No surprise here. (1 Viewer)

[DadsDream]

This is absolute garbage of the highest order.


Forgetting for a moment the idea that ANYONE could over-write the White House's email back-ups -- and I find that IMPOSSIBLE to believe -- the White House uses a clustered Exchange e-mail server. This isn't an old sendmail box and this isn't some local company account. That Exchange Server Cluster is likely backed-up at least DAILY (if not much more often) and then the weekly backup is duplicated with one copy going to secure off-site storage for redundancy. MINIMUM.

That doesn't account for any likely mirrored copies of those hard drives by the network security team (which would be different than the Email/Windows guys) (or any of the three letter agencies) who are tasked with keeping audit-capable trails for reverse engineering code/malware, or for post-event forensics.



I'd love to see the changelogs for when the email servers were patched and updated with various security updates and/or new software additions and OS upgrades -- because they certainly didn't recover from any of those events without backups and they certainly didn't risk an upgrade on OS version without ensuring they had backups as well, right??

yeah. sure.

Allow me to digress a moment...

My brother was a Headquarters Marine Corps programmer back in the day. Their quarterly backup of the service records of every Marine who ever served went haywire one weekend. It had to be up and running by Monday.

Solution?

Have the West Coast backup flown via supersonic fighter jet, cross country to Washington in time to start over again and have it completed before Monday morning.

Back on topic, he also got a computer with an absolutely enormous hard drive capacity in 1998. A whopping 9 gigabytes! Can you imagine? Nine whole gigabytes on a single hard drive! Wow!

Stop and think a second how far the technology has come. The volume of information and the way in which its handled has evolved faster than the law or the government's ability to keep up with it.

Yes, I'm fully aware of how suspicious the story looks. But, nobody seems to be willing to even broach the idea that it could be as simple as a typical government operation acting like a typical governemnt operation.

 

[RebSaint]

Stop and think a second how far the technology has come. The volume of information and the way in which its handled has evolved faster than the law or the government's ability to keep up with it.

Yes, I'm fully aware of how suspicious the story looks. But, nobody seems to be willing to even broach the idea that it could be as simple as a typical government operation acting like a typical governemnt operation.

Nobody is dismissing the problems governments may face regarding saving electronic data. I think every informed person who knows a little bit about computers to know as much.

But we're talking for one, about the White House here--pretty much safe to assume that the WH has the state-of-the-art document saving computer technology.

Secondly, it's not so much lost data in of itself, it's *the kind of specific data* which was lost, which you are excusing away as typical government incompetency.

So we're just expected to believe that *specific* e-mails regarding pre-war intelligence, Iraq, and the CIA leaks were lost because of technological/computer malfunctions.

Right.

 

[DadsDream]

Which would make you more qualified than others here on the technical vagaries of the White House computers after 2000 how?

I also know that computers have changed a lot since the early 1990s.

Back in the day as a government employee, I ordered backup tapes and had my request refused by the GSA due to budget constraints and we were ordered by the GAO to reuse old archived backup tapes.

It was a general, government-wide policy and perfectly normal. Notice, I said "government-wide." When it comes to GAO and GSA policy, EVERYBODY in the government has to comply.

I just thought that my experience might provide a bit of insight.

Never dreamed someone with no federal government experience would resent that and seek to discredit me and what I'm trying to share.

Is it suspicious that the e-mails are gone and the backups were taped over? Sure.

Is it necessarily due to a deliberate attempt to hide something. No.

That's all I'm saying.

 

[RebSaint]

Never dreamed someone with no federal government experience would resent that and seek to discredit me and what I'm trying to share.

*Whiff*

I have had federal government experience. I worked in a national park and for the national park service in one capacity. Not that it matters for this thread's purposes, because it doesn't.

I resent you providing your qualifications as an insinuation that there are participants in this thread less qualified than you to offer up an informed opinion. And I'm sorry you don't like me diminishing your qualifications, but I don't see anything much in your experience which could offer any more or less insight than anybody else in this thread.

 

[DadsDream]

*Whiff*

I have had federal government experience. I worked in a national park and for the national park service in one capacity.

I resent you providing your qualifications as an insinuation that there are participants in this thread less qualified than you to offer up an informed opinion.

I was turned down by the State of Louisiana to be an Interpretive Ranger at the Rebel State Commemorative Area!

Wow! What a coincidence!

"He may be a crook, but he's our crook."
Louisiana Democrat, remarking about Edwin Edwards' 32-count federal indictment.

 

[JimEverett]

Its statutory law that the email records be kept (or at least the sender(s), receipient(s) and the subject matter discussed in the email).
I don't know the technical aspects of data backup but I have engaged in discovery with federal agencies and have never had a problem with electronic files being deleted. Of course I have never dealth with the White House, so maybe the White House has a crappier system than the Social Security Administration, or Transportation Safety Administration, or bankruptcy court, etc.

Yeah, that's it.

 

[DadsDream]

Its statutory law that the email records be kept (or at least the sender(s), receipient(s) and the subject matter discussed in the email).
I don't know the technical aspects of data backup but I have engaged in discovery with federal agencies and have never had a problem with electronic files being deleted. Of course I have never dealth with the White House, so maybe the White House has a crappier system than the Social Security Administration, or Transportation Safety Administration, or bankruptcy court, etc.

Yeah, that's it.

Not "crappier" Jim...more...ahem..."flexible."

 

[Coach_Largent]

Well - typical govm't networking then and now is very different than that red herring, isn't it?

First, the Marines != The White House.
Second, the late 90's and IT practices then != current IT trends, in style, cost, spending, etc ...

I mean, I'd guess that one ASA tandem costs more than they used to budget for an entire IT staff, "back in the day". Not to mention the IDS/IPS's, CSA/HIDS, IP telephony and the subsequent security measures needed, AV, anti-spam, multi-GB switches, satellite data links, etc ... all multi-vendor and layered. The cost of the network security aspects alone are staggering.

I've worked on a lot of three-letter and four-letter govm't security networks (via contract) in the past 6 years and I can tell you that no one is balking at backup-tape costs.

 

[Jazzbo]

Ooops

 

[NCSaint]

other people are doing it or have done it - great defense.

When did anyone say is was right? It is getting harder and harder to discuss things in here.

 

[DadsDream]

The difference between 2003 versus now with regard to anything regarding computers is totally mind-boggling and is something which the writer of the Reuters news piece seemed not to take into account, in my opinion.

 

[jpcdolphan]

Not "crappier" Jim...more...ahem..."flexible."

What are you implying?

You seem to state earlier in the thread that the White House did not deliberately delete (or fail to back up) incriminating documents because they were part of an investigation but your statement that I quoted above seems to indicate that (you believe, at least) the WH has a standard policy of "making sure" that potentially incriminating documents don't get saved and/or backed up.

If so, aren't we splitting hairs debating whether these specific e-mails got special treatment after the fact as opposed to being removed before everything broke open?

Either way, it was a deliberate act.

 

[DadsDream]

Ooops

Sweet Rose Mary Woods! I'd almost forgotten all about her!

Hey, looks like that pic was part of her demonstration of how she accidently created the gap in the Nixon tapes. Wrong button. Ooops!

 

[RebSaint]

The difference between 2003 versus now with regard to anything regarding computers is totally mind-boggling and is something which the writer of the Reuters news piece seemed not to take into account, in my opinion.

I don't see how making this point would change the circumstances at all and make this whole thing any less suspicious. It's pretty much common sense that computers have significantly changed since 2003. I just find it hard to believe that the computer system for the administration for the leader of the free world would lose *specific* data relating to very controversial issues.

Including this caveat wouldn't at all change the jist of the story.

 

[DadsDream]

What are you implying?

You seem to state earlier in the thread that the White House did not deliberately delete (or fail to back up) incriminating documents because they were part of an investigation but your statement that I quoted above seems to indicate that (you believe, at least) the WH has a standard policy of "making sure" that potentially incriminating documents don't get saved and/or backed up.

If so, aren't we splitting hairs debating whether these specific e-mails got special treatment after the fact as opposed to being removed before everything broke open?

Either way, it was a deliberate act.

Roughly the first 2/3 of Reuters article pretty much damns it as a purely deliberate act. In the last few paragraphs it rather sarcastically provides other scenarios which could account for it.

I'm following the Reuters formula in reverse.