Trying To Find White House Missing E-mails 437
Gov IT writes "On Wednesday a federal court ordered all employees working in the Bush White House to surrender media that might contain e-mails sent or received during a two and a half year period in hope of locating missing messages before President-elect Barack Obama takes over next week."
Re:And then what? (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't you mean "respect the law"?
I have no idea if they could even remotely find evidence that President Bush was directly responsible for the intentional destruction of evidence, but I seriously doubt it. But the law trumps the office. That is one reason we have a PRESIDENT, not KING.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Clinton and Bush both never used email in office (Score:1, Interesting)
I read that Clinton and Bush both never used email while in office to avoid anything in the future to come back and haunt them ....This is a great example....Bama wants to keep his blackberry should be fun
Re:And then what? (Score:1, Interesting)
There's no question the data loss was intentional. The White House claims that the tapes were "accidentally" overwritten.
I work for the federal government specifically in tape storage. Every tape vendor that talks to us wants to sell us write-once (WORM) tapes, even though we don't have any records that we have to preserve. These tapes can't be overwritten.
There's no way through simple ignorance to set up a tape system that allows the accidental deletion of records where there is a legal requirement to keep them.
Right... (Score:3, Interesting)
All I have to say is good luck with that...
Honest question (Score:2, Interesting)
Do they have to retain all spam messages too? If not, who determines what is spam and what isn't?
Re:Contempt of Court (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, sure, but... What makes you think anyone in the Bush administration is going to be held any more accountable than Bernie Madoff, who is walking around when he should be in jail?
In the short term, the worst that will happen to Madoff is he ends up in jail.
In the long term, he will go down in the history books as a swindler and a liar.
I've already seen the expression "he Madoff with our money" used in print.
That will be his legacy and for individuals like him, it is a far worse punishment.
To bring this back on topic, without an accurate historical record, right wing think tanks will do (have been doing) their best to whitewash Bush & Cheney's actions and there will be a huge hole in the facts which can be used to refute them.
They've successfully run out the clock.
Re:Contempt of Court (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, you convienently forget the emails that disappeared on the Clinton/Gore watch...
LK
Re:And then what? (Score:2, Interesting)
But the law trumps the office.
Do you mind if I ask what was your position when the previous President was on trial for Perjury, Subornation of Perjury and Obstruction of Justice?
LK
Re:Oh hey, look, in the distance, that ship... (Score:2, Interesting)
:I'm an atheist
Atheism is impossible because the world is irrational. Therefor, you are doomed to invent something in your mind that acts a religion, even if you do not call that, and has a god at the head of it, or gods. In your case, your god is your depersonalized ideal of a constitution that is very personal and very polarizing. See, you can act like a religious nut without even having a conventional god.
Re:Contempt of Court (Score:3, Interesting)
Now tapes get mixed up and over written all the time, someone doesn't realize what's on them and thinks it's just something that can be rotated in or someone thinks the information is in another place and the tapes are redundant or something.
Yes, competence abound. In *real* IT, though, tapes, once written, are marked and sent to an offsite storage. They are never recalled from there for "rotation" - the only reason to request your old backup is because you want to restore it.
The problem comes from backup media being expensive
I can understand if a liquor store owner can be too cheap to write once and archive the tape. However I think the US government can afford a few tapes, and if not it is negligent in its duty.
Almost all magnetic media starts losing it's luster after about 5 years and needs refreshed from time to time
It's always nice when people point out a problem and then immediately offer a good solution :-) How many employees will it take to copy tapes? Probably one tech will be too many: insert tape A, insert tape B, press the button. If you use LTO or T10000 WORM tapes then they can't be erased accidentally. Also, LTO tapes are rated for 15 to 30 years, plenty of time to copy them on our future X-Ray 100 PB storage crystals.
What will happen.... (Score:1, Interesting)
...if those missing emails get recovered, and wind up conclusively proving that Bush and Cheney did NOT lie about Iraq WMDs but instead were lied to intelligence and/or State Department minions who turn out to be Democrats?
Will it all get quietly dropped, or will the same zeal that was used to attack Bush/Cheney be used to attack the individuals responsible?
Impossible, you say? Consider the fact that the post-2006 Congress was none too eager to persue impeachment proceedings against Bush/Cheney, in spite of the loud drumbeats from the moveon.org minions. One would think they would have been delighted to do so if it were the open/shut case that some people claim.
Remember that The Law Of Unintended Consequences is always ready to pounce upon the unwary. Never assume that things will work out the way you think. Sometimes, things recoil the exact opposite way that you intend.
YES, those emails should be recovered if at all possible. They are important historical documents. Any and all significant facts in these emails should be added to the historical record and publicized -- no matter WHO it embarrasses.
And that includes the Democratic Party and other elements of the Left.
Re:Contempt of Court (Score:4, Interesting)
I really don't care about your anecdotal evidence. I'm talking about the industry standards here and the practical limitations to any magnetic media.
The problem isn't that you found two bits of information that you could use, it is that archiving and storing the information isn't as easy as the parent pretends it is. There will be lost information and the potential for it is there. You cannot just say Guess what I dove my car on the wrong side of the road the other day, everyone should be able to do it when everyone knows that there can be problems with driving your car on the wrong side of the road.
I don't need to find an excuse for anyone. Funny though how you actually think this is about protecting the administration instead of the practice pitfalls of long term data storage. Can I assume that your entire comment was politically motivated and should be regarded with as little respect as that would deserve?
Re:Finding Stuff (Score:1, Interesting)
Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. US soil. On the other hand, his opponent, John McCain was born in Panama. Whose citizenship should we be questioning?
I'm glad I voted for Killface