White House Ordered to Preserve All Email

Verunks writes "A federal judge Monday ordered the White House to preserve copies of all its e-mails in response to two lawsuits that seek to determine whether e-mails have been destroyed in violation of federal law. The issue surfaced in the leak probe of administration officials who disclosed Valerie Plame's CIA identity. ' The Federal Records Act details strict standards prohibiting the destruction of government documents including electronic messages, unless first approved by the archivist of the United States. Justice Department lawyers had urged the courts to accept a proposed White House declaration promising to preserve all backup tapes. The judge's order "should stop any future destruction of e-mails, but the White House stopped archiving its e-mail in 2003 and we don't know if some backup tapes for those e-mails were already taped over before we went to court. It's a mystery," said Meredith Fuchs, a lawyer for the National Security Archive.'"

I'm afraid they're too late

[Cro Magnon]

Nothing for you to see here. Please move along.

Check with AT&T?

[Lost Penguin]

Since AT&T has been spying on everyone since spring of 2000, why not ask them for copies of Whitehouse and NRC.com emails?

White House spokeswoman clarifies.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

She said she has seen some news reports that some court has ordered the White House to preserve all emails, mails and such records. But she has checked her emails just a minute ago and there is no such order there.

Unfortunately...

[InvisblePinkUnicorn]

Unfortunately, the court order was sent via email, and was filtered along with all judicial and legislative correspondence, directly to the Trash.

And so it continues...

What's the problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why shouldn't we get to see their emails? After all, if they've done nothing wrong, they have nothing to hide.

Oh, wait...

Re:Storage requirements?

[niceone]

Yeah, now all the terrorists have to do to bring down the US government is to send lots of emails with really big attachments to [e-mail].

Re:haha, who are they kidding?

[mfnickster]

the emails will simply "get lost"
or the email servers will suddenly break down and need repair.

This just in: archivist reports that 18.5 minutes worth of presidential e-mails contain nothing but whitespace.

Cavity Search Bush

[Doc Ruby]

What Republicans told me and the rest of the world for the past 7 years:

If you're not guilty, you won't mind being searched - so now we have to search you much more closely. Mr Bush, please drop your drawers.

Re:Careful what freedoms we give away

[slapout]

"Don't use official systems for personal business."

I think that probably covers everyone on Slashdot.
 

Re:Check with AT&T?

[Actually, I do RTFA]

We may as well argue about who has the nicer cufflinks.

Okay, I have a lovely platinum set of cufflinks. They are round and have a bias relief of an eagle. The eagle's eye is made out of a small (don't know the carat offhand) diamond.

You are up.