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White House hard drives tossed

Well here's a new variation of the dog ate my homework by our wonderful Executive Branch:

quote:

White House: Computer hard drives tossed By PETE YOST, Associated Press WriterFri Mar 21, 7:34 PM ET 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. In proposing an e-mail recovery plan Tuesday, Facciola expressed concern that a large volume of electronic messages may be missing from White House computer servers, as two private groups that are suing the White House allege. Facciola proposed the drastic approach of going to individual workstations of White House computer users after the White House disclosed in January that it recycled its computer backup tapes before October 2003. Recycling � taping over existing data � raises the possibility that any missing e-mails may not be recoverable. At a House committee hearing last month, a computer expert who previously worked at the White House called the e-mail system "primitive" and said it was set up in a way that created a high risk that data would be lost from White House servers where it was being archived. Under pressure to provide details about its computer system, the White House told the congressional committee that it never completed work that began in 2003 on a planned records management and e-mail archiving system. The White House canceled the project in late 2006 and says it is still working on a new version. In the absence of a permanent archiving system, the White House has been archiving e-mails on White House servers since early in the administration. The White House says it does not know if any e-mails are missing, but is looking into the matter. 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. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080321...te_house_e_mail

Huh. These are considered public documents, right? Well thank goodness the White House is "looking into the matter." Am I to understand the bullshit line that the hard drives are not only gone, but the White House doesn't even bother to back up their shit in the first place?

Riiiiiight.

Good thing the judge gave them 3 days to find some answers on their own. They sure found, uhh, something alright.

Good grief.

Re: White House hard drives tossed

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Originally posted by MisterOpus1 Well here's a new variation of the dog ate my homework by our wonderful Executive Branch: Huh. These are considered public documents, right? Well thank goodness the White House is "looking into the matter." Am I to understand the bullshit line that the hard drives are not only gone, but the White House doesn't even bother to back up their shit in the first place? Riiiiiight. Good thing the judge gave them 3 days to find some answers on their own. They sure found, uhh, something alright. Good grief.

The local credit union I work for has a better data backup/archive than that crap. "All email is the personal property of the company and subject to review." They are playing games in the White House..

Not surprising - we go through the same thing at work every year...

/files it under 'big deal' drawer...

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Originally posted by Fir3start3r Not surprising - we go through the same thing at work every year... /files it under 'big deal' drawer...

Your office isn't the gravitational core of the executive branch of the governing body of 300 million individuals, either.

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Originally posted by DJ Shibby Your office isn't the gravitational core of the executive branch of the governing body of 300 million individuals, either.

Come on, the suggestion that the government isn't backing anything up from these drives is ludicrous at best.

It's an industry standard to scrub old drives before disposing of them!

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Originally posted by Fir3start3r Come on, the suggestion that the government isn't backing anything up from these drives is ludicrous at best. It's an industry standard to scrub old drives before disposing of them!

It may be the industry standard, but it's certainly not the standard of the Executive Branch of the federal government who's required by law to have backups of every email going into and out of the office.

They're trying hard to stall and play everyone for fools, but the bottom line is they should have had those emails backed up somehow.

dog ate my homework, dailykos.

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Originally posted by MisterOpus1 They're trying hard to stall and play everyone for fools, but the bottom line is they should have had those emails backed up somehow.

And any fool in the industry would know that emails are NOT backed up on local hard drives...

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Originally posted by Fir3start3r And any fool in the industry would know that emails are NOT backed up on local hard drives...

Umm, huh?

You do realize that most of everything you do on the computer is on the hard drive unless it's scrubbed or shredded, i.e. overwritten with useless data (like one number). So yes, the judge has every right to question and examine each workstation, considering how the archiving of emails on servers or backup data was supposedly ignored. Information may very likely still be on a workstation, although the investigation would become much more tedious.

"Backed up," not exactly. But they are likely there provided no additional data has overwritten them.

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Originally posted by MisterOpus1 Umm, huh? You do realize that most of everything you do on the computer is on the hard drive unless it's scrubbed or shredded, i.e. overwritten with useless data (like one number). So yes, the judge has every right to question and examine each workstation, considering how the archiving of emails on servers or backup data was supposedly ignored. Information may very likely still be on a workstation, although the investigation would become much more tedious. "Backed up," not exactly. But they are likely there provided no additional data has overwritten them.

They are trying to combine two different events into one suggestion that emails are missing because of scrubbed hard drives which isn't the case.
See below.

quote:

the White House has been archiving e-mails on White House servers since early in the administration.

Scrubbing hard drives is done all the time - there's no mystery about this.
I would hope they would after a corporate refresh since it is standard security protocol (in any business, government or otherwise).

While they may be missing a permanent archiving email system (as stupid as that is) on their servers, corporate email systems are not delivered to a workstation and leave the server - they remain on the server.

Believe me, I go through this everyday at work...

Our entire government is built on the basis of 'plausible deny ability' . . . why wouldn't the White House email system be built around the same idea?

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Originally posted by Dieselboy_1206 Our entire government is built on the basis of 'plausible deny ability' . . . why wouldn't the White House email system be built around the same idea?

It's too convenient for the those that don't like government entities - not that I'm a big fan of big government either.

Lets look at it this way, any sensitive information would never be left on a workstation alone...

Had they been scrubbing hard drive servers this article would have a totally meaning.

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Originally posted by Fir3start3r They are trying to combine two different events into one suggestion that emails are missing because of scrubbed hard drives which isn't the case. See below.

Umm, no, they are not. As the article stated:

quote:

In proposing an e-mail recovery plan Tuesday, Facciola expressed concern that a large volume of electronic messages may be missing from White House computer servers, as two private groups that are suing the White House allege. Facciola proposed the drastic approach of going to individual workstations of White House computer users after the White House disclosed in January that it recycled its computer backup tapes before October 2003.

Now here's the problem - the White House should have archived their emails on the servers. They claim absolute ignorance or stupidity and didn't archive anything under the time in question, SO the judge is wanting to see if there's anything on the workstations in some way, shape, or form.

That's not combining anything, and I'm wondering if you're trying to be almost ignorant in understanding that. They can't get it one way on a given email server, nor can they can they get them from backups, so the judge is looking at the data on the individuals hard drives instead.

quote:

Scrubbing hard drives is done all the time - there's no mystery about this. I would hope they would after a corporate refresh since it is standard security protocol (in any business, government or otherwise).

I understand this, as a former tech support worker myself we did this all the time, especially before we tossed them or recycled them.

But that would be up to the judge to examine them to find out, since it's unlikely ALL of them were scrubbed.

quote:

While they may be missing a permanent archiving email system (as stupid as that is) on their servers, corporate email systems are not delivered to a workstation and leave the server - they remain on the server. Believe me, I go through this everyday at work...

The data itself is still transferred in file to the workstation. It goes to a temporary file onto the workstation, which can still be retrieved provided that no new data has overwritten it.

So it's not permanently stored onto the workstation, per se, like it is on the email server, but there can still be evidence of its existence on the workstation, and with some good retrievers who know their shit that data can be restored if it's not overwritten.

And this is all provided that they had email servers in the first place like we're both referring to here. Considering they seemingly can't find their homework at all, I tend to wonder exactly what kind of system they truly had.

Or they're just plain fucking lying through their teeth about their servers and backup data, or had completely scrubbed those servers and backup data by now anyway.

quote:

Originally posted by Fir3start3r Come on, the suggestion that the government isn't backing anything up from these drives is ludicrous at best. It's an industry standard to scrub old drives before disposing of them!

I think we've come to the point where everything that happens with this administration is automatically suspect to suspicion... and really, it's their own fault.

With that said, what you say could very well be 100% true.

quote:

Originally posted by Fir3start3r Come on, the suggestion that the government isn't backing anything up from these drives is ludicrous at best. It's an industry standard to scrub old drives before disposing of them!

The reason we're taking this so seriously is that there were very shady e-mails discovered, and there most likely are more.

If you're disposing of things that could be evidence WHILE under investigation, then don't be surprised when the heat suddenly gets turned up on your activities.

Question is, what else are they hiding?

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Originally posted by DJ Shibby I think we've come to the point where everything that happens with this administration is automatically suspect to suspicion... and really, it's their own fault.

This, I can agree with...

quote:

Originally posted by DJ Shibby The reason we're taking this so seriously is that there were very shady e-mails discovered, and there most likely are more. If you're disposing of things that could be evidence WHILE under investigation, then don't be surprised when the heat suddenly gets turned up on your activities. Question is, what else are they hiding?

The big question for me is who the hell would be idiot enough to use corporate systems for shady deals? Are they really that dumb....wait...I take that back...

quote:

Originally posted by Fir3start3r The big question for me is who the hell would be idiot enough to use corporate systems for shady deals? Are they really that dumb....wait...I take that back...

You're telling me brotha! haha

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