FBI Arrests 2 Pa. Senate Legislative Aides (Dem)

great ...

PHILADELPHIA (AP) -

The FBI arrested two men who did computer work for a powerful state senator Wednesday on charges that they permanently deleted e-mails to thwart a federal investigation.

Leonard P. Luchko and Mark Eister performed electronic "wipes" of computers at Sen. Vincent J. Fumo's Senate offices, his home at the New Jersey shore and at a nonprofit with deep ties to Fumo, authorities allege.

"This was a deliberate, systematic and ultimately successful effort to interfere with a federal investigation," U.S. Attorney Patrick Meehan said. "We have to assume that valuable information is lost forever."

The document does not name Fumo and he has not been charged. The affidavit refers to an unidentified senator who clearly is Fumo.

Luchko and Eister, employees of a state Senate entity that provides computer services to its Democratic members, are charged with obstruction of justice.


more...

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/nat-gen/2006/may/31/053103680.html

I mean, for such efforts to a) work, and then b) obstruction charges brought? I don't recall seeing any stories of a federal prosecution for this before. Just curious. If that's how it went down, it is a crime.

Just last week they raided another democrats office, looks like this may be a new ROVE campaign tactice to make voters believe democrats are worse than republicanswhen it comes to corruption.

The FBI put Duke Cunningham and Abramoff in jail and isn't done yet. Whatever their faults, I hardly think you can accuse them of political bias in this case.

I remember it well.

Redstone

they did worse...

.. According to the 65-page affidavit unsealed Wednesday, Leonard Luchko, 49, of Collingdale, Pa., and Mark Eister, 36, of Camp Hill, Pa., systematically destroyed e-mail and other electronic evidence to keep it from FBI scrutiny.

An ongoing investigation by the FBI and Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation Division is exploring whether Fumo used his authority and position to extort money from corporations for a nonprofit associated with his South Philadelphia district office. The investigation is also examining whether he benefited personally and politically from expenditures made by the nonprofit ..

Of about 84,000 e-mails recovered by the FBI from all of the computer equipment, fewer than 125 pertain to the nonprofit organization and even fewer are pertinent to any of the issues relevant to the criminal investigation.

"This was a deliberate, systematic, and ultimately successful effort to interfere with a federal investigation," Meehan said.

Fumo was not named in the affidavit, which instead refers to a "senator" and the nonprofit firm in question as "the organization", because no charges have been filed. But, based on deductions from the information provided, Fumo is the senator being referenced ..

http://www.bizjournals.com/philadelphia/stories/2006/05/29/daily12.html

Since when is "assumption" sufficient cause for criminal justice? This sounds an awful lot like a fishing expedition to me, i.e. get these guys into separate rooms and tell each of them that other has ratted him out and he's gonna be red meat on cellblock C unless he sings like a canary. This is intimidation, IMO. Unless the FBI has some specific information about what was deleted from those hard drives, I can't see this getting much farther if the aides simply maintain that all they did was clean up crufty old files. It should be standard practice to electronically shred old files anyway.

to be committed they can arrest you in-vitro

to be committed they can arrest you in-vitro

We have the Citizens' Alliance for Better Neighborhoods, a non-profit that helped finance charter schools and refurbished run-down properties in South Philadelphia which is Fumo's district and we have a fellow asking for donations to the non-profit, and we have emails that have been erased by the computer servicing organizations employees as per request.

http://www.abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=2024130
http://www.forbes.com/entrepreneurs/feeds/ap/2006/05/31/ap2784548.html

<snip<
Federal investigators said they have been looking into the charity since 2003, and prosecutors say they have numerous e-mails from third-party sources that show Fumo used the nonprofit to funnel money to projects and causes important to him.

Fumo, the ranking Democrat on the Senate appropriations committee, is one of the most influential politicians in Harrisburg. He has said requests for donations to Citizens Alliance were efforts to help his district and did not influence his policy positions.

<snip>
Luchko's lawyer, James C. Schwartzman, said he was surprised to learn of the arrests because he had repeatedly offered to have his client surrender. He promised to fight the charges and said Luchko was not under any pressure to please Fumo. <snip>

Here they have no charges filed against an official, but we now have charges against aids of a Senator for obstruction based on the fact that:

1. These people are under investigation by the FBI
2. Someone cleaned their computers (a very common practice)

Now, they imply they will never be able to bring the original charges.

Unlike the Fitzgerald/Libby drama, all these people are accused of doing is cleaning computers. The FBI doesn't even suggest that they knew important information was on those computers. They just say that important information "might" have been on the computers.

I think this stinks to high heaven! Sounds like Gonzo attacking democrats to balance the Culture of Corruption among Republicans.

Jimmy Hoffa's body....tore down a barn that had to cost something....

Oh as far as the terrorist....they don't have time for that...

they couldn't find a single Dem office that cleans their emails on the Hill? Not one? Oh that's right they can't go into offices on the Hill.

... (ok I like it) there is "deleting" old stuff which people do all the time, then there is "wiping".

To "wipe", takes extraordinary measures, it is not something you could just sit down at your PC and do. It requires using special software tools to rewrite each "worrisome" sector of the hard drive several (most people say 7) times.

If in fact they went to these lengths, then they most certainly did have something to hide and they did obstruct justice - IF they knew there was an investigation underway.

If I had systems that had 'sensitive' info on them, I would want deletions wiped as well. The Norton security suite has a program called incinerator that will wipe deleted files. It replace the recycle bin on your desktop. Pretty simple, no?

There are also any number of stand alone programs that can be used. No extrordinary measures, other than installing a program, is needed.

.. it is not "hard" to do, but it requires taking extraordinary steps. Most people just delete files and then perhaps empty their Recycle Bin.

If you are going all the way to using a "wiping" program such as the one you mentioned or any one of several others like Evidence Eliminator, you are going well beyond "cleaning up old emails". And if you do that AFTER finding out there is an investigation underway, you are guilty of destroying evidence.

existed, and who "wiped" them away?

It's also possible that they inferred the existence of the missing emails from evidence on other systems.

This could be the sender, or an intermediate email ISP provider.

that hits the nail on the head.

from a "wiped" drive? How "wiped" are these drives? Just erasing isn't enough, as files aren't really erased by the delete command; this just changes the first character of the file so it's no longer recognized. Are two aides really technically savvy enough to be able to destroy the data to the point FBI techs can't recover it? Also, wouldn't there be backups lying around somewhere to offer up if the drives themselves have been wiped?

Truly wiping a drive to the point that files are unrecoverable isn't that hard, but you have to know what you're doing and the software isn't part of the normal operating system tools unless the drives were completely reformatted and repartitioned. Even then, I'd still wonder whether there are tools available to the high spy set for recovering files.

This is my semi-ignorant understanding, anyway. Any techies out there want to weigh in?

On the one hand, if anyone goes to that much trouble to clean a hard drive, you have to wonder what they're getting rid of. STILL, a garden variety reformat and repartition for whatever reason isn't really that unusual.

On the other hand, if the FBI doesn't have file recovery tools far above and beyond those available to the average customer, they really need to gear up.

> Aren't there ways to recover or reconstruct data
> from a "wiped" drive?

Not if you know what you're doing when you wipe it.

But the real trick is making sure you know where all
the backups (including off-site backups) are stored
and nail those too.

Tesha

I'm sure no computer geek, but I know most things can be reconstructed. I've always thought if you reformat the HD, everything was completely gone. Aparently a similar thing can be done selectively by "wiping". So if something is wiped, how did the FBI even know there was something there that's now gone????

The problem is that a lot of data in computer systems
is heavily interlinked. Received mail may leave its
footprints in any number of files while on its way
to your eventual mailbox (and screen).

This is especially true for the networked computer
systems such as are used in modern offices.

Nonetheless, a dedicated tech could conceivably
wipe out all traces of something without leaving
notable inconsistencies that could be detected.

Tesha

They have resources to retrieve lost data even from a corrupted hard drive. Its very expensive but they can do it.

As a bounding case, I assure you that if you take your
hard drive apart and run all the platters through a belt
sander, there is no power on Earth that is going to
retrieve the files that were stored on that disk.

But there are other, less-drastic procedures that
can permanently remove data from a hard drive such
that no one can practically read it. The procedure
involves writing many arbitrary data patterns over
the areas of the disk to be affected, ensuring that
even the slightly-off-track magnetic fields amount
to nothing more than noise. Given enough passes,
this makes the erased data unrecoverable.

Some disk drives help you by including a specific
low-level disk function called "Data Security Erase";
in this case, the heads of the disk may be slewed
slightly off of the track centerline, helping to
erase the fringing fields that might be left
behind by ordinary erase (re-write) operations.

Tesha

:hi:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=1325825&mesg_id=1325825

Let's not forget it's an election year. The GOP will be starting investigations (valid or not) into Democrats across the country. We thought the Swiftboaters were bad--we ain't seen nothing yet. It's going to be a long, hot summer.

the fan yet.

maybe with a low-level format? These would be normal things to do when upgrading a PCs operating system. Why do I have a feeling the FBI is now criminalizing standard operating procedures? How the hell were these guys supposed to know the FBI was interested in these computers?

distraction from the countless republican crimes in action and coming down the pike.

Hang on to your hats, kids. It's gonna be a bumpy ride.

Got McCarthy?

in a state that has not done as well as it should ...people are questioning the republicans who are running the state. Yes we have a Dem governor but he is basically between a rock and a hard place because the legislature is controlled by repubs.

thought they were actually doing the right thing by starting to investigate all the corrupt repugs!