Comments on: It’s More than Just WHETHER the E-Mails Are On the Back-Ups

By: rhfactor

rhfactor — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 08:22:11 +0000

this Jodi bitch is still around?

what motivates such a wannabe?

By: JodiDog

JodiDog — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 23:46:31 +0000

Emails, emails, emails.
Torture tapes, torture tapes.
Plame, Plame, Plame.
AG, AG, AG.

Democrats seem to to be looking for things a lot.

Well there is one exception, a guy knew where the incriminating stuff was.

Sandy Berger, former Clinton NSA, forefeited his law license rather than tell what he had stolen from the National Archives.

By: jdmckay

jdmckay — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 23:38:35 +0000

re your 86: yes, normally I’d agree.

In my mind (speculation) I lumped ‘em together because of politicization/propaganda from Feith’s shop for pre-Iraq-invasion. Common sense tells me communication between OSP & WH was constant. Also tells me that any records of those communications would send those involved to the gallows. Having a one-stop auto-delete & disk-wiping hosting service would be… convenient. And finding someone to do that job might not be so easy.

Just my (currently) US $.0167 (and dropping fast) worth speculation.

By: Rayne

Rayne — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 21:52:29 +0000

jdmckay –

re: (84) — yup, depending on architecture, should be completely automated process and at least RAID-5 on Exchange server, let alone other redundancies they would surely have (my experience in a Fortune 100 enterprise dealt with (3) global data centers so all redundancies wouldn’t exist in one state, country or one continent, but since this is the gov’t, they probably have at least two in 2-3 state radius…and then some).

re: (85) — I tend to think that there are some segregations, that EOP wouldn’t be with DOD or DOS or other departments, let alone DOD on one (again, having worked in IT for a vendor to DOD, I know they had entirely different services and contracts depending on arm of service). Still, 1K/2K is nothing. Piece of cake to handle backups.

re: (101) — yes, thanks for that, forgot that luaptifer was the lead on that; wanderindiana was one of the team that contributed to that ePM investigation. Which is still not done, I will interject; there are tidbits that pop up from time to time that lead us back into the same rat’s nest.

By: jdmckay

jdmckay — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 21:21:07 +0000

As this involves the central IT works at one of the two major political parties, there is concern, surely, to preserve and protect the vigor of that party, Republican, for the “offsite” accounts. Another rumination that occurs to me is the tension between ISPs and the Republicans, though many pipe providers are Republican; so, if the provider is archiving, that complicates eradication efforts by Republican server administrators.

WH/RNC hosts were repubs. And they even keep GOP administered state elections (Ohio ‘04) all in the same family. ePluribus did a nice family tree, more here.

By: Leen

Leen — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 20:40:01 +0000

Test

By: JohnLopresti

JohnLopresti — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 20:19:20 +0000

P, I am busy primarily elsewhere, true. I think Melissa and company have learned a lot from the secret rollodex foia embroglio and in tandem now with the archivist are on a promising venture in the emails unscrubbing request. It is too long since I toured mid range tradeshows to be precise in the current thread; and my work customarily was second tier, though with moments of something more principal. I still have to finish studying the hundreds of redactions in the Chief Justice pixDust scandal, though appreciate MemHole and wayBack for making that search productive. The recent Nixon YorbaLinda PresidentialArchive cooling off period’s expiration also could be a promising development. There are some good researchers on that history.

By: PetePierce

PetePierce — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 20:01:11 +0000

John–

Thanks for the link you provided me the other day. I think by the time I got back to the thread you would probably have left.

I appreciate it.

By: JohnLopresti

JohnLopresti — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 18:55:01 +0000

Nice to see the Millenium gear updates in this thread. Which offices among the 2k+ employees in the WhiteHous would still have its own workstations each individually equipped with 1/4-inch tape cartridge backups, likely few, if any, in 2003; probably those desktop devices were replaced at the same time as all the sans-W keycap keyboards in 2000. I like the jukebox mention, though that may be fancy gear for offices of president and veep. When I last had to use a taping system for a workgroup, the software had an arcane userInterface; however, some manufacturers were merging and acquisitioning, and some of the administrator console interfaces were as simple as looking at one’s own folders on a plain vanilla hard drive, and even a restore operation in some of those environments was as fast and easy as replacing a folder or even a file; though, email has other efficiencies less analogous to spreadsheets and word processing documents. I would expect, however, that in our own era IT in the WH and State would be very interesting with respect to keeping as much as possible accessible, and keeping the UI simple enough so workstation ’seat’ occupants could effect their own ‘restores’ without engaging helpdesk for assistance. I agree with the techs in the thread who expostulate onomatopoeiacally at the concept ‘emails could be lost because they were erased completely for those two or three years’. I could see the furniture subcontractor who did IT arranging for a scrub of select emails but not all for two years; and if the subsidiary of any of the principal network gear vendors had lost all those years’ emails, it would explain banning from bid lists in future rfp’s; too outlandish to contemplate and unlikely. I think there is a subscript ongoing in the current lawsuit, something like national archivist seeing the merits in crew’s more politicized, yet curious, intent; as in, presidential records act obligations as critiqued long after the current administration has left office. As this involves the central IT works at one of the two major political parties, there is concern, surely, to preserve and protect the vigor of that party, Republican, for the “offsite” accounts. Another rumination that occurs to me is the tension between ISPs and the Republicans, though many pipe providers are Republican; so, if the provider is archiving, that complicates eradication efforts by Republican server administrators. I think the archivist is protecting the archive’s integrity in this effort.

That said, though, on a separate OffTopic forTheThread matter, I found an InspectorGeneral report from a part of the archivist’s department in the matter of purloined JGRoberts Reagan memos from the presidential library; amazing: the IG report finally delivered a year later in 2006 80pp long has dozens of REDACTIONS/page. And this is the matter of the nominee to ChiefJ of ScourtUS.

Forensically, I would wonder if there is time this week for an AndyCard, you have 36 hours before we tell you we want those documents, interlude, in which the missing years’ emails could be located by header but selectively multiply wiped, and if that disappearance effort itself would be documented.

By: klynn

klynn — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 18:28:23 +0000

Most definitely. I shared a story about my work in the Presidential election in Ohio in the FDL threads (a long time ago) that pointed to the use of “phone gathered information” (surveillance) in terms of the Ohio election. My guess is there are emails out there that spread the information gathered on Ohio strategy by Dems and independent groups..