Expert: White House Had "Primitive" Email Setup

A computer expert who worked at the White House provided the first inside look at its e-mail system Tuesday, calling it a "primitive" setup that created a "high" risk that data would be lost.

Steven McDevitt's written statements placed on the public record at a congressional hearing asserted that a study by White House technical staff in October 2005 turned up an estimated 1,000 days on which e-mail was missing....

McDevitt's statements detailed shortcomings that he said have plagued the White House e-mail system for six years. He declared that:

_The White House had no complete inventory of e-mail files.

_There was no automatic system to ensure that e-mails were archived and preserved.

_Until mid-2005 the e-mail system had serious security flaws, in which "everyone" on the White House computer network had access to e-mail. McDevitt wrote that the "potential impact" of the security flaw was that there was no way to verify that retained data had not been modified.