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Have Terabytes of Enron Data Quietly Gone Missing? (muckrock.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the forgetting-the-past dept.

Long-time Slashdot reader v3rgEz quotes MuckRock: Government investigations into California's electricity shortage, ultimately determined to be caused by intentional market manipulations and capped retail electricity prices by the now infamous Enron Corporation, resulted in terabytes of information being collected by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. This included several extremely large databases, some of which had nearly 200 million rows of data, including Enron's bidding and price processes, their trading and risk management systems, emails, audio recordings, and nearly 100,000 additional documents. That information has quietly disappeared, and not even its custodians seem to know why.
The web page where a defense contractor hosts the data has been down since 2013, and after a one-month wait they replied to a request by stating the data was "under review" and "currently not accessible," adding that it might never be available again. And while a U.S. government site also claims they offer a trio of datasets on CD, that agency "has not responded to repeated requests for these datasets sent over the past two months."

The site also instructs visitors to email Lockheed Martin, who maintains some of the data -- but the provided email address bounces.

5 of 85 comments (clear)

  1. Why should we care? by Brett+Buck · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What difference does it make at this point? The case is closed, the company is gone, people have gone to jail. It's completely irrelevant today. There are also plenty of public records of the trials if anyone wants to know the details.

    1. Re:Why should we care? by 110010001000 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It isn't irrelevant. There are companies like Enron out there right now. Look for companies that hate short sellers. Enron execs detested short sellers. For a good reason: they expose inflated numbers and fake businesses. Literally the same things happen over and over again in the business world. The lessons of Enron have been forgotten because everyone wants the gravy train to keep rolling.

    2. Re:Why should we care? by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

      It isn't irrelevant. There are companies like Enron out there right now.

      That doesn't explain what anyone would want to do with the data from the Enron case. If you're trying to make a case against another corporation, you're going to need data about THEIR activities, not Enron's.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    3. Re:Why should we care? by PopeRatzo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I have not forgotten the lesson. Dont let the government price fix. Dont let politicians claim that its for the peoples own good while they get campaign donations from those ready to take advantage of it.

      Wow, you not only have forgotten the lesson, it appears that you never knew the lesson to begin with.

      The Enron disaster didn't occur because of "government price fix". It all blew up because Enron was manipulating markets after deregulation.

      The disaster came from Enron's illegal goddamn behavior. People went to prison over it.

      https://www.theguardian.com/bu...

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    4. Re:Why should we care? by PopeRatzo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If the government hadn't regulated the prices for political purposes, then Enron would not have been able to gouge the retailers.

      That's like saying, "If the government hadn't made murder illegal, then Charlie Manson would never have become a murderer."

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.