White House: Hard drives tossed

[jackson_dem]

:eyes:

-snip-

WASHINGTON — Older White House computer hard drives have been destroyed, the White House disclosed to a federal court Friday in a controversy over millions of possibly missing e-mails from 2003 to 2005.

The White House revealed new information about how it handles its computers in an effort to persuade a federal magistrate it would be fruitless to undertake an e-mail recovery plan that the court proposed.

"When workstations are at the end of their lifecycle and retired ... the hard drives are generally sent offsite to another government entity for physical destruction," the White House said in a sworn declaration filed with U.S. Magistrate Judge John Facciola.

It has been the goal of a White House Office of Administration "refresh program" to replace one-third of its workstations every year in the Executive Office of the President, according to the declaration.

Some, but not necessarily all, of the data on old hard drives is moved to new computer hard drives, the declaration added.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2008-03-21-white-house-trashed_N.htm?csp=34

[Mira]

1. Are they the ones that force me to have years and years of paper

stored in my house as proof of my tax claims?
The irony staggers me.

[samdogmom]

2. Well knock me over with a feather! What a bunch of B.S.!!!!

Give me a break...these guys are CROOKS--arrest them all now!

[PSPS]

3. No hard drives doesn't mean no email

The whitehouse almost certainly uses a hosted email arrangement, probably Exchange. The workstation hard drives may have an offline file (OST), but the server would have it all. At least it would up until they deleted them and scrubbed any backups.

In the old days, they used to have to use bimbos like Fawn Hall to carry tons of paper to the overworked whitehouse shredders.

[MaryCeleste]

25. Hmmm not neccearily

The server may or may not have had them. Its optional, even with Exchange. Backup retention policies do seem a bit lax though

[debbierlus]

4. And, tonight's Friday Night New's Dump: We threw away the evidence

Oh my fucking god...

Of COURSE they did....

[KingOfLostSouls]

5. "We destroyed evidence"

thats what they're really saying.


you know, its amazing how two sides are sitting here and on the campaign trail tearing each other to shreds

and the REAL enemey, the REAL haters of freedom, are still working to destroy our country.

[NC_Nurse]

6. My dog ate my homework.

Just as plausible. Christ.

[kestrel91316]

7. I REALLY hate to say this, but.......

I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.

Fuck and double fuck. I TOLD YOU THEY WOULD DO THIS.

Oh, and BTW, Republicans.........you can forget about LITTLE OL' ME obeying your stinkin' laws any time and every time there's a Republican sitting in the WH. You just got served notice.

[KingOfLostSouls]

8. I don't think anyone thought they wouldn't

this administration comply with the law and do something right?

yeahhhhhhhhh suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuure

[tachyon]

9. Rose Mary Woods could never have imagined such shenanigans

in her wildest wet dreams. :D
:D

[jackson_dem]

13. lol yup!

[C_U_L8R]

10. Call the NSA .. they've scooped up ALL the emails

[Cirque du So-What]

11. I'm still holding out hope

that somewhere in that criminal enterprise, some weaselly, anal-retentive minion has these e-mails squirreled away on his machine - maybe even made backups - and that his hard drive will be discovered inadvertently.

[Nickster]

12. Funny, I get a new laptop at work and they can replicate my email without

transferring the hard drives between computers. Must be some kind of magic.

[Wickerman]

15. weird, ain't it?

I'm told to watch what I write in email as we keep everything backed-up for like 3 years. And yah, no matter that I have gone through 2 computer and 3 hard drives in that time. Funny my County level agency would be more proactive in saving data than the freakin' white house.

[msongs]

14. bush knows the dems in congress are a bunch of scaredy cats nt

[Spiffarino]

16. Something we can agree on.

The BushCo bastards think we're all idiots. Unfortunately, they're probably mostly right.

What's Britney up to today!?

:nuke:

[spanone]

17. destroying evidence

it's none of our business

[Rex]

18. Oopsy, did people want that information?

I guess they couldn't have backed everything up to a master drive or sumthin. :eyes: Can't do that.

[malaise]

19. Time we destroy the drivers who destroyed

the drivers. IMPEACH!

[bdamomma]

20. and their response to destroyed evidence is "so".

[jimshoes]

21. What a bunch of lying sacks of shit

Why should I even try to follow the fucking rules any more.

[Triana]

22. So? WTF does that have to do with it?

The email archives/storage is on the SERVERS, most likely. If the system is Exchange or an IMAP server, it's there, not on individual systems.

And in an enterprise-level system such as the Fed. Gov't I'd EXPECT the email infrastructure to be an enterprise-wide, centralized system meaning: IMAP or Exchange or something of that sort.

SO - THE DATA IS/ WAS ON THE SERVERS - NOT the workstations. And the SERVERS are what they ought to be looking at and for. WHAT happened to the data on the servers? They don't BACK UP their server data at the White House?!

EXCUSE ME? :wtf:


Now, this is the biggest truckload of horse-puckey I've seen yet about this issue.

They're stalling, lying, distracting, obfuscating.

WHO IS IN CHARGE of the mail SERVERS? And WHAT have they done with the e-mail data that WAS there?

[MaryCeleste]

27. Your technical position is not correct

Mail can be transferred to clients and removed from the server with any kind of mail server. Mail servers also have space quotas and retention policies to save disc space. Even on a well run system there is little chance that emails from 2003 would still be there unless saved at a client level. Even backup media goes on a rotation and gets reused periodically.

There is a law that says all official WH email must be retained that has clearly been ignored. The WH email is an independent system that has been a CF for quite some time, even before shrub

[htuttle]

28. Retention policies to "save disc space"?

Um...Bullshit.

Storage costs have dropped WAY below $1 per gigabyte (even less for long-term storage like tape), which can store probably a few million emails. There is absolutely NO excuse for not following the law and archiving every little thing other than outright fraud and malfeasance -- especially considering the incredibly, mind-bogglingly HUGE sums of money spent on contractors in Iraq!

on edit:

I just wanted to add that I've been the IT administrator for an email system that serves about 200 people. In the LAST 10 YEARS, we've NEVER had to remove a stored email due to disk space limitations.

[Triana]

29. Exactly - somebody was deliberately NOT following policy (n/t)

[MaryCeleste]

33. It not policy, is US Code that is being ignored

But to claim that it would all still be on the server is foolish. It was purged, and purged intentionally.

[MaryCeleste]

32. Work at an enterprise level and it becomes a big deal

Current limitation where I work is no more the 50MB on the server. Everything else has to be stored local. Mine overflows in 3-4 days. Archiving is a different matter.

You will get no argument from me that WH email is a CF and it should have been structured to automatically archive all transactions.

[htuttle]

37. Bah! That's no excuse!

The White House staff numbers no more than 2,000 or so. That's still small enough to comfortably keep hundreds of millions of emails online and active on the mail server, much less backed up onto tape.

If your current workplace limits users to 50mb each -- they're just CHEAP, not 'standardized'.

:eyes:

[Triana]

41. My 11 GB of email is on a server - IMAP - been there for almost THREE years

...NONE of it is stored locally. NONE of it.

When I run out of space, I am able to have my quota increased. It's an IMAP server. EVERYONE has 10GB (that is GIGABYTES) to start with. They can get an increase if needed - just for the asking. NO ONE stores their email locally (well, very few people). They are in fact encouraged NOT to. The mail is backed up from the server.

In large enterprises this IS how it's done.

[hootinholler]

51. Not really...

The retention CF was fixed with PROFS, which * dismantled permanently.

-Hoot

[Elidor]

23. It's been quite an evolving story, hasn't it?

First they said, "Oops. We were supposed to back up the emails? Oh, yeah, but see, these weren't THOSE emails. These were different emails. Different server."

Then they said, "The other emails? Oh, gee, no, those are private, you can't see them."

Oh, yes we can. "Oh, look, we didn't back up those emails, either. Pity. Even though we spend millions of the public's money on this stuff, we can't be expected to have in place the type of security backups that even the most hopelessly inefficient businesses implemented years ago."

Now it's, "Oh, look, the hard drives were trashed. And you know...we're really hoping that you've conveniently forgotten about the existence of the NSA, while we're on the subject..."

Not just liars, but terrible liars. A 10-year old couldn't get away with such pathetic obfuscation.

[Clear Blue Sky]

24. Nixonian...

[Ghost in the Machine]

26. The emails they're looking for are on the RNC servers anyways...

Registrant: Republican National Committee
310 First Street SE
Washington, DC 20003
US

Domain Name: RNCHQ.COM

Administrative Contact , Technical Contact :
Republican National Committee
[e-mail]
310 First Street SE
Washington, DC 20003
US
Phone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]

Record expires on 06-Apr-2009
Record created on 06-Apr-2005
Database last updated on 16-Oct-2007

Domain servers in listed order:

NS1.CHA.SMARTECHCORP.NET
A.NS.TRESPASSERS-W.NET

{ Server Name: NS1.CHA.SMARTECHCORP.NET
IP Address: 64.203.96.130
Registrar: ENOM, INC.
Whois Server: whois.enom.com
Referral URL: http://www.enom.com
}


Current Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, LLC.
Record Type: Domain Name
Server Type: Indeterminate
Lock Status: clientTransferProhibited
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

[L. Coyote]

36. And their lawyers' computers.

[MaryCeleste]

38. RNC has no requriement to archive and can simple state they did not

and there will be no way to prove otherwise. Under the circumstance, what would you guess their response will be?

On Edit: I think they may now be under a court order to archive and recover what they can. Its been a while since I read about it.

[MiniMe]

42. No, they don't. But it was illegal for the WH to use those RNC accounts

for official WH business.

[defendandprotect]

30. Why not try the telecoms --- ?? They probably have copies of the e-mails . . . !!!

[opihimoimoi]

31. Integrity ??? INTEGRITY TOO??? UNDER the BUS??? Is there NO SHAME?

Just arrogantly say ya destroyed the evidence?? Thats it??? Get over it?? Move on?? New Day....Oh, there is that March madness over there....

[L. Coyote]

34. Of course. Hopefully in an ecologcally conscious manner.

So, where are the e-mail recovery ideas?

[magellan]

35. They're exceptionally careful with their own data, incredibly lax with everyone else's

That isn't incompetence, it's criminal.

[Missy Vixen]

39. The dog threw up on our homework

What they're not divulging: Everything on those hard drives, if I remember correctly, was to be archived. Everything.

Will we ever find out exactly who ordered this? Probably not.

LMAO,
Julie

[StarryNite]

40. How convieeenient

:eyes:

[tom_paine]

43. A total incriminating electronic document-shredding INSTITUTIONALIZED no less

One new workstation every three years. The old workstation, evidence, ahem, destroyed cyclically, efficiently.

And Eliot Spitzer can't even buy a high-class hooker.

By the way, who are Client's #1-8 and #10-#60? No names mentioned there (ahem).

I'll say it again: The double-standard for criminality is staggering, and the Sovietization/Bushification/Nazification/Baathification is complete or near-complete at the executive level.

The Old Republic of America, the Untied States of America is no more. It is way too far gone.

Chance I am wrong? Sure, but I think it's down to 2% now. Look at Spitzer vs. Vitter.

Vitter gets a standing ovation and keeps his seat. Spitzer destroyed.

This is what is must feel like to be Russian or Chinese. The Bushies have only to apply the clamps to make it a 100% similarity. And all the laws are ready for some future Bushie to make it so like keys in an ignition.

May God and Heaven help us and our descendants.

[havocmom]

45. My man Tom has a point.

Spot on.

Remind me to PM you about doings here at home x( Those fuckers are everywhere.

[havocmom]

46. And, Tom has mail

Long and depressing mail...

[wildbilln864]

44. What? Another outrageous crime by the Bush/PNAC cabal?

:boring:

[Blue_In_AK]

47. Isn't this de facto against the law, no matter what

was on those hard drives? Isn't there some kind of White House records act that mandates that these things be kept? What now?

[lebkuchen]

48. as if there were laws against and an ability to enforce them

Hasn't the rule of law been tossed out the window under the Bush administration? It's pretty much "anything goes, do what you want" from what we're sensing from across the pond.

Nobody is acountable.

[lovuian]

49. Can't they call the server and get the emails

there has to be a back up system

[MaryCeleste]

53. The server was run internally to the WH, they claim loss of some of the backups

[Echo In Light]

50. Shades of "shredding" via Iran/Contra congressional hearings

[HuffleClaw]

52. obstruction of justice?

HOW many excuses have they gone through now?

1. you can't have them

2. they aren't really ours, but someone else's so you can't have them

3. ok, they are ours but you still can't have them because its a national security matter

4. well, we can't find them

5. well, we do have them but we sort of accidentally destroyed them


"It would be costly and time-consuming for the White House to institute an e-mail retrieval program that entails pulling data off each individual workstation, the court papers filed Friday state"

as 'costly and time-consuming' as say, the fruitless whitewater investigation?