Posted on 03/21/2008 7:37:36 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON - 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.
i’m sure google has a copy of those emails somewhere.
Good. How about getting hard drives from Congress and dig through all their files and emails?
U.S. President George W. Bush (L) speaks about "The National President's Challenge" in the East Garden of the White House in Washington while Eli Manning, quarterback for the New York Giants football team, and fitness celebrity Denise Austin, listen March 20, 2008. REUTERS/Larry Downing (UNITED STATES)
It’s happened before. To bad Nixon slipped up...
LOL!
Good.
(what I wish he said.)
(AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
I’m amazed that anyone is amazed that hard drives are destroyed. I’d destroy them too.
I’m glad the lessons of Nixon’s office tapes have not been lost on the Bush Administration. This data would simply have been fodder for more wasted time by the lowest-rated Congress in modern history.
Care to get into any specifics?
Yo! Most of them are Clinton holdovers.. thank you Algore.
Take your embarassment to the next National Security Breach that compromises this nation more than the WaPo, NYT, PSMNBC
etc.
I’m proud of them. I crack my old hard drives open and smash them with a hammer.
Denise Austin is hot for her age.
WTF??
If you own a busniess and you have anything to do with HIPPA rules (you do if you offer employess heath insurance) and you just throw your computer in the trash and it is discovered by a third party and turned into the Feds or State, you’d get the book thrown at you.
What are you jabbering about? They cannot leave the hard drives around for every Hillary, Nancy and Harry to look through, copy, save, etc. For the sake of National Security the hard drives needed to be destroyed. They saved the e-mails. They said they destroyed the hard drives...did they also say they destroyed the back-ups? ;)
She used to serve in a similar fitness council role when GHW Bush was in office.. she’s probably mid 40 50ish now but looking good.
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