundreds of OWS-flavored groups that had their applications deliberately steered into limbo (not approved, not denied) using tactics like asking the organizers for lists of all of the people in their groups, what books they read, what they think about - you know, the same sort of stuff that was asked of the conservative groups whose applications were deliberately kept on ice past the election cycle in question. So, please - all of those OWS groups in the same status, and be specific. The IRS doesn't have such a list, because there isn't one (as there is with the conservative groups that were abused by that agency). So you must have a large list that nobody else does. Do tell! Specifically.

Re:Recycled Hard Drive?!

[ScentCone]

The UNreasonable and unbelievable part is that those emails existed ONLY on that hard drive.

Sure, that's unreasonable. But the actually unbelievable part is that investigators had six more people whose email they wanted to collect, and - shockingly! - there was also a failure of storage for those same people, and those records were also beyond reaching.

Unbelievable, but sure as hell convenient for the administration. Unbelievable, and completely predictable for "the most transparent administration in history."

Re:Recycled Hard Drive?!

[msauve]

You say that as if it were true. Cite, please, because there is no "6 month" limitation, and the records required to be kept are

As used in this chapter, "records" includes all books, papers, maps, photographs, machine readable materials, or other documentary materials, regardless of physical form or characteristics, made or received by an agency of the United States Government under Federal law or in connection with the transaction of public business and preserved or appropriate for preservation by that agency or its legitimate successor as evidence of the organization, functions, policies, decisions, procedures, operations, or other activities of the Government or because of the informational value of data in them.

Which clearly includes the information now being sought. Furthermore, for records kept only on a (now defective) hard drive, the law requires action to recover them:

The head of each Federal agency shall notify the Archivist of any actual, impending, or threatened unlawful removal, defacing, alteration, or destruction of records in the custody of the agency of which he is the head that shall come to his attention and with the assistance of the Archivist shall initiate action through the Attorney General for the recovery of records he knows or has reason to believe have been unlawfully removed from his agency, or from another Federal agency whose records have been transferred to his legal custody. In any case in which the head of the agency does not initiate an action for such recovery or other redress within a reasonable period of time after being notified of any such unlawful action, the Archivist shall request the Attorney General to initiate such an action, and shall notify the Congress when such a request has been made.

- both cites from 44 USC Chapter 33.

Re:Recycled Hard Drive?!

[sandytaru]

Depends on how outlook was configured. Ideally the backups of the PST file should be stored on the user's share via Documents, but if the shared drive was getting too bloated with fat PST files because of retention policies (yup) I would not be surprised at all if the PST file was re-configured to be stored in the local drive instead.

Re:Recycled Hard Drive?!

[UnknowingFool]

And the fact that the only group that was denied status was a progressive liberal group. Please present facts otherwise. Oh, you can't can you? All you've got is crazy conspiracy theories about denied the IRS target right leaning groups when it didn't happen. At best, these groups got extra scrutiny and IN THE END still got their status.

Re:Recycled Hard Drive?!

[UnknowingFool]

I'm not up on my group think short hand, but the IRS only targeted Tea Party and Conservative groups. That some OWS, whatever that is, groups were also included in the list is more like a friendly fire incident.

The poster refers to the fact that the IRS methods targeted both liberal and conservative groups. In fact the only group denied status was a progressive liberal group. It wasn't merely a case of friendly fire.

Re:Recycled Hard Drive?!

[UnknowingFool]

You say that as if it were true. Cite, please, because there is no "6 month" limitation, and the records required to be kept are,

Please my original link. It clearly says the IRS keeps emails for 6 months.

Which clearly includes the information now being sought. Furthermore, for records kept only on a (now defective) hard drive, the law requires action to recover them:

First of all, 44 USC Chapter 33 does not actually say that. 44 USC Chapter 29 covers retention. So either you are trying to sloppy in documenting or you are trying to combine two different sections to say one thing that it does not. The keyword you seem to miss is "unlawful". In this case, the HD was crashed. The IT person removed it. That's not unlawful as the IT staff as part of normal lawful duties removed a HD.

Re:Recycled Hard Drive?!

[msauve]

The administration has a legal duty to retain and protect records. If they do not keep that duty, as is the case here, it is an illegal act. You're not very good at this.

Re:Recycled Hard Drive?!

[DutchUncle]

Basically I agree. OTOH suppose that hard drive with potentially sensitive information fell into the wrong hands? The hysteria over "lack of security" would be worse. If there was no specific retention order for the drive, and they gave up on attempted recovery, then destruction was the *appropriate* solution at the time, at least for the IT techs working on it. Security works against retention and backup.

Re:Recycled Hard Drive?!

[UnknowingFool]

Wow, you need to read and comprehend better. From your own quote:

The head of each Federal agency shall notify the Archivist of any actual, impending, or threatened ,b>unlawful removal, defacing, alteration, or destruction of records in the custody of the agency

An IT staff doing his job in replacing a HD is lawful as it is his/her job. What you seem to think is that any destruction is by nature unlawful. That's faulty logic and selective reading of the statute. What you are saying is as silly as saying that the janitor throwing away trash at a government agency is unlawful.

Re:Recycled Hard Drive?!

[msauve]

If that "trash" consists of the only copy of protected records, yes, it is illegal. It is a failure by the head of the agency to "preserve records."

You seem to think that federal agencies can legally destroy records simply by placing them in the trash, where they can be carried off by the garbageman.

Re:Recycled Hard Drive?!

[UnknowingFool]

Again you keep not understanding what "unlawful" means. If a stranger takes my car away, that's called theft. If I call a tow service to move my car, that's not theft. If a tow wrecker takes my car because it was illegally parked, that's also not theft. 44 USC 29 applies to "unlawful" destruction. Not ALL destruction. Please read more carefully.

Re:Recycled Hard Drive?!

[UnknowingFool]

Do you spend your nights worrying about something that you can't change or do you eventually shrug it off too?

Re:Recycled Hard Drive?!

[msauve]

If you have the legal responsibility to preserve records, and do not do so, you have acted unlawfully.

Re:Recycled Hard Drive?!

[ScentCone]

And the fact that the only group that was denied status was a progressive liberal group

The issue wasn't denial, it was the issuing of hugely onerous lists of harassing questions intended to delay the processing of these groups' applications, thus keeping them from being processed. Not denied, NOT APPROVED, either.

You can't say the groups were or weren't denied, because they were kept in limbo, on purpose, for months and sometimes years. As good as denied, but actually better, because they couldn't appeal that non-denial, limbo condition.

All you've got is crazy conspiracy theories about denied the IRS target right leaning groups when it didn't happen.

And you're making stuff up. Who said they were denied? They weren't denied their status as non-profits, they were denied the same level of access and service as their liberal counterparts. Deliberate, purposeful, and unconstitutional unequal treatment under the law.

Re:Recycled Hard Drive?!

[Shatrat]

They targeted both right and left wing groups critical of the adminstration? Oh well that changes everyfuckingthing. Thanks for pointing this out.

Re:Recycled Hard Drive?!

[UnknowingFool]

You can't say the groups were or weren't denied, because they were kept in limbo, on purpose, for months and sometimes years. As good as denied, but actually better, because they couldn't appeal that non-denial, limbo condition.

They were delayed "on purpose" requires that pre-supposition that it was for political reasons. Being a government bureaucracy, you'd rather believe it was malice as opposed to being a normal, government bureaucracy that takes too long to do things.

Re:Recycled Hard Drive?!

[UnknowingFool]

Let me explain this again: In 44 USC Chapter 29 section that you quote covers the "unlawful" destruction of records. It says it in black and white. It does not address ALL destruction. You keep equating ALL destruction as unlawful when 29 does not say that at all. There can be lawful destruction of records.

Re:Recycled Hard Drive?!

[ScentCone]

Being a government bureaucracy, you'd rather believe it was malice as opposed to being a normal, government bureaucracy that takes too long to do things.

It's a lot simpler than that. They came right out and said they targeted the groups in question because of the political orientation of those groups. As other groups were processed in weeks, the conservative groups were asked questions about their personal reading lists as their applications lingered for months or years. What part of that are you not understanding?

Re:Recycled Hard Drive?!

[AK Marc]

IRS was (still is, by some reports) moving to Win7 off XP. It's an industry standard act to wipe drives when re-imaging to a new OS. I've seen nothing in all this that points to malice. Not for targeting new registrants, and not for "losing email".

Re:Recycled Hard Drive?!

[AK Marc]

When it's the user's hard drive

Is wiped in a routine OS upgrade.

and the contents of the mail server and the backups of the hard drive and the backups of the mail server and the user seems reluctant to tell the truth about what the emails actually say and there are allegations of misconduct involving said emails and (as far as we know) the IRS isn't also missing a whole bunch of non-related emails, only "coincidentally" the potentially-damaging ones...

Because users, against department guidelines, archive emails to a local (not network) drive, causing all the actions above to happen automatically without any human action or knowledge.

then maybe it really is a fucking conspiracy!

No, I've seen this happen at multiple private companies. They just didn't have lots of lawsuits flying around calling attention to it. That's not a conspiracy, that's standard "hire a CS graduate for IT" work. IT professionals, are, in general, incompetent (certainly not anyone reading this, but all the "other guys"). Setting email box limits low, quotas on shared drives, and a policy requiring all emails to be stored on the server demonstrates incompetence. Especially when the IT guys go in and bump their 20M limits to 20G, and complain about the whiny users.

This kust looks like standard private-sector IT SNAFU. I've not seen *anything* that would indicate otherwise.

Re:Recycled Hard Drive?!

[Straif]

That group was denied because they expressly stated their goal was the training and election of Democrat women, not female candidates, but Democrat female candidates only. That's like going into a gun shop and on the form stating you are buying a gun to shoot your neighbor and then using that as an example of excessive gun control.

Even so, that same group had already been granted non-profit status at several other branches.

Re:Recycled Hard Drive?!

[AK Marc]

Yeah, facts like six other failures of storage for emails for six other people's mail the investigators want to read? What a crazy coincidence. But facts are facts, right?

The time frame of the "failures" overlaps with the IRS's XP to Win7 upgrades. Could it be that the entire department was (wongly) storing emails locally, probably on bad IT advice, and got all their emails wiped in a routine OS upgrade? No, it's a conspiracy to treat all applicants the same, poorly.

The "problem" seems to be that there were an unusually high number of applications in a short period, so they *all* got delayed. It's a "conservative" issue because of the mix of applicants, not that they were singled out as the applicants treated poorly.

The conspiracy is twisting uniformly poor service into a political conspiracy.

Re:Recycled Hard Drive?!

[Straif]

Even the IRS's own IT guidelines states that all Federal Records (emails pertaining to IRS related activities) must be retained indefinitely for FOIA requests. There is no 6 mount opt out. It's also federal law that those documents be maintained.

The IT department did try to cover themselves by saying that they aren't responsible for storing those records and that EVERY work related email must be printed and then physically stored (like that was ever going to happen).

Re:Recycled Hard Drive?!

[Yakasha]

You can't say the groups were or weren't denied, because they were kept in limbo, on purpose, for months and sometimes years. As good as denied, but actually better, because they couldn't appeal that non-denial, limbo condition.

They were delayed "on purpose" requires that pre-supposition that it was for political reasons. Being a government bureaucracy, you'd rather believe it was malice as opposed to being a normal, government bureaucracy that takes too long to do things.

Which liberal groups waited 3 years for an answer?

Re:Recycled Hard Drive?!

[AK Marc]

You obviously don't work in IT. I've seen companies with very low quotas. So everyone stored emails locally. And the standard policy for OS upgrades is to wipe the drive. As the time these were "lost" the IRS was working on XP to Win7 upgrades. Why is it "unreasonable" to think that upgrades are done in batches of departments or bad archive habits are propagated among co-workers?

Re:Recycled Hard Drive?!

[Belial6]

Don't forget that the year prior to the misconduct, the president "joked" about using the IRS to attack rivals.

Re:Recycled Hard Drive?!

[Belial6]

Particularly convenient for an administration that publicly "joked" about using the IRS as a harassment tool just the prior year.

Re:Recycled Hard Drive?!

[david_thornley]

Or it's blithering incompetence on the part of IRS IT. IIRC, they're currently paying Microsoft through the nose because they haven't been able to get off XP yet. I have no confidence that the IRS could get most of the non-related emails either, your speculation to the contrary. Perhaps the reason they haven't turned up missing is that nobody's asked to look at them.

Sure, this level of incompetence is illegal. It would also be completely unsurprising.

Re:Recycled Hard Drive?!

[SecurityGuy]

We're not talking companies, we're talking the federal government where there are records retention laws, and we're talking about an IRS director's emails, some of which almost certainly met the definition of "records" under the law. Some things which are merely good practice for "companies" are mandatory for federal agencies.

Re:Recycled Hard Drive?!

[mrchaotica]

Okay, fine. In that case, add a "...and the Federal Records Act (among other things) explicitly makes the kind of IT gross incompetence you mention illegal..." clause to my previous statement!

Re:Recycled Hard Drive?!

[AK Marc]

And many of them are mandatory for companies as well.

Doesn't change the fact that many "best practices" are pretty horrible, and most IT departments are incompetent.

Some things which are merely good practice for "companies" are mandatory for federal agencies.

So is it a conspiracy or negligence? It's hard to prove all the lunatics wrong when the bar changes every post. There is no proof of a deliberate coverup. There is no proof of deliberate deletions. The practices used by the government are incompetent, but still industry "best practices", because the industry is incompetent.

Re:Recycled Hard Drive?!

[AK Marc]

Someone else posted the IRS policy making the storage of emails the "responsibility" of the employee. At some point a human has to do it. So which human and how deliberately is the question. It looks to me that employees "innocently" archived emails locally, deleting them off the server. They then "lost" them in a mass event, like a department OS upgrade. Sounds plausible, and no one act "grossly" anything.

Unless you consider it gross incompetence to allow users to delete emails. Even the cat joke ones.

Re:Recycled Hard Drive?!

[squiggleslash]

Yeah, government bureaucracies can be slow. But for 27 months, right before an election, not one single "Tea Party" or "Patriots" group got approved, while dozens of liberal groups got approved. This amounts to tampering with an election

Compare like with like. Is your statement correct if it's changed to "But for 27 months, right before an election, not one single "Tea Party" or "Patriots" group got approved, while dozens of Occupy groups got approved."? No.

Is your statement correct if it's changed to "But for 27 months, right before an election, not one single conservative group got approved, while dozens of liberal groups got approved."? Again, no.

I'm not sure if you're trying to spin things, or you're repeating a talking point without thinking about it.

Re:Recycled Hard Drive?!

[mrchaotica]

There is a saying: "once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, three times is enemy action." Even if each thing could plausibly be a mistake due to incompetence when considered individually, the combination suggests that somebody is acting in bad faith.

Unless you consider it gross incompetence to allow users to delete emails. Even the cat joke ones.

Disk space is cheap, and the Federal Records Act (etc.) says that stuff should be FOIA-able. So yes, I think that if somebody FOIAs the cat jokes then the IRS should be able to provide them!

Re:Recycled Hard Drive?!

[Sarius64]

Well GS-15's can be fired for gross negligence these days, so yes.

Re:Recycled Hard Drive?!

[UnknowingFool]

[Citation Needed]

Re:Recycled Hard Drive?!

[UnknowingFool]

Generally you would take an image of the drive and put it on tape for archival purposes before destroying it...

And if the HD is not functioning, how do you image it? I'm not an expert on HDs but if the HD fails to work, I don't have a lot of tools to fix this. Data Recovery companies have many tools and procedures to try to recover the data. Some things to try is replacing different parts like the board, head, etc. I do not see a lowly IT tech having these tools.

Only a moron would believe that there are no records of those emails. The mailbox database would be replicated(to 16 different locations if my tax rate is accurate). If their admins are not complete morons those servers are backed up nightly(or even more frequently) to tape and spinning rust. The tape is then archived offsite for later use

This was covered. IRS keeps emails and their backups for 6 months only. The emails wanted go back 3 years.

Therefore subpoena every email from anyone in the government to Lois Lerner, and every email from her to every government official. This should allow cross referencing of all of the emails and you could easily rebuild the emails from those chains. even if someone didn't get the email from her it would be referenced in an email that was forwarded to someone else.

This was done. The IRS retrieved 24,000 emails from 83 individuals on their local HDs. There are of course emails that will be missing. Her mails off her HD in this case.

Re:Recycled Hard Drive?!

[UnknowingFool]

First of all I said "Personally" meaning "in my experience" specifically because I don't claim to know how the entire IT world does things. But in my experience from small (under 30) to large (Fortune 100) companies, they don't keep HDs around that don't work especially when they have warranties to replace them with little cost. A basic attempt to recover the data is done. But the IT guy isn't normally a data recovery expert. If there was something immensely valuable on the drive, it might be sent out to one of these data recovery companies. But this is done at great cost. Often times, the data is just gone. The HD is gone.

Re:Recycled Hard Drive?!

[AK Marc]

There is a saying: "once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, three times is enemy action."

So a car crash with two full cars head-on killing 8 people must be an enemy action because there were 8 deaths? Every major plane disaster with more than 8 dead was an enemy action, where more than 3 died?

From what I can tell this was a single incident, it just happened to affect multiple systems. The person who said they "crashed" is lying or was misinformed (in politics, I'd guess lying). Every report I've seen (from both sides, aside from the one "crashed" assertion, which has been repeated, but never confirmed) is consistent with the OS upgrades happening at the time, and SOP for OS upgrades is to wipe the drive and clean-install the new image/OS.

As far as I can tell, this was a single "incident" that just happened to affect more than one computer.

Re:Recycled Hard Drive?!

[mrchaotica]

Look, if you're so partisan that it blinds you to the blatant problems with this situation, then nothing I could say will convince you. I, however, can see that Republicans abusing their 501c3 status and Democrats corrupting the IRS to pursue a witch-hunt are both entirely possible. I don't know which of those happened -- cynically, I suspect both -- but I'm not going to pretend anybody is squeaky-clean just because they're on "my side!"

Re:Recycled Hard Drive?!

[AK Marc]

II'm not partisan, and that you see it as such indicates you are, despite implying you aren't.

Re:Recycled Hard Drive?!

[ScentCone]

Congressional testimony. Presidential news conference. You're embarrassing yourself.

Re:Recycled Hard Drive?!

[UnknowingFool]

So when asked for proof, you provide none.

Lost...

[JBMcB]

We lost the backups. Her computer drive was taken apart and recycled into a crib mobile for underprivileged infants. We had printouts but those were shredded into organic compost. The tape backups were overwritten as we only have one backup set of tapes. The people who sent her the email also deleted them from their "sent" boxes as they only have 5MB of quota for that mail box. The people who received her email deleted them from their inboxes as we rigorously practice inbox zero.

So you see, no monkey business here.

Re:Lost...

[Anonymous Coward]

The mail servers on which the email was transmitted also did not store the emails as our email server is a heavily modified ENIAC machine which has no digital storage. The emails were outputted onto punch cards, but a freak accident involving a series of angry kittens destroyed these too. We sifted the remains for any clues to the contents of the emails, but unfortunately did not have any luck.

It was proposed that we contact the souls of John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert via a medium and a Ouija board, but this was rejected on ground of religious freedom due to the IRS being a Christian organisation and not subscribing to paganistic rituals.

Re:Lost...

[argStyopa]

"The most transparent administration ever."

Actually, true. Probably not how they meant it. Or maybe it was?

Re:Fox News?

[pastafazou]

can you find the story on the Washington Post or the New York Times? If so, maybe you could provide a link, and we can compare the details included or omitted by each source. If, on the other hand, all you want to do is take a cheap shot at Fox news, then maybe you should be modded down as a troll....

Re:Fox News?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't necessarily look upon this as a partisan attack or the babbling of conspiracy theorists, although there probably is some of both in the mix. The reality of the situation is that people in public office and certainly people at that level need to have all official e-mails archived. Relying on the un-backed-up hard drive of a computer as the sole repository of official communications is complete insanity. Heads need to roll over this. They wouldn't accept this as an excuse when they're chasing after private citizens for this or for that. And to top it all off, the information probably does exist somewhere on a government server ... controlled by the NSA. It's out of control.

The Green Option

[neglogic]

Did they recycle the lost e-mails also? I hate to just throw away those electrons, better to recycle them.

Anti-tax, not conservative, groups

[Anonymous Coward]

These groups specifically feel that "taxation is slavery", and tried to circumvent tax law by claiming educational organization status.

To NOT target them for further scrutiny would have been a bigger scandal.

Re:Anti-tax, not conservative, groups

[Oligonicella]

Your post is a blatant lie. "The Internal Revenue Service apologized Friday for what it acknowledged was "inappropriate" targeting of conservative political groups during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status." - Associated Press

Re:Anti-tax, not conservative, groups

[sandytaru]

From what I understand, they went after them for not filling out their forms with all the required information.

Re:Anti-tax, not conservative, groups

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Actually, wasn't the USA founded by anti-tax groups . . . ?

Yes, the revolution taxes its children, indeed. It doesn't eat them any more.

Re:Anti-tax, not conservative, groups

[sandytaru]

This is the first I've heard about "personal audits of leadership." The story and the scandal, when it broke, was that organizations filing for tax-exempt status were asked to provide additional details regarding the organization. That may have included asking for personal information regarding some of the members, but if a group trying to say it's a "social improvement" organization is being led by someone whose day job is working as a political speech writer, the IRS would like to know that. I would go so far as to say they have a right to know that, Citizen's United be damned.

These organizations are filing for tax exempt status because donors are giving them a lot of money, and in order to avoid paying taxes on that donated money, they're under burden of proof to show that it's not being used directly for political purposes. Taxes are not an opt-in thing.

Re:How Convenient

[pastafazou]

You're absolutely correct, and everyone with any idea about IT knows this. Every story about this on the 'net has plenty of comments suggesting it too. So why don't the folks on the committee asking questions know it?

Do you really want to trust a government with

[UnknownSoldier]

your health records when they can't even keep your tax data??

Why the hell aren't these people slapped with an obstruction of justice fine??

Re:Do you really want to trust a government with

[OutSourcingIsTreason]

Why do you think "they can't even keep your tax data"? The company I work for is far more careful with customer data than with the emails I send to my coworkers.

Re:Do you really want to trust a government with

[asylumx]

Seriously! One person's emails != my tax data...

Re:Do you really want to trust a government with

[sandytaru]

Unless you work for the Army, the government doesn't store your health records. Your doctor's office does.

My father worked in an Army hospital's records department for twelve years before electronic medical records became a thing. Holy moly, some veterans files were about two inches thick.

Re:Do you really want to trust a government with

[UnknownSoldier]

It is *real* simple. Either the emails were:

personal: using government property for self gain is against the law.

OR

business: there was a *reason* the emails were sent/received. Ergo, I mentioned earlier: Obstruction of Justice

This isn't about "my" data but about not being accountable.

left-wing spin

[pastafazou]

They targeted likely opponents of the Obama administration in an attempt to impede the flow of funds to their opponents. It is a clear politicization of a department of the government that shouldn't be politicized. Any other interpretation of this is spin.

Re:left-wing spin

[dywolf]

Another myth repeated without factual basis.

Re: left-wing spin

[Anonymous Coward]

http://m.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/14/read-the-inspector-general-report-on-the-irs-scandal/

The IRS inspector General disagrees with you.

Re: left-wing spin

[ScentCone]

It also came out before they realized they targeted progressive groups just as often or more often.

Why are you lying? Hundreds of conservative groups had their applications deliberately delayed (past the election cycle) while progressive groups were pushed right through. Progressive groups were not subjected to illegal inquiries about the books their members read, what they think about, whether or how they pray, and more. The reason the IRS came out (when it was clear this was going to become public) and apologized for mistreating hundreds of conservative groups was because that's what happened. You're trying to wish it away, just like the administration.

If the opposite had happened (a conservative administration was running the IRS, and it was hundreds of progressive groups' applications tied up for years because of the names of the groups, and group organizers were told to respond with lists of all members, what books those members read, etc), you'd be shrieking at the top of your lungs, and you know it.

Re: left-wing spin

[thaylin]

I would love to see your citation for that. Even the most conservative web searches report more than that. http://thinkprogress.org/polit...

Re: left-wing spin

[thaylin]

Actually I would not, I am not liberal, and dont blame things on the president without evidence that he/she was involved in it. I dont run crying foul at every little thing that happens negatively. Also I am not lying http://thinkprogress.org/polit....

Re: left-wing spin

[thaylin]

It may be because I am typically settling down around 8-10pm getting ready for bed, and dont read every post in a thread, I assume you dont either, boy would that require a lot of time. Having read it now I dont see anything that "tears it to shreds". Most of the posts that try to refute it talk about having progressive in their name, as if that was the only way they were targeted.

Re:left-wing spin

[Sarius64]

Here you go!

U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Darrell Issa (CA-49), Chairman

Debunking the Myth that the IRS Targeted Progressives: How the IRS and Congressional Democrats Misled America about Disparate Treatment

Re:Fox News?

[mrbill1234]

I would love to be a fly on the wall in the Star Chamber where all the MSM other than Fox news conspire together.

Re:Fox News?

[Oligonicella]

"We've been informed that the hard drive has been thrown away," - Sen. Orrin Hatch:Finance Committee

What exactly prompted you to attempt that lame non-sequitor to Fox News? How exactly does it support any position that this did not happen, which was your obvious attempt to imply?

This is routine IT stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

Her hard drive crashed 3 years ago, she lost her pst file that was kept on her local hard drive (a bad but common practice). IT shredded the ruined drive, or a more likely event, it was turned into the manufacturer for a replacement drive because it was still under warranty.

No great conspiracy, just basic IT stuff.

Re:Fox News?

[Charliemopps]

/. is really going downhill....

The media in general is going down hill. As much as Foxnews shills for the republicans, this is probably the biggest story of the year, yet it's missing from nearly every other news organization in the country.
http://www.nytimes.com/
http://www.latimes.com/
http://www.pbs.org/topics/news...
http://www.cbsnews.com/
http://www.nbcnews.com/
http://abcnews.go.com/

I checked every one of those and there's no mention of it.
Obama could get IMPEACHED over this. This is turning into a Watergate level scandal.
It could all be coincidental, but seriously? The IRS doesn't archive email? REALLY?

Spoliation

[fluffmypill0w]

This is a clear cut case. Records will show abnormal handling of data. Duh

Re:Fox News?

[Lumpy]

Or it could be FAKE NEWS and the others refuse to report on made up bullshit? A Lot of news outlets are prone to make shit up. CNN did that over and over, Fox news has, etc...

Until I see at least three separate reported stories on different sources of it with complete information, I treat everything reported on Fox news or ANY other news outlet and 100% bullshit.

Our fucking news sources are 90% entertainment and 10% professional today.

Re:Fox News?

[Mashiki]

Welcome to the world of hyper-partisan liberals, who don't want the anointed one to be blamed for anything.

Come on, liberals. This is now beyond the scope of Watergate, if you have even the most base level of integrity you already know this. If you don't, you're either woefully ignorant on a site that's supposed to be for geeks, and you don't even understand the basics of how back-ups are done, and multi-mirrored arrays come into play. Or you're so hyper-partisan, so fucking bigoted that you should be questioning your entire belief system at this point.

Re:Fox News?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/irs-lost-lois-lerners-emails-in-tea-party-probe/

It is a shame to NBC and ABC when even CBS is doing their job to some degree.

I've seen IRS computers

[slaker]

An acquaintance of mine is a senior guy in Chicago's IRS office. He does large corporate audits, which means he's sitting across from guys in $2000 suits all day. The laptop he was carrying until late 2012 had a Windows 2000 license sticker on it and his "new" government-issued laptop is an HP that was manufactured in 2004. These guys really do make more with less and I have no trouble believing that the equipment Lerner was using was painfully obsolete and used until it died.

Re:I've seen IRS computers

[operagost]

I guess the IRS asset depreciation rules don't actually apply to the IRS.

Re:I've seen IRS computers

[sandytaru]

I just had an 8 year old monitor die on me. So a coworker swapped it out with an identical 8 year old monitor that still functioned. We're getting new monitors later this year, but the old ones will be-reused and sent out to field offices - until they all die for good.

Re:I've seen IRS computers

[_Sharp'r_]

A long time ago, when managing some government service contracts, I had someone from the BLM walk in and essentially say, "It's the end of the fiscal year and we need to spend some money left in our budget, what's the most expensive PCs and multiple monitor setups you can find to sell us to replace all our current machines with?"

I doubt Lois Lerner, a Director managing a group with 900 employees, was making due with old obsolete hardware like the guys in the trenches do. She managed a $90M+ budget, so I'm sure they could find some cash to keep her PC up to date.

Re:I've seen IRS computers

[ThatsNotPudding]

These guys really do make more with less and I have no trouble believing that the equipment Lerner was using was painfully obsolete and used until it died.

Guess who keeps cutting the IRS budget? The same Grover Norquist / Koch Whore pricks that are now screaming 'conspiracy'.

The real conspiracy is this: every dollar cut from the IRS budget results in SEVEN dollars robbed from the public coffers by scumbag thieves.

Re:Fox News?

[UnknowingFool]

Because Fox News paints it like this was some sort of sudden nefarious act by the IRS and fails to give relevant facts. Politico gives a much more detailed explanation that makes it less like a grand conspiracy. Lerner's HD crashed in 2011. It was replaced. IT threw away the old drive because it wasn't functioning. When facts are presented, it doesn't seem like it's that big a conspiracy.

All Hail our Supreme Dictator Barack

[gelfling]

We're approaching a "The Reichstag Burned Down" moment in America.

Re:Fox News?

[mysidia]

The IRS doesn't archive email? REALLY?

Apparently.... either they are in violation of the law, or we really need a new federal records act, requiring that all electronic documents pertaining to business be preserved in their original electronic form and backed up in at least two places, with yearly verification that the backup is working: with industry standard security controls to ensure that individual employees, regardless of status, are not allowed to omit, alter, or remove items from the record; technical measures are used to enforce the requirement; and, administrator actions to override the technical requirement are logged and audited and admin audit logs are backed up to at least two pieces of write-only media at different geographic locations.

Re:Fox News?

[UnknowingFool]

Maybe the media doesn't report it because it's not that big a story. Politico did report on it and they presented with many more facts that makes it seem like less a story. Fox News paints it like the IRS suddenly destroyed an old HD. In reality, the HD crashed in 2011 and was replaced. Being broken, IT threw it away. End of story.

Obama could get IMPEACHED over this. This is turning into a Watergate level scandal.

For that to happen, Obama would have to be involved. So far EVERY single detail of this so called "scandal" has uncovered that the President knew about it. Most likely because the actions of every single bureaucrat doesn't involve the President. Basically it's the GOP trying anything they can to oppose the President. Fake scandals like this one are just another tactic. And guess what, you're the sucker the GOP/Fox News is targeting.

It could all be coincidental, but seriously? The IRS doesn't archive email? REALLY?

Well if you read another source other than Fox, you would have known that the IRS keeps 6 months of emails. The GOP is asking for emails that go back 3 years.

Mail Server?

[jimmifett]

Who cares about a computer hard drive, what about the mail server? Surely her mail is archived by exchange or something. I mean, corporate email has to be archived for what, 5-7 years or something? Delicious bacon forbid that a business doesn't backup it's communications. Even IMs are archived via corporate email these days, via Office Communicator or it's successor. Sure, her local PST files are probably lost with drive erasure, but the server archive has to be there. If not, someone needs to be going to prison, and I can guarantee the IT ppl are going to point fingers in the proper direction, they aren't going to take the fall.

Re:Mail Server?

[UnknowingFool]

Current IRS policy is 6 months retention. I think that should be longer but that was not the case here.

Re:Fox News?

[jeffmeden]

"We've been informed that the hard drive has been thrown away," - Sen. Orrin Hatch:Finance Committee

What exactly prompted you to attempt that lame non-sequitor to Fox News? How exactly does it support any position that this did not happen, which was your obvious attempt to imply?

OK, here you go: The hard drive containing her emails "crashed" (it was unusable and could not be recovered by the IRS IT staff) and as a result, it was recycled/destroyed and replaced with a new one. The actual source was a Politico story which, besides conjecture, contained only this brief line of concrete information:

“We’ve been informed that the hard drive has been thrown away,” Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, the top Republican on the Finance Committee, said in a brief hallway interview.

So, unless there is some compelling reason to think that the drive was corrupted purposefully, or the recovery was disingenuous, then all you have here is SOP for any IT department (fix what's broke). Yet the only thing we see on Foxnews.com is a story painted to look exactly like the uncovering of a conspiracy (see all the other rants about impeachment for an example of how severely people are overreacting to this.)

Anything else I can help with?

Re:Fox News?

[UnknowingFool]

Edit: That the President didn't know about it.

Re:Fox News?

[Charliemopps]

Or it could be FAKE NEWS and the others refuse to report on made up bullshit? A Lot of news outlets are prone to make shit up. CNN did that over and over, Fox news has, etc...

Until I see at least three separate reported stories on different sources of it with complete information, I treat everything reported on Fox news or ANY other news outlet and 100% bullshit.

Our fucking news sources are 90% entertainment and 10% professional today.

How about directly from the lips of Orrin Hatch?

“We’ve been informed that the hard drive has been thrown away,” Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, the top Republican on the Finance Committee, said in a brief hallway interview.

http://www.politico.com/story/...

Re:Fox News?

[Culture20]

Why were her emails allowed to be on only her laptop/desktop HDD?

Re:Fox News?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I'm just baffled as to how IT managed to avoid being lynched by the cube drones if their standards for data retention and redundancy are in fact that low.

People hate losing data, and storing it the employee's HDD (except as an expendable cache purely for speed and bandwidth purposes) is roughly equivalent, once you have a decent number of people in the office, to just randomly deleting some sucker's email every week or two. Even in complete absence of any legal requirements, the users would either switch to unofficially using some shit webmail service or rise up with pitchforks in short order.

I am less than convinced by the alleged nonprofit status of some of the poor, wounded, groups whining about their treatment by the IRS; but the IRS sure is doing an excellent job of looking guilty as hell right about now.

Re:Fox News?

[Richard_at_work]

Why is no one in these meetings asking the fecking obvious question - why were her emails only stored on the one hard disk? What happened to the server side store? The archives? The on site backups? The off site backups?

Re:Fox News?

[Oligonicella]

Or Leahy, Democrat from Vermont (since Hatch is a Repub):
"You can't erase e-mails, not today, They've gone through too many servers. They can't say they've been lost. That's like saying, 'The dog ate my homework.' They're there, They know they're there, and we'll subpoena them, if necessary, and we'll have them."

Re:Fox News?

[UnknowingFool]

They were not "only" on her computer. They were also on the Outlook server; however, the IRS only keeps 6 months of emails. The GOP wanted all copies of her emails and they may have been on the computer in her .pst file. I say "may" as those files become corrupt themselves and have max file size, etc.

Sick the NSA Frankenstein on Government

[Anonymous Coward]

Well good people, now is the time to send a request over to NSA so that we (American people) can get the meta data by and between the entire IRS the whomever "they" have been talking to on this matter (and what else?).
Sure it will not directly yield the content of the messages (or so they say) but it can point to someone else you has a an electronic copy of these "lost" emails - like government computer.

Re:Fox News?

[NatasRevol]

Maybe their data retention is 3 months. And higher ups didn't understand what that meant and called it a crash/purge/accident/whatever.

I don't believe there are any actual regulations on how long you have to keep data, other than to have a stated length of time. I know that's how it worked where I was an email admin. We decided on 6 months. And legal okayed it. 6months & 1 day, it's all gone.

A yeah -- sure

[grheller]

How convenient this is -- Everyone concerned in this charade needs to go to prison, including that fool in the WH

Re:Fox News?

[kick6]

Or it could be FAKE NEWS and the others refuse to report on made up bullshit? A Lot of news outlets are prone to make shit up. CNN did that over and over, Fox news has, etc... Until I see at least three separate reported stories on different sources of it with complete information, I treat everything reported on Fox news or ANY other news outlet and 100% bullshit. Our fucking news sources are 90% entertainment and 10% professional today.

First you say that "others refuse to report on made up bullshit." Then you go on to say that, basically, all the MSM reports on made up bullshit. Color me confused.

Re:Fox News?

[NatasRevol]

Why doesn't anyone on slashdot ask more pertinent questions.

Like how long were the backups supposed to stick around?
What's user SOP for managing old emails?
What's IT's SOP for managing old emails?
How were they backed up?
How reliable/tested was the backup process, medium & recovery?
Or should we all just assume that everything is kept forever AND recoverable?

Re:Fox News?

[asylumx]

If it's from CNN, they'll probably claim the emails were on the Malaysia Airlines flight...

Re:Fox News?

[danbert8]

Yes, because I work for an oil company and when the government comes to investigate a pipeline leak they suspect was due to intentional decision making and my emails were lost in a hard drive crash and the drive was thrown away is a completely valid excuse and I'm sure the EPA will let us off the hook for any potential negative information that may have been contained in those emails.

Re:Fox News?

[Nutria]

but the IRS sure is doing an excellent job of looking guilty as hell right about now.

Purdy much... "What can we do to inflame Glenn Beck's foam horde even more? I know!!! Let's shred all the evidence proving our innocence!"

And these are the type of people They want running nationalized health care?

Re:How do you recycle a crashed hard drive?

[Culture20]

By separating it into its component parts and putting those parts into bins. The electronics and platters are shredded with industrial shredders. Then the parts and shredded dust are sent to recycling centers which sell the materials to factory which turn the materials into soda cans, picnic tables, or more hard drives.

Re:Fox News?

[Anonymous Coward]

The IRS has a retention policy as does _EVERY_ Government agency. This is plain and simple obstruction of justice, and people should be put in jail for it. Immediately people should be jailed for contempt, and while they sit the charges for obstruction can be raised. If people start going to jail, there is a chance for backups to magically appear.

Re:Fox News?

[danbert8]

Well according to their word the President didn't know about it. Sadly it seems all records of any conversations about it were lost...

Re:Missing IRS emails

[Anonymous Coward]

Enlighten us on which ones are fake?

200+ dead Mexicans from a failed ATF program, where Holder refused to give Congress requested information?
4 dead people at an embassy in Libya?
Dead people on VA waiting lists for treatment?
The if you like your health plan you can keep it, lie of the year last year?

Perhaps hundreds and hundreds of dead people is fake outrage for you, but its not for their family members.

Re: Fox News?

[Anonymous Coward]

In unrelated news, the IRS has released a new tax form for 2015: Form 1040-Soylent

Re:Fox News?

[LaughingVulcan]

Or Leahy, Democrat from Vermont (since Hatch is a Repub): "You can't erase e-mails, not today, They've gone through too many servers. They can't say they've been lost. That's like saying, 'The dog ate my homework.' They're there, They know they're there, and we'll subpoena them, if necessary, and we'll have them."

Which proves exactly how out of touch our legislators are in technical understanding, and once again makes it rather obvious that we have the government we deserve. (Also, how normative the surveillance culture has become that *anyone* should think data should be stored forever, for all time, no matter what it is.)

I know where to look!

[prisoner-of-enigma]

They should just contact the NSA. I'm sure they've got copies.

Exchange

[xdor]

No backup of the email server either? Hmm...

Re:Fox News?

[queequeg1]

I would be far more concerned about this issue if the president DIDN'T know about it. Obama will be gone in a couple of years. However, the nameless drones at the IRS who can drastically impact the lives of everyday Americans will continue in their jobs. It's kind of scary to think that there might have been some organically generated movement within the IRS to engage in this sort of conduct.

Re:Fox News?

[smooth wombat]

Obama could get IMPEACHED over this. This is turning into a Watergate level scandal.

How? Did the President order the IRS to destroy emails? Did the President order the IRS to investigate both conservative and liberal groups? Did the President have anything to do with what happened at the IRS?

Considering the previous administration explicitly told its staffers to use non-governmental email sources, in direct violation of several different laws, that it deleted emails after it was told to retain them for the investigation into the firing of 8 attorneys and a host of other related issues, including using the excuse that if an email had not been opened it wasn't considered read and therefore wasn't subject to retention and also fell under executive privilege, I fail to see how something not involving the President could lead to his impeachment when incidents directly involving a previous President didn't lead to impeachment.

Re:Fox News?

[DudeTheMath]

It's such a shame the IRS has this huge budget and all the newest computers, and they can't manage to keep all email forever.

Blind-eye

[xdor]

It is a conspiracy that's what's being investigated!

This is not just a political animal (i.e. an elected administration), this is the company in charge of tax records who is in non-compliance with the Federal law it enforces.

Or (more likely) the actual conspiracy has more connections, enough that someone is covering them up.

E-mail lost to SOP

[Eristone]

I am still laughing at all this because people forget to go back to the basics and remember that this is government/corporate and not your home mailbox. This is not Google's mail where it was revolutionary when they offered unlimited storage space. This isn't a technology company that treasures email communication like gold. This is a place that still is operating under late 90s/early 00s rules.

1) Storage is expensive - so (assuming) that they are running Exchange and somewhat recent (2003 - switching to 2007 would have taken too long when everything is working fine and made more sense to wait to 2010), they don't have a lot of storage space on the back end. Yes, I know you're bragging about terabyte drives and the like but the equipment on the back end is going to be circa 2005 and enterprise storage would be sitting around 72gb or 144gb SCSI, or maybe a NetApp or EMC device to allow clustering but it will still be limited.

2) Mail box sizes are going to be dictated by that same ancient policy - which means that they are going to be set at something like 100 MB or maybe even 250 MB. If they were *really* progressive, they'll be at 500 MB maximum size.

3) Standard IT procedure when the mailbox is full - archive the older messages to a PST file.

4) Standard IT policy is going to forbid putting PST files on home drives or any other networked drive because they are going to take up needed space. (remember, storage is still expensive in corporate/government world - we can't go down to Fry's and just get a few disks and pop 'em in a server without killing anything that resembles a support contract)

From here, all it takes is a crashed hard drive, a virus infected system (wipe and restore), moving to a new computer and doing a less than good job of moving the files from the old one to the new one or even PST corruption and that stuff is just gone.

Re:E-mail lost to SOP

[taxman_10m]

It's not even a space issue. MS was saying don't put PST files on the network:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/ask...

Has that guidance even changed since then?

Re:E-mail lost to SOP

[omnichad]

It's still not a good idea, whether MS says so or not. Then again, I question the reasoning of an entire collection of email being in a single point of failure file. Especially one that corrupts easily over a certain size (at least before the newer 64-bit format). Maybe the index, but why the contents? Something more like Maildir makes a lot of sense. Apple Mail also puts each email in its own file - which is what I've been using for years now...at least at home.

At work, I keep Outlook PST files local - and I don't have the problems that my coworkers do. I changed from the SOP default for a good reason.

Re:Fox News?

[Archangel Michael]

For those of us in IT, the excuses as to the failure to secure documentation, in the midst of a controversy is key. The fact that they are just NOW trotting this out as an excuse, rather than when the request was made, is highly suspicious. "Computer Crash" happens, but as we say in IT, if it doesn't exist in three places, it doesn't exist.

THAT being said, if they are claiming, again, that it was incompetence and not nefariousness, all I can say is, this is exactly WHY government cannot run anything competently. Further, because we cannot expect reasonable competency in government, the role of government needs to be severely limited.

And yet, we have people who think that government run healthcare is going to be a godsend. I wonder how many people dying from Government "ooops we made a mistake" people will take. Oh wait, that just happened with the VA.

Any sufficient level of incompetence is indistinguishable from malice. The problem is, they should be treated the same, but aren't.

Why where the emails only on the desktop drive?

[Anonymous Coward]

I work for local government (why I'm posting as an AC) in a state with strong Sunshine Laws. ALL of our incoming and outgoing emails are archived as they are part of the public record! Even if I deleted all of my emails, they can still be searched and produced if requested. Why isn't this the case at the Federal level????

Re:Why where the emails only on the desktop drive?

[AK Marc]

In short, because there is no unified federal policy. The end user deletes things because they assume that the server stores all. The server honors the delete request because, hey, it's a delete request. For all the server knows, its a photo of a cat. The user should keep it if it's important.

So you have multiple sides assuming the other is doing something they are not. And things fall through the cracks.

It's not malice, it's incompetence. Lots of it. Of course, I've seen the same thing happen in corporates. A corporate as large as the government would be worse, not better.

Re:Fox News?

[Hotawa Hawk-eye]

The IRS guidelines on how long businesses should keep tax records for at least 2 or 3 years, in some circumstances (not involving filing a fraudulent return) they recommend up to 6 or 7 years.

The Internal Revenue Service -- Do As We Say Not As We Do.

Re:Fox News?

[Anonymous Coward]

They used to have a secret forum but it was exposed. (Not that they reported on it!)

Re:Fox News?

[anagama]

For that to happen, Obama would have to be involved.

Politicians are slimy evil scum, but they aren't stupid. They saw what happened to Nixon, so now they do all the same stuff he did, just through levels of insulation. GOP and DNC alike -- fetid pukes the lot of them.

Re:Fox News?

[UnknowingFool]

These were NOT tax records. These were emails. Tax records are kept by the IRS for a long period of time. That is what the GOP is wanting. They want some smoking gun that Lerner communicated with the White House.

If only there were regularly scheduled elections..

[Maxwell]

Except for the upcoming election, where surely, this time the REAL Americans (white, wealthy, republican) will elect us a new King who will Save Us All!

jail 'em

[AndyKron]

Bullshit. Put them in jail for lying or gross incompetence.

Re:jail 'em

[AK Marc]

You can't jail them because you are sure it's one or the other. You have to pick one and prove it. So, which is it?

Re:Fox News?

[Archangel Michael]

If your excuse for what happened is this, that it is pure incompetence, that alone should cause a high level concern regarding a very powerful arm of government (IRS) being run in an incompetent way. The problem is we treat incompetence better than nefariousness, when they should be treated exactly the same way. Because if you cannot tell the difference in the results, they are the same.

And actually, if you ask me, incompetence is worse, because it allows the Nefarious to use it as an excuse to get away with high crimes and misdemeanors.

Gross incompetence should be crime, akin to willful negligence, just to stop it from being used as an excuse for nefarious acts.

Re:Fox News?

[UnknowingFool]

So Obama has to know the actions of every single bureaucrat under his administration 24/7. Is that what you are advocating? Because that's what the GOP is trying to do. They want an email from the White House (especially from the President) that ordered Lerner to do what she did.

Re:Fox News?

[UnknowingFool]

The lack of evidence is not evidence of a conspiracy.

Re:Fox News?

[mrjimorg]

It wasn't just her emails and hard drive, but also "6 other employees" who happen to have been corresponding with her. In fact, the only people at the IRS that is having hard drive crashes are the people who's email would provide evidence in this case. They seem to have pretty consistent hard drive issues among those with damning evidence, but no issues outside of those people.
Additionally, when her drive crashed, IT would have restored those emails from backup at that point, so even a loss of the backup isn't justification.

Re:Fox News?

[stenvar]

Because Fox News paints it like this was some sort of sudden nefarious act by the IRS and fails to give relevant facts.

Where are they "painting" this? I see no judgment, interpretation, or editorializing in the Fox news story.

What "relevant facts" does Fox omit according to you? Please state them so that we can get the full picture that we are missing according to you.

Re:Fox News?

[dcollins117]

And to top it all off, the information probably does exist somewhere on a government server ...

I'll bet it does. These are important historical documents. For that reason alone I'm sure someone is archiving them.

They may not become public for another 50 years or so but they'll turn up.

Re:Fox News?

[mrjimorg]

Odd, at the company I work at those email's can't just be erased. They're on the servers, the backups off site, and those are backed up out of the country. 7 years by legal requirement, and probably longer because "We've got them in storage, why bother hiring someone to find and delete them?"

Re:Fox News?

[chiefcrash]

So, unless there is some compelling reason to think that the drive was corrupted purposefully, or the recovery was disingenuous, then all you have here is SOP for any IT department (fix what's broke).

Hmm, all the IT departments I've worked for always had an SOP to fix what's broke, then store the broken hard drive rather than toss it. Sometimes we end up having to send the drives off to a clean-lab recovery outfit to grab important stuff.

Is it necessarily a conspiracy that the IRS IT Department tossed a drive? No. Is it something that at the very list indicates a need for a policy change? Possibly.

Re:Fox News?

[Archangel Michael]

Or should we all just assume that everything is kept forever AND recoverable?

Yes. Especially in government. Nefarious activity is hidden as incompetence otherwise. Did Lois Learner's Office target Tea Party and Patriot groups, that is beyond a doubt now. The question is, how high up did that order come from. And now, we'll never know. THE only obvious way to handle this now is a full on independent investigation, and special prosecutor, and the arrest of Lois Learner, being charged with willful negligence and dereliction of duty, with additional charges pended the investigation.

AND taking the fifth as a government official should automatically trigger investigation, and sealing of all documentations and immediate lockout from the job, and suspension of pay. Additionally, "retirement" and benefits will be suspended until the outcome is established. Taking the fifth as a civil servant is a right, but not one that should be without conditions. IF you want to take the fifth, by all means do so, but realize that it starts a process which you might not like.

Re:Missing IRS emails

[kick6]

At this point, it's hard to take seriously any of the right wing complaints against Obama. Even if a particular one might be justified, there has been so much fake outrage from them that they just look like clowns.

As opposed to the fake outrage that the liberals use as their calling card to activism for everything?

Brendon Eich
A Football team called the redskins
A world conference on masculinity

Never attribute to malice

[n6kuy]

.. that which can be adequately explained by incompetence.

Just when we think the IRS can't be any more evil

[Applehu Akbar]

...It gets worse. They are now claiming "my dog ate my homework" for precisely, and only, every employee named in this investigation. It would be fitting to apply the IRS' own special rule here, which is that if you can't prove your innocence, you're guilty. Long sentences for each of the accused, unless those hard drives can be made to miraculously reappear.

Re:How about the DOJ? (Thanks, Bush!)

[stenvar]

Yes, and we elected Obama to fix these problems, as he promised over and over again during his campaign, and as he pointed to his credentials as a constitutional scholar for why he was qualified to do it.

We elected Obama to end spying on American citizens, abuse of power, extraterritorial killings, war mongering, and crony capitalism.

Instead, Obama has embraced and expanded all of those and has turned out to be worse than Bush in many ways.

"Bush did it" is not sufficient excuse for Obama to do it; "Bush did it" should be an immediate signal to any decent, honest president not to do it as well.

Re:Fox News?

[NatasRevol]

Sorry, you lost it at the first, completely unrealistic, word.

Re:Fox News?

[Noah Haders]

I found it on politico, which I find to be somewhat left leaning albeit inside the beltway: http://www.politico.com/story/...

Re:Fox News?

[Dishevel]

So then are you stating that the story is a lie? Are you saying that this story is all over the other media outlets?

Maybe you think that most major IT departments using exchange servers can lose a ton of the emails from 6 people being investigated? I am sure that happens all the time. If you do not see how crazy that excuse is you really have no business on /.

Re:Fox News?

[bigpat]

Relying on the un-backed-up hard drive of a computer as the sole repository of official communications is complete insanity. Heads need to roll over this. They wouldn't accept this as an excuse when they're chasing after private citizens for this or for that.

Yes, not having emails backed up on a server in some sort of archive would be absurd. Government requires document retention of just about everything. Unless every email was end to end encrypted, but even then there should be good key management that would allow investigators to decrypt the emails. Just seems absurd that with all the document retention policies the government has that it wouldn't have copies of those emails someplace. Or that other government agencies or the White House wouldn't have copies of inter-agency emails. If the trail dries up it is because people want it to dry up.

The assumption now is that the White House instigated increased IRS scrutiny on groups aligned with the Tea Party which would be a very serious abuse of presidential power to use the tax collecting and police powers of the executive branch to target opposition political groups.

Nixon is rolling over in his grave... the lesson for history is if Nixon had just destroyed all the tapes he could have gotten away with his dirty tricks brigade and abuses of power.

Re:Fox News?

[queequeg1]

You misunderstood me. I'm not concerned about Obama knowing everything that goes on at every level. That's obviously impossible. I am instead concerned about bureaucrats who are effectively answerable to no one using their governmental powers to engage in coordinated campaigns against political opponents (if that's what happened). Obama will be gone in a couple of years, so if he did know about this issue (or directed it), the problem would be somewhat self-correcting. But if Obama didn't have a direct roll in this (and it instead originated entirely within the IRS bureaucracy), solving the problem will likely be much more difficult.

Re:Fox News?

[Noah Haders]

+1 that's awesome. "Breaking news: no signals from MH370 for 67 days. Story developing."

Re:Fox News?

[Enigma2175]

We already have answers to many of those questions, why would we need to ask them again?

The IRS policy is to keep email for 6 months. Users may keep email for longer than 6 months in local PST files. It doesn't appear that individual workstations were backed up, assumably the server is (but the 6 months of email from the server is not missing). The rest of your questions are also about backups, if they aren't backing up individual computers then they probably aren't relevant.

Re:Fox News?

[sandytaru]

This isn't even incompetent government, this is just standard IT processes not being applicable to government processes, and no one questioning it. Data retention rules exist not just to save critical emails, but because Outlook servers get clogged as hell with utterly useless junk without them. Most backup processes aren't concerned with archives of things as they were three years ago, because it's far more important to have a backup available of things as they were yesterday. Even at the hospital I worked IT for, we deliberately drive nails through and smashed up dead hard drives because HIPPA rules required that we do that!

Re:Fox News?

[Dishevel]

I am fairly sure that they are not out destroying evidence that would exonerate them. I am fairly certain that power was being wielded with a purpose over there.

Re:Fox News?

[boristdog]

Never attribute to malice that which may be caused by incompetence.

I worked for the IRS for 6 years. It is a huge, bloated bureaucracy and everyone is afraid of it so no one messes with it. We lost data all the time, which was a boon to people who owed money based on that data. Honestly, there was more fucking going on amongst the people in the office than actual work. It was the land of office affairs.

Re:Fox News?

[rsmoody]

Regardless, the point remains. Those of us at the end of the IRS gun barrel (and yes, if you do not pay your taxes, sooner or later, someone armed with a gun will come to visit you) must keep our records for multiple years. Loosing said records is not an excuse and will find you guilty of all charges levied against you and you will be fined and/or thrown in jail. Why is this not applied to the members of the entity that will surely, swiftly and thoroughly enforce their retention laws? There is no excuse for these "lost" emails, they are on a server somewhere or backed up on tape somewhere. Do I have proof? No. But seriously, do you really believe these emails are not recoverable?

Re:Fox News?

[sandytaru]

Naw. The GOP might be hyperventilating over the IRS doing their job of making sure that tax exempt organizations are, you know, not actually political organizations in disguise, but in the end all the right-wing organizations that got extra scrutiny ultimately passed and got their tax exempt status. Meanwhile, a few left-leaning organizations were denied tax exempt status after the same extra scrutiny.

This is like howling about the extra biopsy your doctor ordered to make sure that lump wasn't cancer.

Re:Missing IRS emails

[stenvar]

Whether Obama fanbois like you take complaints against him seriously hardly matters. What matters is whether Obama has the trust and support of the American people, and he does not, as poll after poll shows, e.g.:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

At this point, Obama has broken so many of his campaign promises and screwed up so often that he has lost the trust of the majority of Americans. So, even if he happens to say something that's true or proposes a policy that might work, we don't trust him and we don't care. It simply isn't worth anybody's time to separate facts from lies, good policies from political payoffs and crony-capitalism, with Obama. All we can hope for is that Congress will prevent him from doing any more damage before his time in office runs out.

(And I say that as a former Obama voter.)

Re:Fox News?

[UnknowingFool]

You misunderstood me. I'm not concerned about Obama knowing everything that goes on at every level. That's obviously impossible. I am instead concerned about bureaucrats who are effectively answerable to no one using their governmental powers to engage in coordinated campaigns against political opponents (if that's what happened)

So far all Congressional investigations have come to the same conclusion: It was not against political opponents. The only group that was denied status was a progressive, liberal group. It was more of a case of bureaucrats using short cuts when they did procedures. Yet Congress needs more investigations.

Re:Fox News?

[Art Deco]

At many businesses it is standard operating procedure to purge all emails older than 90 days that they are not required by law to retain and this includes backups of email. The issue is more financial than anything else. Let's say Joe Blow gets caught downloading kiddie porn. Law enforcement subpoenas all his work email which since Mr Blow worked for Big Corporation for 15 years is a boatload. All the operators end up working for weeks restoring 400,000 emails from hundreds of backups then 3rd party consultants charge a few bucks to examine each email. All of a sudden Mr. Blow's behavior off the clock ends up costing his employer $millions. Is it possible that some of the purged emails ended up saved in other people's mailboxes or in backups of other MTAs? Certainly, but digging those up is someone else's problem. Getting back to the original issue. Is it really that surprising that the IRS would flag groups with "Tea Party" in their name as more political than not? Does anyone think that Tea Party groups are purely philanthropic? Indeed they should give extra scrutiny to groups with liberal terms like "progressive" and "justice" which as I understand it the IRS was already doing. While the Tea Party started as a grass roots group of wild eyed libertarians it quickly evolved as a way for money from big oil to stoke feelings of racial resentment among angry white men to convince them to vote against their own interests and for policies that benefit their wealthy puppet masters.

Re:Fox News?

[Megol]

_WHY_ would this be important in a historic perspective?

Re:Fox News?

[danbert8]

No, but I'm just saying the IRS wouldn't accept my word that I didn't hide income and assets if they were doing an audit. Sorry, I lost all my paper records would not be an excuse.

Re:Fox News?

[whitelabrat]

The Federal IT shops are a shitshow run by bottom feeding contractors who give zero feels. The Feds they support generally are paper pushers for whom computers are magical beings filled with little elves, and robots and give zero feels how it all works.

So yeah. Not hating. Just been there myself.

Re:Fox News?

[Megol]

Moving goal posts are we? Email and tax records aren't the same for most of the world...

Re:Fox News?

[Dishevel]

Actually I think there was never a real need to communicate directly with the Whitehouse about it. If they did I am sure they did it face to face and not over email.

What I do believe is that she was wielding her power with a purpose. She went out to get those tea party people. We already know that Senator were demanding that the IRS "Investigate" these groups.

Is it really a surprise that people who believe that the ends justify the means would do this? You don't have to go to congress. You can prosecute the laws you want to. You can decide what laws to defend and which ones not to. You can lie. You can omit. You can obfuscate. All of these things are business as usual. We have just come to a conclusion as a people that if you are a politician you can do criminal things and not be a criminal. We should just write it in the statute and accept what we accept.

Re:Fox News?

[UnknowingFool]

Well, Sparky explain this to me: All email by the IRS is kept for 6 months. Read that again: ALL email. So you want to paint it as some sort of a grand conspiracy by this President when it has been IRS data retention for many years.

Tell me they don't have an exchange server that archives email. Tell me they have no backups.

Please read up on some facts. 6 months. Now you might argue it should be more. But you act as if they had no emails. That's factually incorrect.

Anyone who gives a crap about their freedom ought to be demanding answers.

And how many Congressional investigations in which there were answers would it take. See it's not about "answers". It's about the answer the GOP wants. They will keep starting investigations until they might get some their answer because all previous ones have come up with answers that didn't suit them.

Re: Fox News?

[Anonymous Coward]

If reality had a liberal bias communism would work.

Re:Fox News?

[Nutria]

Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?

Because people like power, and don't like giving it up. (If you really had to ask that, then you're too young to vote.)

Re:Fox News?

[Megol]

Are you willing to pay the costs for infinite backups of all governmental data? The expenses for that would be astronomical!

Re:Fox News?

[Megol]

7 years storage of all emails? Do you live in Belarus or some other dictatorial state?

Re: Fox News?

[sumdumass]

Communism does work. All you need is enough guns and a lot of good boots to stomp on pepple with.

And the people will cherish and enjoy every minute of it whether they like it or not.

Re:Fox News?

[LynnwoodRooster]

IRS Commissioner said otherwise. Now, it is possible this is all just incompetence and the commissioner doesn't have a clue about actual e-mail storage (nor does anyone who prepped his talking points for his testimony). But what does that say about the IRS as a whole? Either it's pretty much incompetent all the way through and needs a SERIOUS overhaul top-to-bottom, or it's now doing a CYA move with the tacit approval of the White House.

Re:Fox News?

[NatasRevol]

This was my point exactly.

Because many people seemed to be unaware that the answers were already out there.

Re:Fox News?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

In other news: In star contrast to college classrooms, Bible school classrooms have a strong conservative bias.

Re:Fox News?

[UnknowingFool]

And that sucks for all of us. And I've seen police officers speed all over town without it being an emergency. That still doesn't mean there was a grand conspiracy here.

Re:Fox News?

[UnknowingFool]

You missed the point. Your tax records are kept. Emails are not tax records. Now you can argue that the IRS (and all federal agencies) should keep emails longer. That's a valid point, but don't act as if it's a grand conspiracy by this administration.

There is no excuse for these "lost" emails, they are on a server somewhere or backed up on tape somewhere. Do I have proof? No. But seriously, do you really believe these emails are not recoverable?

Again, the IRS only keeps emails for 6 months. They are backed up only for that time period.

Re:Fox News?

[LynnwoodRooster]

Pretty sure this is a real issue given that the IRS commissioner apologized for the targeting of Tea Party groups. If it's fake, why come out and apologize?

Re:Fox News?

[jeffmeden]

If your excuse for what happened is this, that it is pure incompetence, that alone should cause a high level concern regarding a very powerful arm of government (IRS) being run in an incompetent way. The problem is we treat incompetence better than nefariousness, when they should be treated exactly the same way. Because if you cannot tell the difference in the results, they are the same.

And actually, if you ask me, incompetence is worse, because it allows the Nefarious to use it as an excuse to get away with high crimes and misdemeanors.

Gross incompetence should be crime, akin to willful negligence, just to stop it from being used as an excuse for nefarious acts.

As many others have pointed out, there is no obligation for the IRS to retain email records for longer than 6 months. So what you call incompetence is really your own inability to understand the requirements. No one told anyone else to "keep these emails sacred, back them up in 3 places, never let more than 2 of the backups get within 100mi of each other, etc" so no, there is not any appropriate punishment here unless you can demonstrate that the emails would have been retained (perhaps by some ultra-vigilant employee) but were not, as a result of a higher up specifically ordering their destruction.

Re:Fox News?

[mrego]

Right, not personal tax records.... they are PUBLIC RECORDS!!!! Even worse that they are 'lost'. So much for the most transparent administration. hahaha

Re:Fox News?

[DCyfer]

Ask and ye shall receive: http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2014/06/16/white-house-lerner-emails-lost-in-computer-crash/?iref=allsearch

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/06/17/even-if-accidental-the-loss-of-lois-lerners-e-mails-is-evidence-of-problems-at-the-irs/

No NY Times, but let's face it, the NYT is to left-wing news what FoxNews is to right-wing news.

Re:Fox News?

[tranquilidad]

Where does the 6 months of emails come from? If that's true then the IRS is in violation of many federal laws as well as their own records retention regulations.

From the IRS Standards for Managing Electronic Mail Records:

"IRS offices will not store the official recordkeeping copy of e-mail messages that are federal records ONLY on the electronic mail system, unless the system has all of the features of an electronic recordkeeping system, some of which are specified in paragraph 2 above. If the electronic mail system is not designed to be a recordkeeping system, ask an E-Mail/System Administrator to instruct you on how to copy the information from the electronic mail system to a recordkeeping system or produce a hard copy for recordkeeping purposes."

Other federal regulations require printed and filed copies of electronic records (including emails) unless they are stored in an approved recordkeeping system. All emails related to decision making processes are, by the way, defined as records that must be kept.

Re:Fox News?

[Dishevel]

Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?

Because people like power, and don't like giving it up. (If you really had to ask that, then you're too young to vote.)

The question is not "why do people who have power want to keep it". The question is "Why do the people keep voting for the last commercial they saw on TV?"

Re:Fox News?

[tranquilidad]

Correct, these were not tax records, they were emails.

Federal law, general federal agency regulations and IRS specific regulations required these emails be kept for a much longer period of time in a formal recordkeeping system. The IRS, if they truly "lost" these emails, could only do so if their previous certifications claiming to follow the required recordkeeping regulations were untrue.

Re:Fox News?

[Archangel Michael]

It is hardly unrealistic. Google manages to archive much of the internet every day. The NSA manages to archive much of the world's internet traffic. Keeping it forever, is much much easier if you know what you're doing.

But if you want "realistic" limits, Email and other official correspondence. All documentation referencing anything/anyone outside your office/Department. All meeting notes and documentation, Audio recordings of meetings as well.

It is unrealistic to believe that email from six people at the center of controversy all disappeared in a series of "hard drive crashes", and no backups were ever made. THAT is unrealistic.

Re:Fox News?

[Archangel Michael]

It isn't infinite. It is definitive and growing, but not infinite. There is a difference. And yes, I am. Either that or we need to fire people for incompetence rather than let them retire just after pleading the fifth.

Re:Fox News?

[UnknowingFool]

No that's just another biased source twisting words and facts to make things look bad who don't understand how IT works. Emails are kept on IRS servers but for only 6 months. Being Outlook based, individuals can keep them longer on their local HDs but it is not an agency mandate to do so. Any emails she included other individuals may be recovered from their HDs if they are still intact. Since Lerner's HD crashed in 2011, her emails located on her HD are gone. Now the emails may be recovered on the other end if their retention is longer. For example if she communicated with me on my gmail account, it would still be there.

Re:Fox News?

[Dishevel]

You are missing the point. None of the tea party groups were denied status. You are correct. They have not been denied because they were doing nothing wrong. There was no basis for a denial. So the IRS just delayed and demanded massive amounts of crazy information. There are still groups waiting years to get approved!

The fact that the IRS is out of control is obvious. The idea that it will swing its crazyness in the preferred direction is a given. If you either believe that the IRS is doing a fine job and does not wield too much power then you either have a vested interest in the system as it stands (Employed by the IRS or a Tax profesional) or you are deluded. If you think that groups that want to see the IRS and many government jobs get deleted or reduced are not targeted specifically by those they want to destroy then you have no idea how humans behave and I call you out as an alien impostor.

Re:Fox News?

[Bartles]

Glenn Beck's foam horde? If you are an American, you should be outraged, because at some point they will come for you.. The NYTimes should be outraged, the Washington Post should be outraged. Nancy Pelosi should be outraged.

Re: Fox News?

[electron sponge]

Reality has a liberal bias.

No, reality is reality. The bias is in the observer.

Re: Fox News?

[Bartles]

This is quite possibly one of the stupidest things I have ever seen on slashdot.

Re:Fox News?

[Archangel Michael]

Actually, that is my definition of incompetence. I understand the requirements. The requirement that the user maintain the documentation they deem "important' on their own hard drive, without adequate backups is ... incompetent. I'm in IT, in a little school district, and this is something we don't allow. And yes, all directors have unlimited size email boxes, and we also provide backups for all important data, and have a disaster recovery center that is on a separate campus from our data center. Because unlike other places, to not have these things in place is incompetence.

Beyond that, the lack of keeping records of your activities as a public sector employee secured with backups is criminally negligent. And if it isn't, it should be. "My dog ate my homework" wasn't a good excuse in 4th grade, why is it allowed in Public Sector?

Re:Fox News?

[UnknowingFool]

I have: Her HD crashed and was replaced in 2011.

The top Republican on one of the House committees investigating the IRS targeting scandal reacted furiously late Wednesday to a report that ex-IRS official Lois Lerner's hard drive had been recycled, making it likely that many emails sent to and from Lerner prior to the summer of 2011 will never be recovered.

All they say is that they can't get emails prior to 2011. They fail to mention the relevant fact that the HD was recycled in 2011. 3 years ago. This was long before the current scandal cropped up. To any casual reader of the headline and the article would suggest it was a recent destruction. Also they fail to mention that the IRS does keep emails on their servers but it is only for 6 months.

Re:Fox News?

[Nutria]

"Why do the people keep voting for the last commercial they saw on TV?"

Short attention span? Not actually being human (which is why Frank Herbert conceived of the gom jabbar")?

Re:Fox News?

[Bartles]

What makes you think those are facts? To me that sounds like a story an 8th grader made up.

Re:How about the DOJ? (Thanks, Bush!)

[pastafazou]

Oh please, the DOJ has been politicized for half a century at least.

Re:Fox News?

[Nutria]

Why worry about something I can't stop or even slow down?

Re:Fox News?

[Dishevel]

You may be right. Problem is if you tell liberal the are not human you will told how offensive and racist you are. If you tell the conservatives they will tell you that Jesus makes them human. Every once in a while you will run into a person who will let you know that you are wrong but are entitled to your opinion and move on about their day. Those would actually be the humans.

Re:Fox News?

[LynnwoodRooster]

I see. The IRS Commissioner's sworn testimony is biased and twisted. How about President Obama's words on the issue where he states "I’ve reviewed the Treasury Department watchdog’s report, and the misconduct that it uncovered is inexcusable"? It's not twisted, it's not biased - this is straight from the group you're trying to defend. It is a real scandal - and those accused even agree about it.

Re:Fox News?

[Dishevel]

Fuck the GOP. Who the hell are they? They were not being targeted. The tea party is the enemy of the GOP and the Dems. They have a bit more in common with the conservatives than the liberals but they consider both sides to be wrong. The IRS was targeting the Tea Party. A group of people that wants the IRS to have much less power. If you think that the IRS does not see the Tea Party as an enemy with or without the help of any administration, current, past or future then you are blind.

The Tea Party is on one side. The Libs, Conservatives, IRS, EPA, Dept of Ed, Dept of Energy, BLM, ICE, Fusion Centers, NSA, and quite a few more are on the other side.

Re:Fox News?

[UnknowingFool]

It doesn't matter. The GOP desperately wants it to be a case of the White House instructing the IRS to go after conservative groups. If they did, then the IRS can't take instructions very well because it went after groups from both sides. In the end, no conservative groups were denied status. So either the IRS is really bad at following orders or there was no conspiracy.

Re:Fox News?

[Nutria]

who will let you know that you are wrong but are entitled to your opinion and move on about their day.

Or some New Age woo-meister who's mind is so open their brains have fallen out.

Re:Fox News?

[UnknowingFool]

This was Lerner's computer that they are talking about. Not a server.

Re:Fox News?

[UnknowingFool]

It is hardly unrealistic. Google manages to archive much of the internet every day. The NSA manages to archive much of the world's internet traffic. Keeping it forever, is much much easier if you know what you're doing.

Both Google and NSA have massively huge server farms for this purpose. Unless Congress has granted the IRS billions of dollars for IT, I don't see them having any money to do this. It is unrealistic as cost is a part of reality.

It is unrealistic to believe that email from six people at the center of controversy all disappeared in a series of "hard drive crashes", and no backups were ever made. THAT is unrealistic.

That's just you not having all the facts. Emails are kept for 6 months on IRS servers. The emails are from 3 years ago. After that they may be on local HDs. Searching through their records, the IRS was able to recover 24,000 emails from 83 individuals from their HDs. But they didn't get every email. I wouldn't say that they all "disappeared".

Major IT departments and lost e-mail

[AF_Cheddar_Head]

I thing the whole thing reeks of conspiracy BUT having worked for multiple government agencies many of them severely limit the size of a users Exchange mailbox and because network storage is scarce they routinely counsel users to keep archived e-mail in a PST stored on the local drive. They tell the user that Outlook runs better this way (mostly true). Problem is this violates government policy on maintaining permanent records (not that the user cares) and means if the local drive crashes or is wiped for a new user all the old e-mail is lost.

Many corporations do the same BTW.

For my money the excuse is just a bit too convenient but plausible.

Re:Major IT departments and lost e-mail

[buybuydandavis]

So their "excuse" is that they were willfully breaking records laws all along?

Re: Major IT departments and lost e-mail

[buybuydandavis]

You tell 'em!

Rules aren't for our rulers!

Also if you take the "only following orders" thing

[Sycraft-fu]

Then where do you draw the line? You clearly need a line, but that means you have to define it, and you need reasoning behind that definition.

I mean think: If we say that you are never on the hook so long as you were given an order by a supervisor, well then that means if they order you to kill someone, you are off the hook for that. Now clearly that is ludicrous. Everyone would say "Of course not in THAT case, they should know that is wrong!" Ok fine, so that means we need a line... Where's the line?

A pretty easy and clear line is illegality. You may not do something illegal just because someone ordered you to. In fact, that is where the military draws the line with their official oath. They pledge "hat I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice." So if an order is NOT according to the UCMJ, then they are actually not supposed to obey it (I'm not saying there are never situations where this becomes a conflict in real life). So one can argue a similar idea for civilians, particularly since unlike the military you are not bound by law to obey supervisors.

Regardless, if you want the line to be something other than illegality, you need to define what that line is, and you need justification for why.

Re:Fox News?

[david672orford]

I'm just baffled as to how IT managed to avoid being lynched by the cube drones if their standards for data retention and redundancy are in fact that low.

People hate losing data, and storing it the employee's HDD (except as an expendable cache purely for speed and bandwidth purposes) is roughly equivalent, once you have a decent number of people in the office, to just randomly deleting some sucker's email every week or two. Even in complete absence of any legal requirements, the users would either switch to unofficially using some shit webmail service or rise up with pitchforks in short order.

Actually, I am surprise by how accepting users can be of data loss. People frequenly accept the loss of things far more important than an bunch of boring e-mail messages. I have know people to format hard drives with hundreds of family pictures because they really want to get the computer working again.

These people were not engaged in a creative endevor and did not lose an irreplacable work product. Without this investigation, what they lost would be junk.

Re:Fox News?

[LDAPMAN]

There are actual laws, not just regulations, relating to data retention for the IRS and other government agencies.

Re:Fox News?

[LDAPMAN]

Unfortunately for your position, there is a law that mandates that the emails are retained. They are official communications.

Hippocracy much?

[AF_Cheddar_Head]

All of you TP types that want the IRS to retain e-mails forever refuse to give the government a dime to build the system to retain that e-mails forever. It ain't cheap to build a backup system to maintain all the e-mails generated by a decent sized business or government agency. That's why retention dates are established and followed. Also why so many users have PST files on their local computer that violate the retention policy and gets the company in trouble with the lawyers and get deleted when a computer is rebuilt or the drive crashes.

Re: Fox News?

[LDAPMAN]

Being denied would be an improvement ver the situation those 190 were in.

Re:Fox News?

[budgenator]

Internal Revenue Manual (IRM)
1.10.3.2.3 (07-08-2011)
Emails as Possible Federal Records
All federal employees and federal contractors are required by law to preserve records containing adequate and proper documentation of the organization, functions, policies, decisions, procedures, and essential transactions of the agency. Records must be properly stored and preserved, available for retrieval and subject to appropriate approved disposition schedules.
The Federal Records Act applies to email records just as it does to records you create using other media. Emails are records when they are:
Created or received in the transaction of agency business
Appropriate for preservation as evidence of the government’s function and activities, or
Valuable because of the information they contain

If you create or receive email messages during the course of your daily work, you are responsible for ensuring that you manage them properly. The Treasury Department’s current email policy requires emails and attachments that meet the definition of a federal record be added to the organization’s files by printing them (including the essential transmission data) and filing them with related paper records. If transmission and receipt data are not printed by the email system, annotate the paper copy. More information on IRS records management requirements is available at http://erc.web.irs.gov/Display... or see the Records Management Handbook, IRM 1.15.1 http://publish.no.irs.gov/IRM/...).
An email determined to be a federal record may eventually be considered as having historical value by the National Archivist prior to disposal. Therefore, ensure that all your communications are professional in tone.
Please note that maintaining a copy of an email or its attachments within the IRS email MS Outlook application does not meet the requirements of maintaining an official record. Therefore, print and file email and its attachments if they are either permanent records or if they relate to a specific case.

1.10.3.2.4 (08-30-2012)
Emails are Subject to FOIA
The public is aware of the role emails play in agency internal operations and emails are included in a growing number of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Emails that are responsive to a FOIA request must be released unless the information contained in the email falls into one of nine very specific categories of exemptions. (See IRM 11.3.13 for more on FOIA processing). There is no category of exemption to protect the author or the Service from embarrassment.
Emails provided in response to a FOIA must include the addressee, date and time. The address list, date and time are considered part of the record for both FOIA and record management purposes.
Do not delete a message or attachment that is the subject of a congressional, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), or discovery request or that is needed for litigation.

Also

1.10.3.3.1 (07-08-2011)
Don’t Slow Down the System
To avoid slowing down transmission of information:
Use Arial or another simple font on a plain background.
Do not use animation, fancy background, "wallpapers," bor

Re:Fox News?

[LDAPMAN]

Keep repeating the talking points...and missing the point entirely. 190 > 7. Outright denial is better that perpetual bureaucracy.

Re:Fox News?

[mythosaz]

Government requires document retention of just about everything.

No, it only requires record retention, and how posts like this get modded insightful is beyond me.

Government, as a rule, doesn't have to keep email items unless they're specifically "records" on those emails. [If you have a record, and you mail it, it's still a record, but email in and of itself isn't necessarily a record.] To simplify this, certain mailboxes are designated as the sort that hold records, and those are managed differently.

http://www.archives.gov/record...

Capstone - which sought to use a broader capture methodology for mailboxes for important roles wasn't implemented until 2013.

Re:Fox News?

[mythosaz]

They keep records.

Emails are not inherently records. The National Archives has a site full of government-legalese pages describing what documents are and aren't.

Server retention is low at the IRS and they used PST files if people wanted to keep old mail.

At some point in the last decade they lost some PST files -- just like at every company I've ever been at where we allowed local storage of old mail. Them recycling the hard drives was just what they do to old computers.

Re:Missing IRS emails

[Megol]

Which "liberals" would that be?

Hint: you and most of the US don't know the definition of that word.

Re:Fox News?

[IcyWolfy]

Most of the large companies I've worked at; and the few government offices I've been at have all had very restrictive email policies.
Usually, 100-300mb of email space total.
3 month retention, before automatic deletion.

So, on day 91, emails just go away.
It's the best interest of the company normally, especially since they don't want to be liable for maintaining and keeping these archives to legal mandates, especially if one just goes missing. (Exchange does sometimes just, well, lose emails seemingly at random)

It doesn't stop the user to copy the email to a local folder on their desktop, but then, it's now a) against policy; b) not backed up, and c) subject to just vanishing as it's on a non-suported envirnomnet that's prone to being reimaged / upgraded.

Re:Fox News?

[Anonymous Coward]

Watergate was a huge scandal because of how far up the chain the coverup went.

Actually, Watergate was a huge scandal and is considered a measuring point for presidential malfeasance mostly because of national media bias. Nixon resigned because the media had relentlessly smeared him to the point that House and Senate whips judged that if Nixon were impeached, he would have been forcibly removed from office. Basically, the media convinced Nixon to give up before his battle to stay in office was fully waged. In contrast, Clinton was defended by the national media, and, even though Clinton was eventually impeached, he was not removed from office. One of Nixon's staffers spent time in jail for illegally possessing 3 confidential FBI files. The Clintons illegally possessed more than 900 confidential FBI files some of which had Hillary's actual fingerprints on them and the Clintons never paid a price for it.

Most of the national broadcast media is partisan Democrat and ideologically leftist. Fox News and talk radio are the only significant exceptions which is why complaining about them is a standard part of the Dem reaction whenever a Dem is found to be misbehaving.

This isn't even as big as the Bush administration firing a bunch of federal prosecutors allegedly because they prosecuted more Republicans than Democrats.

Bush tried to replace 8 U.S. Attorneys, something which was entirely legal for him to do. The Bush admin never gave a public reason for doing so. The media excoriated Bush endlessly nonetheless. In his first action as President, Clinton replaced more than 60 U.S. Attorneys, some of whom were directly involved in ongoing criminal investigations of Clinton's activities as Governor of Arkansas, effectively ending the criminal investigations and the media yawned.

Do you think the national media is treating Obama more like it treated Nixon and Bush or more like it treated Clinton? Do try to be honest, at least with yourself.

Re: Fox News?

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

How crazy dumb do you have to believe that liberals are communists?

Speaking of Nixon

[Deathlizard]

If I remember correctly, Nixon's office lost and recycled data that was possibly incriminating and it ended up costing him the presidency.

At the very least, someone's head should roll at the IRS.

Re:Missing IRS emails

[mtthwbrnd]

"All we can hope for is that Congress will prevent him from doing any more damage before his time in office runs out."

Yah!! And then the next puppet will come along! Probably a woman this time.

Re:Just when we think the IRS can't be any more ev

[TubeSteak]

They are now claiming "my dog ate my homework" for precisely, and only, every employee named in this investigation.

I imagine The IRS has had more than just those 7 hard drive failures.
But I imagine Congress doesn't really care how many annual hard drive failures the IRS sees across all its employee computers.

Re:How about the DOJ? (Thanks, Bush!)

[pastafazou]

I apologize for my last reply. I agree with you that Bush put people he preferred into the DOJ with political opinions oriented to his. But that's exactly what happens with every administration, so I assumed you were putting up a "Ya, but Bush!" argument to downplay the seriousness of the IRS becoming politically oriented.

Re:Fox News?

[TubeSteak]

In fact, the only people at the IRS that is having hard drive crashes are the people who's email would provide evidence in this case. They seem to have pretty consistent hard drive issues among those with damning evidence, but no issues outside of those people.

[Citation Needed]

Re:Fox News?

[NatasRevol]

the retention period is until the National Archive says so.

Uh, no it's actually 6 months.

Re:Fox News?

[Straif]

According to the IRS's own website all emails that can be considered "Federal Records" (essentially anything having to do with actual work at the IRS) must be maintained and in fact printed and stored. These document are subject to FOIA request and they simply don't have the legal option to have them expire and get deleted.

Re:Fox News?

[Straif]

By the IRS ITs own definition these emails were "Federal Records" and as such were required by law to be archived indefinitely for just such purposes as this investigation.

jail time

[NikeHerc]

Somebody needs to go to jail for mishandling this situation. Our government has gotten way, way out of control.

Re:Fox News?

[UnknowingFool]

There is a law that emails are retained for a certain period of time. The law does not say emails should be kept indefinitely. The IRS only keeps emails on their servers for 6 months. Maybe they should keep them longer but I suspect space and cost are issues.

Re:so, no backups?

[Richy_T]

Recovery? They are the disaster.

Re: Fox News?

[NatasRevol]

Fucking google it.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Prior to the eruption of the IRS controversy last spring, the IRS had a policy of backing up the data on its email server (which runs Microsoft Outlook) every day. It kept a backup of the records for six months on digital tape, according to a letter sent from the IRS to Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah).

Re:Fox News?

[UnknowingFool]

Keep repeating the talking points...and missing the point entirely. 190 > 7. Outright denial is better that perpetual bureaucracy.

And you miss the point. If your numbers are correct: 190 out of 292 groups with no denials for conservative groups were processed. 7 out of 20 with 1 denial for liberal groups. By my math, 65% processing rate for conservative groups with 0% denial. 35% processing rate with 14% denial for liberals. You are correct in claiming that more conservative groups were investigated; however, looking at the data, it appears that the liberal groups have a far worse success rate.

nd do you know why there is perpetually bureaucracy? Citizens United opened the flood gates and the IRS now has many more applications to process. Yet Congress is unwilling to give the IRS more money, more resources, whatever because the GOP is inherently opposed to the idea of taxation. The same reason the GOP tries to undermine the EPA and other regulatory bodies like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau,

Re:Fox News?

[kwbauer]

For the same reason that Nixon's missing 18 minutes of audio tape are.

Re:Fox News?

[kwbauer]

If they were about how to tax or not tax an entity then they most certainly were tax records.

Re:Fox News?

[Straif]

It's true that no Tea Party group was denied non-profit status but that was never the issue. The issue was those groups were never denied OR granted non-profit status; their applications were intentionally sent to secondary review and never processed, or processed in such a way that effectively resulted in harassment from the IRS until they revoked their applications. The questions asked by the IRS to prospective Tea Party related groups were way outside of the scope the IRS is permitted when determining the legal status of a non-profit (such as requiring a complete list of donors which is not required for 501(c)(4)s). Progressive groups on the other hand were processed with minimal delay.

One liberal group was in fact denied their non-profit status (only after the same group had already received it for both the Federal and several state branches) but that wasn't even part of this process. That was done under a completely unrelated review process for completely different reasons. Their problem was that their own declaration stated they ONLY work with Democrat women to get them elected. That was determined to be outside of the definition of "common good" so their application was denied. If they had simply stated they were a group to help get female candidate elected, and then just so happened to focus on Dems, then that would have legally met the requirements for a 501(c)(4) (the other branches may have said that in their applications), but since they openly declared their support for a party and not an ideology, they were denied and then reapplied as a 527.

Re:Fox News?

[Straif]

Emails concerning the functions of the IRA are considered, by the IRS, "Federal Records" which are legally required to be archived indefinitely. This isn't an option, it's in their own IT guidelines.

In fact their guidelines require that all such emails should be printed and physically archived because Exchange Servers do not meet their definition of a proper archival system. Since that is the case then they either broke federal law by not finding an electronic archival system or by not printing and storing the physical documents. Your choice.

Re:Fox News?

[LDAPMAN]

Not sure where you are getting your numbers but representatives of the IRS said you are wrong in testimony before committee:

http://dailycaller.com/2014/04...

Re:Fox News?

[Straif]

This story was never about denials. The story was that these organizations were placed in limbo for, in some cases, years and never granted their non-profit status and some were harassed with questions outside of the IRS purview to a point that they withdrew their applications.

Those that were later granted happened AFTER the initial scandal broke (which also happened to be after the election).

Re:Fox News?

[bigpat]

First there is a reasonable suspicion that there was a conspiracy to use the IRS to target groups in a partisan way. This is a serious abuse of power.

So there are two things here. First, If you destroy records that you believe could be subject to a criminal investigation then you have committed a crime. That is irregardless of any document retention policies. And people have been prosecuted for obstruction of justice when they knew or should have known that an investigation was coming and they simply instructed people to follow the document retention policy.

Second the current guideline for document retention of "transitory" emails is180 days, but for Federal Records it is much much longer. I did find a useful description of the test for whether an email is or contains a "Federal Record" under the law:

To qualify as a Federal record under the Federal Records Act, a document must pass two tests:

It is made or received in the course of business, and

It is preserved or appropriate for preservation because it is evidence of Agency activities (as described above) or has sufficient informational value to warrant preservation.

So yes assuming that the bulk of the emails were correspondence over official public business and not friends forwarding her funny cat videos, then yes there is at the very least a violation of public records law. And it would be a violation of Federal Law for the IRS not to have something in place to preserve emails... for at least 180 days even if they were all just cat videos, but they would be required to archive emails for far longer if they contain official correspondence which some of the emails most certainly did contain.

Re:so, no backups?

[Straif]

Sadly, their official plan is for all work emails to be printed and then those physical copies to be archived.

Re: Fox News?

[rickb928]

My current .OST file is 6.8GB, down from 8.7GB after a purge of mail >2 years old. I have no legal holds nor regulatory holds, so this was a self-directed purge. I did, however, circumvent policy and archive to a local file.

I work for a Fortune 100 financial company, and we have similar regulatory requirements.

Blaming system constraints is disingenuous. Jail them.

Re: Fox News?

[rickb928]

"did not lose an irreplacable work product. "

Apparently, they did. You are incorrect

"Without this investigation, what they lost would be junk."

Investigations are one of the primary reasons to retain this data. You are incorrect again.

Try again.

Re: Fox News?

[rickb928]

Confusing the criminal case with a political agenda is stupid.

But today it is astute. That was then....

As a former government IT contractor...

[Junior J. Junior III]

From 2001-2011, I worked for a series of contractors under NASA.

Most users who I supported were administrators and managers of various stripes, and a few users who were skilled with desktop publishing, web development, imagery, video, or 3d modeling/CAD. Most of them didn't understand how computers worked, and didn't care how they worked. They were just magic boxes that they used to do work with.

The idea of deleting email was frightening to most users. Email was a record that proved that you did work, and could be used for Cover Your Ass in the event of an inquiry. It could also prove a conversation happened, that an agreement was made, and so settle many disputes arising out of miscommunication. Most people whom I worked with hardly ever deleted messages, and because their local hard drive had plenty of capacity, they didn't have a real need to.

Until 2007, we used POP3 clients running on the local machine to download mail from a server. Messages were deleted from the server once downloaded, so only existed on the client machine at that point. Some users had decades of email stored in their client on their local hard drive, which typically was not backed up. I'm sure the servers had some redundancy and short backup, but to my knowledge we did not have a system that archived email. The closest thing resembling an archive was the aggregate collection of all mailboxes on the the client machines' hard drives.

Occasionally we did have users lose data due to a failed hard drive. Users who got bit by data loss tended to learn from this and implement safeguard such as backup to server, or to removable media. But incredibly, these lessons, once learned, were not applied at more than the individual level. People might talk to each other and departments might share knowledge for how to back up data, but it was never something that was codified in policy. People were on their own to implement their own backup and to make sure it worked. It was something that if anything, was encouraged, but not required or enforced. But very often it was not thought about until after the fact of a data loss incident.

In 2007, we moved to Outlook/Exchange for email. Many long time users were very put off by the change, and did not want to give up their Eudora, and could not deal with the fact that we were not going to migrate their old email into Exchange. Enough resistance was put up that IT ended up continuing to support the client side of the old email system indefinitely, so that users could still access their local archive of old email, and possibly also use automation features in their old client to continue to run processes that generated automated mail messages.

Exchange uses MAPI, so in the new system our messages were now always left on the server, until deleted. We had 1GB server quotas (around this time I believe Gmail was giving the world ~6GB for free). In theory, the 1GB server quota gave us security from data loss because the Exchange server's storage was backed up. In fact, the low quota size forced much more mail deletion than had ever happened in the old POP3 days of decentralized, distributed ad-hoc archive. But this was by design rather than by defect. And it was a lot easier to restore any retained data if it was lost.

All the same, users did not want to delete email, ever. Once they hit their quota on the server, they'd submit requests asking for an increase to their quota, which only would be granted if the volume of incoming mail that they had to deal with made a larger quota necessary in order to allow them to have a reasonable backlog of mail going back 6 months to a year, or they had a senior enough position that they could get whatever they demanded. Even then, when people hit their new quota, they still didn't want to delete old messages. The IT team supporting the new email refused to support this in any way, but didn't prevent users from creating local .pst files which they could use to store mail, once again on the local hard drive

Re:As a former government IT contractor...

[blindseer]

That's a nice story but it does not explain why only e-mail to external people were lost and internal e-mail messages could be retrieved. Had it played out as you explained then all e-mail from some date in the past, where the e-mail had exceeded quotas, would have been lost. What smells the worst about this is that we are hearing about this just now. These people have been fighting over these e-mails for a long time and only when it looks like they might actually have to hand them over does it come out that they were lost.

I suppose someone can come up with another interesting anecdote on how things like this happen all the time but this sounds all too convenient. If I gave an excuse like this to the government they'd lock me up and throw away the key. I'd hope equality of the law would apply but some animals are more equal than others.

Re:As a former government IT contractor...

[Junior J. Junior III]

I have no idea of the particulars in the IRS case, so it's useless for me to speculate on that. I haven't heard that internal mails were retrievable while external mails were not. The loss of a single user's hard drive does not explain that very well. It might be possible that the internal messages could have been retrieved from other users systems within the IRS. Perhaps the user could have filtered external emails to a local .pst file that was lost when the hard drive died, while internal emails were contained in numerous other mailboxes within the agency? I have no idea, but it's an explanation that could be plausible.

Re:As a former government IT contractor...

[UnknowingFool]

That's a nice story but it does not explain why only e-mail to external people were lost and internal e-mail messages could be retrieved

They weren't. The Fox story fails to mention that the IRS has recovered 24,000 emails from 83 individuals from their local HDs. The Politico story mentions it. This is why I'm distrustful of Fox News.

Had it played out as you explained then all e-mail from some date in the past, where the e-mail had exceeded quotas, would have been lost.

Again the Politico story specifically mentions that the IRS only keeps 6 months on their servers. After that individuals can keep them longer but it is not an agency mandate.

What smells the worst about this is that we are hearing about this just now.

You are only hearing about it now because the IRS keeps getting more and more requests for information. The last subpoena requested all of Lerner's old media including old HDs. I don't know about you but my company would take some time locating that information if I had a HD replaced. And then researching what happened to that HD 3 years ago.

Re:Fox News?

[budgenator]

The responsibilities for determining whether the documents are historically important or may be deleted rests with the National Archive, not the IRS or any of it's public employees.

Re:Just when we think the IRS can't be any more ev

[flopsquad]

I'm going to sidestep the actual debate here ("Lost Emails: Incompetence or Conspiracy?"), and just put it out there that using word-for-word talking points from conservative talk radio—like "the dog ate my homework"—makes it really hard to take an argument seriously.

If I wanted to know what Herman Cain's opinion was, I would have tuned in this morning to his show (which I did), to hear him say that this was like whining that "the dog ate my homework, and now I can't find my dog." And then, I could have also gotten Rush Limbaugh's sage opinion that this is a case of crying "the dog ate my homework." I'm sure Hannity is saying it right now, and O'Reilly will say it later.

Look, this may be a case of pure corruption and lies, unconstitutional targeting out of political spite reaching to the highest levels. If it is, LL should go to jail, those responsible should be prosecuted, and the conservative pundits will get my blessing to all simultaneously jizz in their pants.

I have my own gripes with Obama (NSA surveillance for starters), and I am open to well-reasoned arguments about his administration's failings. But using canned phraseology—written by people that measure and calculate how effectively various wordings can be used to rile up the base and grab soundbites—will get you nowhere.

Similarly short shrift goes to things like: calling all taxes and regulations "job killers"; sardonically calling Islam "the religion of peaaaace"; calling Obama "The Community Organizer"; chanting pithy-but-meaningless phrases like "Bush lied people died"; appending "-Gate" to the end of anything remotely controversial; and pretty much any pundit, politician, or political group calling anything "racist."

Note this rant is not personally directed at you, Applehu, but you just happen to be the winning 19th poster to use this straight-from-the-show-notes talk radio quote.
</rant>

Very convenient for them

[Hamsterdan]

Yet if anybody else tries that, it's jail time for obstruction of justice...

Re:Also if you take the "only following orders" th

[david_thornley]

Except that there's lots of things that are illegal or legal according to the wider context. Violent actions are pretty much all illegal in civilian life, except for self-defense, and that's not much wider a context. Reformatting a drive is legal unless there's a specific reason why it's illegal, and that does depend on a wider context. Heck, I don't know if the reformatting was illegal; does the law say it's illegal to destroy evidence, or illegal to knowingly destroy evidence?

Re:Fox News?

[kaatochacha]

1) Don't store most things on a local HD.
2) Especially don't store email on a local hard drive.
3) I really really, really must emphasize that anything important should not be kept on PCs hard drive.
4) Audit steps 1-3 regularly.

Oh, BTW, telling the IRS you're missing documents from before they declared an audit isn't grounds for dismissal of the audit either.

Re:Fox News?

[crypticedge]

First - They investigated liberal groups as well & only denied a liberal group, no conservative ones at all.

Second - Per the tax code 501(c) status requires exclusive welfare activities, and directly states in the code no political activity. SCOTUS read exclusive to mean mostly, thus creating a new law illegally in the citizens united case.

Third - Fox is a republican owned propaganda network. There's no facts behind it.

Re:Just when we think the IRS can't be any more ev

[david_thornley]

Has anybody asked for email records of employees not named in this investigation? Do we know their email is still available?

Re:Fox News?

[budgenator]

Expecpt the IRS uses Exchange Server so at best a copy of the emails were on Lerner's computer; what happened to the backups for the server if the Exchange Administrator didn't specifically delete them out of the archive folder?

Re:Fox News?

[david_thornley]

In fact, the only people at the IRS that is having hard drive crashes are the people who's email would provide evidence in this case.

You're just making that up, aren't you? If that were true, it would be astonishing: at a place as big as the IRS, without competent IT support, I'd expect lots of people to have their hard drives crash.

Re:Fox News?

[Culture20]

"Computer Crash" happens, but as we say in IT, if it doesn't exist in three places, it doesn't exist.

I'm not sure what you mean. The HD failed. This happened. HDs have failed on me before.

GP means that unless backups/files are in several places (both digitally and geographically), they're just counting down to destruction. The IT people at the IRS should have known this... did know this, but were probably overruled by CEO style behavior from the top ("I need to store only one copy of all my emails in this pst archive on my desktop. Don't bother me about backing up my desktop"). Hopefully they got signatures about these exceptions to standard/legally required practices from management.

THAT being said, if they are claiming, again, that it was incompetence and not nefariousness, all I can say is, this is exactly WHY government cannot run anything competently. Further, because we cannot expect reasonable competency in government, the role of government needs to be severely limited.

Um, no. They are claiming standard IT processes. If your HD failed and was not recoverable, I don't think your company would keep it for 3 years in case it gets subpoenaed later.

Depends on what was on it, and what management said to do with the drive. If there was a chance they'd spend the thousands needed for data recovery in the future, the drive might be kept in a safe in a locked room with a security camera.

The other half of standard practices is data retention and backups. Good practices for those were not followed here by either Lerner or IRS IT staff.

Re:Fox News?

[Culture20]

anything important should not be kept *solely* on PCs hard drive

FTFY. It doesn't hurt to have local copies of some things. It may even save your bacon if there are multiple backup tape failures after the server's drives fail.

Re:Fox News?

[Belial6]

Politico actually makes it sound like a grand conspiracy: http://www.politico.com/story/...

Re:Fox News?

[Dishevel]

If you stay away from the news and just look at the people and what they really want. The Tea Party is the people.

Re:Just when we think the IRS can't be any more ev

[Applehu Akbar]

Stings when a nerve is hit, doesn't it?

Actually, I have been recently listening to exactly none of the shows you cite. But I'm sure that if you work for the IRS, you're going to automatically assume I'm guilty.

Re:Fox News?

[Vitriol Angst]

Funny that while a lot of tea party groups actually do enjoy billionaire corporate benefactors, none of them have actually been harmed.

There's never been a louder group of whiney entitled people with more privileges in the history of the USA -- coupled with a really, really bad sense of history that they named themselves after a protest against tax subsidies.

If only this were a terminal case of being a tool, if only.

Re: Fox News?

[Vitriol Angst]

This is insightful? Communism was originally planned to come from an advanced society; think Star Trek rather than bolshevik Russia.

Yes, there are corrupt people and that's a huge flaw in Communism. It's also a huge flaw in capitalism. The golden years everyone points to for the reason why Capitalism should reign supreme are between 1940 and 1980 -- the years when America was blessed by redistribution of wealth and a slightly Socialist form of government. Now we are getting well and truly screwed by Libertarianism.

Re: Fox News?

[budgenator]

When a news media outlet confuses an Email client program like Outlook with a Email/Calendering server program like Exchange Server, I become suspicious of either the reporter's veracity or his ability to know when he's getting a dog and pony show; yet your link reports

Emails considered an "official record" of the IRS couldn't be deleted and, in fact, needed to also have a hard copy filed. Those emails that constitute an official record are ones that are loosely defined under IRS policy as ones that were "[c]reated or received in the transaction of agency business," "appropriate for preservation as evidence of the government's function or activities," or "valuable because of the information they contain".

Which I read as any Email that is actually work related, rather than when your buddy two cubes over is going to lunch.

Re:Fox News?

[Vitriol Angst]

The Tea Party is an organization that thinks rich people shouldn't pay taxes.

The IRS collects taxes.

So looking for tax dodgers masquerading as charities -- no brainer.

I disagree that they are "independent" of the Republican party. It's an organization that pretends to be for a lot of things, in order to achieve Tea Party / and or Libertarian goals. The Tea Party is merely stripped bare of the pretense. The Koch brothers fund the Tea Party and it's closely aligned with ALEC.

The Republican party works for the Tea Party, and so do Blue Dog Democrats -- they all have the same benefactors. Follow the money. ALWAYS follow the money; http://www.theguardian.com/com...

It isn't so much as reducing the EXPENSE of government -- it's always, always about SHIFTING the costs so that it lands on everyone but the .1%.

Re:Fox News?

[Vitriol Angst]

Except that there in no proof that illegal immigrants compete for wages with the poor.

Grey's law, a corollary to Clarke's Third law

[radarskiy]

Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.

Re:Fox News?

[Archangel Michael]

"I posit the incompetence lies not with the IRS's IT department, but with the ones determining their budget."

Yeah, likely some/most/all of the same people at the heart of the scandal.

Re:Fox News?

[kaatochacha]

This.
I'm tired of people hiding evil with "whoops!"

Re:Fox News?

[Archangel Michael]

Actually no. They can keep the fifth. Due Process is a CRIMINAL activity. She wasn't being investigated criminally at that point. Taking the fifth there, in front of congress, should be cause for immediate dismissal. Period.

Re: Fox News?

[tysonedwards]

What are the odds that CBS was the one to break this??? It's their time to shine, and they've spent so long looking for the right time to capitAlize on their name! See, BS!

Re:Fox News?

[dcollins117]

_WHY_ would this be important in a historic perspective?

The emails document correspondence to and from White House officials. That's an invaluable resource to future historians. All correspondence with the White House is.

Re: Fox News?

[Darinbob]

Straight from the Fox News dictionary of every changing definitions.

How about this, Conservatives who never tolerate dissent, voting out in primary elections any Republican who dares compromise with the administration to get bills passed; never have respect for personal rights to a person's body; their ideology is about hording wealth in the hands of a few tiny worthy individuals; they view wealth inequality as a god given right; etc. See, there are many ways to grossly misrepresent and distort someone's political views.

Re:Just when we think the IRS can't be any more ev

[AK Marc]

Well, and now I'm hearing they were "recycled" not failed. The timing of the XP to Win7 migration coincides with the data loss. They could have simply been re-imaged with workers "illegally" keeping emails locally and not backed up. Thats not even negligence on the part of the IRS at that point. So long as the policy to keep emails was well known and enforced when known to be broken.

Re:How amazingly convenient!

[AK Marc]

Did it crash? I heard "recycled" and the timing is in line with OS upgrades. Wipe the drive and re-image. The timing of the requests was unrelated to the data loss.

Re:Fox News?

[AK Marc]

So, the IRS is given the smallest budget possible, and re-uses drives (probably over OS upgrades) and it required to wipe them, lest taxpayer info get released. Yet, when they are following all those rules, a department manages to break IRS rules and stores emails locally, probably because the budget cuts for the IRS require them to use low quotas, so users, against policy, archive locally. Then, the corner they are backed into is abused by the same people who made the problem to invent some other non-existent problem and make it all into a huge conspiracy.

The only power behind the purpose was the power to cut budgets.

Re:Fox News?

[AK Marc]

Relying on the un-backed-up hard drive of a computer as the sole repository of official communications is complete insanity.

That's standard procedure for the private sector, and many in the government have (And will) work in the private sector that they keep those bad habits. It's not deliberate, it's "best practices."

Re: Fox News?

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Ok, that level of crazy dumb. Got it.

Re: Fox News?

[Matt.Battey]

This is exactly why there needs to be lifetime term limits to members of Congress.

Re: Fox News?

[Matt.Battey]

Come on, you're telling that releasing 5-10 nonessential employees wouldn't free enough budget to be compliant with the law? There's noncompliance and them there's willful non compliance.

Re: Fox News?

[Matt.Battey]

Right on. The reason for the 90 day policy is that it sounds very familiar with warranty and other consumer policy language. When in fact, most discovery will occur well past that timeframe, thus the policy sounds genuine when it is really libelous.

Re:Just when we think the IRS can't be any more ev

[flopsquad]

Er, what? Don't know what you're getting at with the "work for the IRS" bit. I'll admit that people (including friends and family) arguing from canned soundbites does agitate me, though I don't doubt you for a second when you say you don't personally listen to the source material. Again, the rant was not really directed at your post. But when you see, time and again, these pre-packaged chunks of partisan messaging being bandied about as if they were real arguments, it just comes off so brainwashy. FWIW I agree that losing all these emails in precisely this way seems highly suspicious.

Re: Fox News?

[Bartles]

If reality had a liberal bias, communism would not exist, because it is anything but liberal.

Re:Fox News?

[blindseer]

Nancy Pelosi should be outraged but instead she uses the lost e-mails as an excuse for more spending. You see the IRS lost the e-mail because they did not have enough money to buy backup tapes or to hire enough IT staff. If we don't spend more money on backup systems now then we can expect more records to get "lost" in the future.

How do people like her get to stay in office? How do people like her get to be Speaker of the House?

Forget I asked. I know the answer. She gets to where she is because her answer to every problem is more government. We've created a feedback loop where more government creates more government. I'm not sure when this loop was created but I believe that the creation of the IRS has a lot to do with it.

Re:Fox News?

[stenvar]

As an IRS official, she was obligated to record all E-mails related to tax decisions; whether there was a pending investigation or scandal is irrelevant. Government officials are required to transfer any relevant E-mails to permanent record keeping systems; what the server E-mail retention policy is is irrelevant. Here is an explanation for the EPA (but the same rules apply to all agencies):

http://www.epa.gov/records/faq...

Furthermore, Obama make a campaign pledge of openness and transparency that he clearly has grossly violated (of course, it's only one of many things he has lied about).

To pretend that what happened here is OK is blind and stupid partisanship on your part.

Re:Missing IRS emails

[stenvar]

Well, if we can create gridlock so that neither Congress nor the president can do too much harm, I'm happy.

Re: Fox News?

[buybuydandavis]

They're just a gawking car accident network now. Every video clip is preceded with "some viewers may find this clip disturbing".

Re:Fox News?

[buybuydandavis]

Yeah, but how keeping regular backups of that over the years?

Re:Fox News?

[buybuydandavis]

People hate losing data, unless they want the data lost. Oopsie, all gone.

Re: Fox News?

[buybuydandavis]

That is their term limit - their lifetimes.

Re: Fox News?

[AK Marc]

And there's "compliance" on paper, that's not followed properly by employees.

Re:Fox News?

[NatasRevol]

1.10.3.2.3 (07-08-2011)
Emails as Possible Federal Records

        All federal employees and federal contractors are required by law to preserve records containing adequate and proper documentation of the organization, functions, policies, decisions, procedures, and essential transactions of the agency. Records must be properly stored and preserved, available for retrieval and subject to appropriate approved disposition schedules.

And that disposition schedule is 6 months.

So, no, they don't need to keep them forever. Yes, they do actually expire & get deleted. Every single day.

Re:Fox News?

[NatasRevol]

The IRS' disposition schedule for email is 6 months. Per the congressional hearing.

Re:Fox News?

[UnknowingFool]

I'm not sure how you can possibly equate Republican Darrell Issa == IRS. It's another claim by a Republican. From your own link:

IRS agents testified before Congress that the agency’s political targeting did not apply to progressive groups as Democrats and the media have claimed, according to a bombshell new staff report prepared by the House Oversight Committee chairman, Rep. Darrell Issa.

So either you are desperately trying to spin GOP talking points as IRS facts or you flat out lied.

Re:Fox News?

[crypticedge]

I guess you don't understand how the 501 application process works. When you apply, you are able to operate as if you've already been approved until you get directly denied. Those groups were not prevented from operating as 501's, they were just asked to prove they qualify for the 501 status they applied for, even though their application was in violation of the 501 status they were after.

Re:Fox News?

[UnknowingFool]

From what I know of companies and government agencies, poor data retention is the norm and not the exception. Especially with an entity that has fewer IT dollars. An underfunded government agency with a small IT staff doesn't follow industry best practices. Color me surprised.

Re:Fox News?

[crypticedge]

Well, ever since they discovered being president while black isn't impeachable, they've been trying to make up a plausible sounding reason to don the hoods and crosses.

Re:Fox News?

[UnknowingFool]

The IRS Commissioner may have a lot of explaining to do. But from what I can tell the actions were not directed by the Whitehouse and not particularly politically motivated. Under the deluge of new applications after Citizens United, the IRS took shortcuts. That's the scandal. The GOP is making out to be that there were secret orders from the Whitehouse.

Re:Fox News?

[UnknowingFool]

No, the IRS does keep backups of emails as instructed by the Standard. The problem is the data retention period is only 6 months. I would argue it needs to be longer but nothing I've seen dictates how long specifically to keep emails.

Re:Fox News?

[omnichad]

To avoid slowing down transmission of information:
                                Use Arial or another simple font on a plain background.

That's funny. I like the end result, but the reasoning of a font choice slowing down the email system is silly.

Re:Fox News?

[UnknowingFool]

As an IRS official, she was obligated to record all E-mails related to tax decisions; whether there was a pending investigation or scandal is irrelevant.

She did. It was on her HD. She was bad at backups but so is most of the computer using world.

Government officials are required to transfer any relevant E-mails to permanent record keeping systems; what the server E-mail retention policy is is irrelevant. Here is an explanation for the EPA (but the same rules apply to all agencies):

I don't see this anywhere as a regulation that applies to the IRS. Each individual agency can set their rules in addition to data retention policy. The EPA seems to do things differently than the IRS.

Furthermore, Obama make a campaign pledge of openness and transparency that he clearly has grossly violated (of course, it's only one of many things he has lied about).

Oh, here we go: If you want to blame Obama for everything that has gone wrong, you can go ahead. But that's your bias. Has Obama done enough? Has he been open enough? I would say no. But this particular scandal may not have had anything to do with him.

To pretend that what happened here is OK is blind and stupid partisanship on your part.

To pretend that Obama had anything to do with this without any proof is partisanship on your part. It's the same thing as the VA scandal: The VA has been screwed up for decades. Suddenly it's all Obama's fault that someone uncovered how screwed up there were? Who's talking partisan here?

Re:Fox News?

[UnknowingFool]

I did. You left out an important detail:

General Correspondence Files - Correspondence ( not covered elsewhere in the Schedule) with the National Office, regional offices, district offices, or subordinate offices concerning program activities involving policy, procedures, decisions, etc, not made a part of a specific case

This only applies to general policies not individual cases.

Re:Fox News?

[UnknowingFool]

Unfortunately for you, they were retained. For 6 months. Please cite any law or statute that requires the IRS retain them for more than 6 months.

Re:Fox News?

[LDAPMAN]

Federal Records Act, 44 U.S.C et seq.

http://www.archives.gov/about/...

email meets the statutory definition of a record. Failure to keep them is a violation of the law.

Re:Fox News?

[WileyC]

And the other SIX hard drives that mysteriously failed when their contents were subpoenaed? The IRS destroying backups when congressional committees were specifically asking for those emails? A congressman asked IN 2011 for that information and then, whoops!, let's throw away the backups RATHER THAN RESTORE THOSE EMAILS? What do you think backups are FOR?!

No, anyone who even remotely believes this crap is delusional. And if you don't believe it and are still shoveling, that makes you liar. It's obvious there is a concerted effort to keep emails from being made public from at LEAST seven different people in the IRS. Now, how many people does it take to make a conspiracy?

Re:Fox News?

[UnknowingFool]

Again, you fail to answer the question: Where does it say that email is to be saved more than six months? All you have is that a government agency must retain records. However if you actually read the statutes it clearly says in 3105 (1):

that records in the custody of the agency are not to be alienated or destroyed except in accordance with sections 3301-3314 of this title, and

If you follow then to Chapter 33.

3308. Disposal of similar records where prior disposal was authorized
When it appears to the Archivist that an agency has in its custody, or is accumulating, records of the same form or character as those of the same agency previously authorized to be disposed of, he may empower the head of the agency to dispose of the records, after they have been in existence a specified period of time, in accordance with regulations promulgated under section 3302 of this title and without listing or scheduling them.

If the IRS has a 6 month retention policy, then it clearly falls under the guidelines set by Chapters 31 and 33 that after a certain time period that they can be disposed.

Re:Fox News?

[_BrianMahoney]

Found this on the Washington Post blog : http://www.washingtonpost.com/... The Daily Mail has lots of stuff on the 'scandal' but, well, it's the Daily Mail. Mother Jones calls it an "IRS scandal that isn't". Good point though about there not being any mainstream newspapers with the story. I think the IRS could do us all a favor and take away Fox's 'news' classification. More of a cult than a news organization.

Lost Emails excuses ring hollow

[pebear]

I'm a backup administrator who works for a large insurance company. Any customer facing data is backed up monthly and saved for 10 years. Any data that the legal department feels might be subpoenaed is saved for 10 years. The IRS had to know that the emails were being actively investigated by congress and they were and are legally bound to have done due diligence and made sure they were all backed up and saved for a reasonable amount of time. Congress needs to send independent FBI investigators in and make sure what was testified was the truth and that there was no foul play going on. If in fact this was all a awful mistake then fine if not then people need to face charges of hindering an investigation, contempt of congress, lying to congress and on and on. The FBI needs to audit along the DR policies of the IRS. The whole we are sorry the PC crashed and or the hard drives were wiped and sent to be recycled rings hollow. It really smells like a cover up and this is what I would consider a constitutional crisis. Allowing the IRS to serve as a political weapon. That needs to stop and people need to go to jail. This is actually much worse than Watergate. As Watergate was comical and slightly sinister with the coverup. This is just plain evil. It's what I would expect from Russia or China and places like that.

Re:Fox News?

[tranquilidad]

Backup systems are specifically prohibited from playing the role of a recordkeeping system.

Recordkeeping systems are required to maintain all documentation related to the decision making process.

Backup systems are run by the IRS and they can pretty much set their own standards on how to manage their IT organization. Recordkeeping systems standards, on the other hand, are established by law and regulation and managed by the National Archives taking out of the hands of any agency the power to set their own retention periods.

When it comes to email, for example, if the agency does not maintain an adequate recordkeeping system, as defined by the National Archives, then they are required to print each and every email and file them using a very specific protocol.

There is no exception and the IRS is not permitted to invent their own recordkeeping system standards. The IRS has previously certified to Congress and the National Archives that they have appropriate recordkeeping systems. It is up to the National Archives to determine the retention period for documents, electronic and paper, that are retained for recordkeeping purposes.

The fact that emails involved in a decision making process are lost indicates that the IRS does not have an appropriate recordkeeping system. This, by itself, is a violation of federal law.

Re:Fox News?

[UnknowingFool]

Please cite where it says that each and every email is to be printed. I can guarantee you that it does not say what you think it says.

Re:Fox News?

[budgenator]

Wierd isn't it, old farts like me think of email as ascii characters with a file or two attached.

Re:Fox News?

[tranquilidad]

IRM (IRS Manual) 1.15.6 Managing Electronic Records Found here
-------------
1.15.6.6
Standards for Managing Electronic Mail Records ...
3. IRS offices will not store the official recordkeeping copy of e-mail messages that are federal records ONLY on the electronic mail system, unless the system has all of the features of an electronic recordkeeping system, some of which are specified in paragraph 2 above. If the electronic mail system is not designed to be a recordkeeping system, ask an E-Mail/System Administrator to instruct you on how to copy the information from the electronic mail system to a recordkeeping system or produce a hard copy[emphasis mine] for recordkeeping purposes.

4. IRS offices that maintain their e-mail records electronically will move or copy them to a separate electronic recordkeeping system unless their system has the features specified in IRM 1.15.6.6.2 above. Backup tapes are not to be used for recordkeeping purposes.[emphasis mine] ...

6. Offices that maintain paper files as their recordkeeping systems will print their e-mail records[emphasis mine] and the related transmission and receipt data. ...

Exhibit 1.15.6-1
Common Questions about E-Mail

Are there special requirements for retaining e-mail messages as records
The basic requirements applicable to all records apply to e-mail records as well. If they are not in an approved electronic recordkeeping system, then the e-mail messages identified as records must be printed out and placed in the appropriate record system[emphasis mine]. However, there are some specific elements for records sent or received through e-mail which also must be captured in addition to the message to satisfy recordkeeping requirements. You should ensure that...

--------------------
There are a bunch of other IRS manuals that discuss printing, filing and retaining records. The issue here is that there is a requirement, formalized by statute and regulation, that all government agencies retain records.

Now about your guarantee; it doesn't say that each and every email has to be printed. It says that if there isn't a suitable electronic recordkeeping system then it has to be printed.

Re:Fox News?

[jwhitener]

I read somewhere else that the official IRS email server backup plan is to maintain 6 months.

If you create or receive email messages during the course of your daily work, you are responsible for ensuring that you manage them properly.

That policy surprises me that it is up to the individual employee to print paper copies of email if it could be related to federal work. So archaic.

I wonder if the investigators targeted 10 IRS employees at random, and attempted to get their email from the same period, if they would find a similar "failure to backup" problem. As in, none of the missing emails from the 6 people are due to malicious behavior, but just generally neglecting their duty to back up to paper.

Re:Fox News?

[stenvar]

I don't see this anywhere as a regulation that applies to the IRS. Each individual agency can set their rules in addition to data retention policy

No, agencies cannot do that. All federal agencies are bound by FOIA and transparency requirements. Even if it was voluntary, Obama promised transparency and record keeping during his campaing.

To pretend that Obama had anything to do with this without any proof is partisanship on your part. It's the same thing as the VA scandal: The VA has been screwed up for decades. Suddenly it's all Obama's fault that someone uncovered how screwed up there were?

Of course, he has everything to do with it: managing these agencies is his primary job. That's what the president does. That's why these agencies are headed by political appointees. I held Bush responsible for the screwups of his appointees as well.

Saying that Obama is a lousy president and a liar isn't partisan, because I said the same thing about Bush. I haven't decided yet which of the two presidents has been more incompetent; it's a close call.

Unreasonable email caps

[GPS Pilot]

I've worked at places where the size of my mailbox was, literally, limited to 25 cents' worth of hard drive space.

Granted, hard drive prices fall rapidly; maybe when the quota was first imposed, it was the equivalent of 25 dollars' worth of hard drive space, and the policy was never revisited while storage costs fell by two orders of magnitude. Still, a $25 limit on one of a professional's most important tools is very stingy. I could expense $25 for a single breakfast if I wanted to (although I never have).

it was "illegal" for them to use email, and they used mail or phone exclusively

Another policy that doesn't make sense. It's easier to audit an employee's email interactions with the public, than his or her telephone interactions with the public.

Journalists accepting of the coverup

[GPS Pilot]

Most news reports seem quite accepting of the story that the emails are irretrievably gone because Lerner's local hard drive crashed.

Is it just because journalists are ignorant of how enterprise email systems typically work (messages stored on an Exchange server with offsite backups)?

Or is it the ultimate proof of the mainstream media being "in the tank" for the Administration?

Re:Fox News?

[tranquilidad]

Just to be more specific on what the IRS does, you can follow this link to see a letter from Leonard Oursler, the national director for legislative affairs for the Department of the Treasury, to the chairman and ranking member of the finance committee.

In the letter, Mr. Oursler indicates that it was Lois Lerner's responsibility to preserve the emails as an official government record, "...the email must be printed and placed in the appropriate file by the employee."

The issue here is that emails related to operations, decision making and a host of other subjects are official government records that must be preserved. These preservation requirements fall well outside standard IT-style email retention policies.

Doing more with less?

[GPS Pilot]

You may be right that they aren't issued cutting-edge laptops. Nonetheless, think about this: thanks to incomes growing faster than the rate of inflation, basic commodities, like a gallon of milk, consume a significantly smaller fraction of a family's income than they did a generation ago. (This is known as Engel's Law.) And that effect is orders-of-magnitude larger for technological commodities, like a gigaflop of computing power.

Government services, too, ought to be costing a smaller fraction of a family's income. (Especially because government uses technology to provide its services. Most government workers sit in front of a computer all day.) But government services are about the only thing that is bucking the trend, and consuming a larger fraction of a family's income!

Re:Fox News?

[Bartles]

So let me get this straight. The computer of a bigwig at the IRS crashes. She loses all her emails. And not once does she request a backup retrieval. The story is BS and you look like a fool believing it.

Re:Fox News?

[Bartles]

Why did Lois Lerner not request a backup retrieval when her computer crashed? There had to be a lot of important stuff that she lost if it encompassed 2 years.

Re:Fox News?

[Bartles]

If your hard drive crashes, you just request a backup retrieval. That's what a normal person would do. Did Lois request a retrieval? It's almost as if they wanted this information to disappear.

Re:Fox News?

[Bartles]

IRS policies, and federal law require them to keep email that may be needed later as official records.

Re:Fox News?

[Bartles]

You are ignoring the facts. Dozens of conservative groups were left in limbo for years. Look at the questions the IRS was trying to get them to answer, and tell me you still believe that.

Re: Fox News?

[Bartles]

Holy fuck, you are dense.

Re:Fox News?

[Bartles]

When it just says retain and does not specify a period that means indefinitely. Just like paper records. It's not that hard to understand.

Re:Fox News?

[Bartles]

Yes, they investigated 7 liberal groups and 190 conservative groups. Totally fair once you take an objective look. Many of those conservative groups had their application held in limbo for years. The only propaganda here, is what you swallowed whole and are now regurgitating.

Re: Fox News?

[Bartles]

Wow, you reinforced his points way better than I could have. Kudos.

Re: Fox News?

[Bartles]

The OP is arguing that the IRS prosecuting a mobster who evaded his taxes, is the same thing as the IRS using it's broad powers to persecute political groups in an election year. He does not have a point.

Now that the IRS has proven rampantly

[ToddInSF]

incompetent, it's time to just get rid of it.

Most of what they do is harass poor and middle class people anyway.

Why would a lemer...

[Snufu]

give its hard drive to the IRS? Was it subpoenad?

Re:Fox News?

[UnknowingFool]

Way not to read:

IRS offices will not store the official recordkeeping copy of e-mail messages that are federal records ONLY on the electronic mail system, unless the system has all of the features of an electronic recordkeeping system, some of which are specified in paragraph 2 above. If the electronic mail system is not designed to be a recordkeeping system, ask an E-Mail/System Administrator to instruct you on how to copy the information from the electronic mail system to a recordkeeping system or produce a hard copy[emphasis mine] for recordkeeping purposes.

4. IRS offices that maintain their e-mail records electronically will move or copy them to a separate electronic recordkeeping system unless their system has the features specified in IRM 1.15.6.6.2above. Backup tapes are not to be used for recordkeeping purposes.[emphasis mine] ...

The basic requirements applicable to all records apply to e-mail records as well. If they are not in an approved electronic recordkeeping system, then the e-mail messages identified as records must be printed out and placed in the appropriate record system[emphasis mine]. However, there are some specific elements for records sent or received through e-mail which also must be captured in addition to the message to satisfy recordkeeping requirements. You should ensure that...

Re:Fox News?

[UnknowingFool]

You seemingly left out very important words and context that negate your point:

When a user needs to create space in his or her email box, the user has the option of either deleting emails (that do not qualify as official records) or moving them . . . if an email qualifies as an official record, per IRS policy, the email must be printed and placed in the appropriate folder . . .

What the GOP wants is ALL emails regardless if they were official records or not specifically if she had any contact with the White House. Again they are not asking for official records as most emails do not qualify as such.

Re:Fox News?

[UnknowingFool]

No, agencies cannot do that. All federal agencies are bound by FOIA and transparency requirements. Even if it was voluntary, Obama promised transparency and record keeping during his campaing.

Emails are NOT FOIA requests. There are special forms to request the information. Any emails that pertain to FOIA requests must be kept but normal emails are not. So again, it's Obama's fault that he has not changed every single agency in the government especially those with antiquated IT systems and procedures. Give me a break.

Of course, he has everything to do with it: managing these agencies is his primary job. That's what the president does. That's why these agencies are headed by political appointees. I held Bush responsible for the screwups of his appointees as well.

Um, no. Leading the country is his primary job. Managing individual agencies are the responsibilities of the individual directors. Is Obama ultimately in charge, yes. Does he manage operational aspects? Hell no. Furthermore, Lerner was not an appointee. She was a career government employee. And she rose to her position under Bush not Obama.

Saying that Obama is a lousy president and a liar isn't partisan, because I said the same thing about Bush. I haven't decided yet which of the two presidents has been more incompetent; it's a close call.

THIS particular issue may not have had anything to do with Obama. It was the actions of government employees that he did not appoint. Bush appointed individuals like Gonzales that definitely played partisan politics.

Re:Fox News?

[tranquilidad]

Are you purposefully being obtuse?

Here is the full definition of a Federal record from the Federal Records Act:

"...all books, papers, maps, photographs, machine-readable materials, or other documentary materials, regardless of physical form or characteristics, made or received by an agency of the U.S. Government under Federal law or in connection with the transaction of public business and preserved or appropriate for preservation by that agency or its legitimate successor as evidence of the organization, functions, policies, decisions, procedures, operations, or other activities of the Government or because of the informational value of the data in them." (44 U.S.C. 3301, Definition of Records)

Any email that went to the White House concerning the business of the IRS is, by definition, an official record requiring preservation.

Any email that constituted a decision making process, procedures or operations is, by definition, an official record requiring preservation.

Perhaps you would care to actually identify a class of emails that pertain to auditing, evaluation of applications for tax-exempt status, procedures to follow when processing such applications or emails that discuss IRS business between the White House and the IRS that would not be official records. Until you can accurately define such a class of emails then it is safe to say that the emails were official records requiring preservation.

As I showed you in the letter from the Department of the Treasury, Lois Lerner was required to physically print those emails and store them. The IRS's failure to properly preserve those records was a violation of law. Lois Lerner's failure to preserve those records was, at least, a violation of IRS policy.

Re:Fox News?

[tranquilidad]

Again, I've already shown you documentation from the government indicating that the IRS email system is not a recordkeeping system according to the Federal Records Act and its associated regulations.

I've also shown you the letter from the Department of the Treasury indicating that Lois Lerner was required to print any email that is an official record; which are almost all emails that are work related.

You can continue to attempt to obfuscate the issue but the facts remain: Lois Lerner and a bunch of other people associated with this issue failed to preserve official records as required by IRS policy and federal law. The IRS failed to preserve records even though they certified their systems would preserve those records.

Stop trying to project your corporate IT mentality onto systems managed by federal agencies. Watergate and 18 missing minutes helped shape the requirements found in the federal records act for good reason.

These emails were official records. Being official records they had to be maintained in an official recordkeeping system. The IRS email system is not an electronic recordkeeping system, by definition. Lois Lerner's hard drive was not an electronic recordkeeping system, by definition. The IRS official recordkeeping system for email is, by evidence of the letter I've already cited, hard copy print outs of the email.

Re:Fox News?

[UnknowingFool]

Are you purposefully not understanding words that don't support your position

as evidence of the organization, functions, policies, decisions, procedures, operations, or other activities

Note it does not include or say ALL communications.

Any email that went to the White House concerning the business of the IRS is, by definition, an official record requiring preservation.

No, the GOP want ALL emails in a desperate fish attempt for some sort of smoking gun that the White House directed the actions. It does not appear this to be the case.

Any email that constituted a decision making process, procedures or operations is, by definition, an official record requiring preservation.

Again, the GOP wants ALL emails.

Perhaps you would care to actually identify a class of emails that pertain to auditing, evaluation of applications for tax-exempt status, procedures to follow when processing such applications or emails that discuss IRS business between the White House and the IRS that would not be official records. Until you can accurately define such a class of emails then it is safe to say that the emails were official records requiring preservation.

Do you actually work in an office? I would think many of my emails do not pertain to official business. Also they don't apply to procedures. They don't apply to operations.

As I showed you in the letter from the Department of the Treasury, Lois Lerner was required to physically print those emails and store them. The IRS's failure to properly preserve those records was a violation of law. Lois Lerner's failure to preserve those records was, at least, a violation of IRS policy.

No you deliberately twisted the words of the letter specifically omitting clauses that say the opposite of what you said.

Re:Fox News?

[UnknowingFool]

You keep twisting the documentation by ignoring words that don't agree with your position. You also leave out certain words which changes the context.

You can continue to attempt to obfuscate the issue but the facts remain: Lois Lerner and a bunch of other people associated with this issue failed to preserve official records as required by IRS policy and federal law. The IRS failed to preserve records even though they certified their systems would preserve those records.

At worst, the IRS has a crappy retention system. Having worked in government and companies with small IT budgets, they are not the only ones. You keep making it out to be a bigger thing than this.

Stop trying to project your corporate IT mentality onto systems managed by federal agencies. Watergate and 18 missing minutes helped shape the requirements found in the federal records act for good reason.

Contrary to your paranoia, not everything is attributed to malice. Incompetence is more likely.

These emails were official records. Being official records they had to be maintained in an official recordkeeping system. The IRS email system is not an electronic recordkeeping system, by definition. Lois Lerner's hard drive was not an electronic recordkeeping system, by definition. The IRS official recordkeeping system for email is, by evidence of the letter I've already cited, hard copy print outs of the email.

According to you, everything is an official record because it is missing. That's hardly logical.

Re:Fox News?

[tranquilidad]

You keep twisting the documentation by ignoring words that don't agree with your position. You also leave out certain words which changes the context.

Demonstrate or provide your own citation.

At worst, the IRS has a crappy retention system. Having worked in government and companies with small IT budgets, they are not the only ones. You keep making it out to be a bigger thing than this.

Stop trying to project your corporate IT mentality onto systems managed by federal agencies. Watergate and 18 missing minutes helped shape the requirements found in the federal records act for good reason.

Contrary to your paranoia, not everything is attributed to malice. Incompetence is more likely.

According to you, everything is an official record because it is missing. That's hardly logical.

I never cited malice and I don't care what reason the emails are missing. An email is more likely than not an official record. You certainly can't prove what you're attempting to state; how do you know official records aren't amongst the missing emails?

The IRS is required by law to preserve their official records. The law doesn't say, "Well, only if you're competent, or it's convenient, or you have the budget for it."

The IRS has certified that they retain their official records.

Unless you can demonstrate that there are no official records in the missing emails then, yes, the IRS has failed to preserve their records as required by law.

You may want to argue that it was incompetence that caused them to violate the law. Others may want to argue that it was malice. What is not arguable is that the IRS and its employee, Lois Lerner, failed to adhere to the requirements of the Federal Records Act.

Poor Ms. Woods tried to argue that it was an "accident" that 18 minutes of tapes were erased. This is the reason the Federal Records Act and its associated certifications exist.

Perhaps you would like to argue that it's mere coincidence combined with incompetence that caused similar disk crashes and email destruction to occur to six other employees closely associated with this issue.

At some point one has to look at the bigger picture. Through negligence, malfeasance, incompetence or evil conspiracy, important evidence related to an abuse by the IRS against citizens of the United States is missing. The more evidence that goes missing and the more sources of evidence that disappear the more like a conspiracy it looks than mere incompetence.

You are free to draw your own conclusion related to the facts but this particular thread started because you seemed to be find it incredulous that the IRS had a policy of printing their emails for preservation. Now that that belief has been shattered you still cling to some hope that even though official records were destroyed, by whatever means, continued investigation is just a GOP stunt.

Re:Fox News?

[tranquilidad]

The Archivist of the United States testified yesterday that the IRS did not follow the law as it relates to the Federal Records Act.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/us-archivist-tells-oversight-committee-the-irs-did-not-follo

Is not following the law the same as breaking it?

Everyone else appears ready to accept that those emails were official records requiring preservation.

Re:Fox News?

[stenvar]

Um, no. Leading the country is his primary job

We don't have a "leader". Obama is head of the executive branch; he's supposed to keep the government running, implement the laws that Congress passes, and otherwise, like all the other presidents, Obama should STFU. It's little proto-fascists like you that want to be led by a "Fuhrer".

Managing individual agencies are the responsibilities of the individual directors.

Yes, appointed by Obama. And it is his job to appoint people who obey the law and come down hard on them when they don't. He has failed to do that. Notice how Eric Holder is still in office?

Re:Fox News?

[FatdogHaiku]

I would love to be a fly on the wall in the Star Chamber where all the MSM other than Fox news conspire together.

"The Star Chamber" was released on DVD in 2005 by Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, so the name is not available for use by the conspiring MSM...
They tried "The Bill Clinton Chamber" but it somehow morphed into a strip club and it's too hard to hear anything...
It's not a very good conspiracy if everyone is shouting between the legs of pole dancers.
Not saying it's not fun, they just don't get much done...