LATimes.....White House to begin Forensic Process to Reconstruct "Killed Emails"

(Has anyone ever heard any techie say "killed" e-mails? Is that a geek speak term or does it imply something more sinister from Scott Stanzel?) :shrug:


Officials' e-mail may be missing, White House says

The messages, on a private system, are wanted by Congress in a probe of the firings of eight U.S. attorneys.
By Tom Hamburger, Times Staff Writer
April 12, 2007
The White House said an effort was underway to see whether the messages could be recovered from the computer system, which was operated and paid for by the Republican National Committee as part of an avowed effort to separate political communications from those dealing with official business.

"The White House has not done a good enough job overseeing staff using political e-mail accounts to assure compliance with the Presidential Records Act," White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said in an unusual late-afternoon teleconference with reporters.

As a result, Stanzel said, "we may not have preserved all e-mails that deal with White House business."

He refused to estimate how many e-mails may have been lost, but the system was used by dozens of officials for more than six years.
-snip-

Some former employees recall receiving briefings on the Hatch Act. At the time of the 2004 Republican convention, newspaper accounts described emphatic warnings to White House staffers not to use government-issued cellphones for politically related calls.

Now, Stanzel said, the White House has begun a formal review that will include new training material for staff members on maintaining records with special attention to those with RNC accounts.

In addition, the White House will begin the forensic process of trying to reconstruct any lost records. That will probably be hampered by an RNC policy of automatically erasing most e-mail after 30 days. Since 2004, White House records have been exempt, Stanzel said, though individuals might have been able to kill out e-mail messages.

The White House will also explore whether the hard drives of laptop computers might have preserved a record of e-mailed communications.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-emails12apr12,0,4800585.story?page=1&coll=la-home-headlines

"the fox is conducting a forensic examination of the henhouse"

:rofl:

Like say, other than the accused. Or one of the employees of the accused.

You kill "living" things like processes on a computer. You remove, unlink, or delete files. I am unfamiliar with using the verb /kill/ in the file deleting sense, however, I think the writer is trying to play up the difficulty in doing this for political reasons (Gasp!).

... on the Internets, the abstract problem of deletion and removal of messages, within a class of protocols across the Internet, was addressed, at least in the abstract, by the invention of a "kill message." The idea was that "a lie circles the world three times before the truth gets out of the door." Given the multitude of store-and-forward message-based (as distinct from packet-based) protocols akin to SMTP and NNTP and so on, the idea of a "kill message" was that it would be a high priority message that would be like an assassination contract ... permission to eradicate the target message traffic, no matter where found.

For a variety of performance and queueing reasons, this notion didn't go very far, iirc, in an OSI sense. It's entirely possible , under the rule that no idea never really dies, that such a functionality may have descendants within certain proprietary implementations.

and that while the original message may have been deleted...the forwards do exist on other computers/laptops.

I kind of go with Leahy. They exist somewhere and even if the "original" was deleted on one computer, a print copy could exist or a "CC" somewhere else.

Dems are being cautious because who can they get to "confiscate" the computers. Justice is Corrupted, FBI is corrupted and so they have to work at pressuring the WH and Justice Staffers who might be getting worried about getting caught up in something...to start working on leaking what they've found.

Maybe I'm too optimistic that important evidence exists and that they are using "deleted e-mails" as an excuse for hanging onto what they know they have. Of course the shredder could already have worked that stuff over....but then the person shredding is in big trouble down the road. So there is a "trail" of those who were involved as to what was done.

use. Unfortunately Leahy's statements today fall into that category as well

Maybe some 3rd parties as well. I wouldn't trust anybody in the Bush White House as far as my 4 year old daughter could throw them.

And commence document recovery performed by experts.

I am sick of this WH's stonewalling on every *#&$^* investigation of their criminality.

These people belong in prison for life.

Perhaps we should keep the heinous criminal vocabulary since these jokes were trying to kill our justice system.

to stand right along beside them. After all a member of congress should have enough security clearance to read the emails.

This is complete b.s. Subpeona all the machines. The White House is in the process of destroying evidence & trying to find anything that the Congress might be able to retrieve. There needs to be an IMMEDIATE demand for this....

ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH!

Who the hell, in their right mind, is going to let the CRIMINAL investigate his own CRIME?


Waxman needs get get these computers and servers confiscated...NOW! What's he waiting for? Is he MAYBE waiting for the WH to dig its hole deeper?...which seems to be what they are in the process of doing.

Frankly, the WH record on "trust us!" isn't faring very well. Their internal investigation over the 'Plame Affair' is just one example...they never conducted an investigation.

Can't they get the same guys who went in to the Capitol and seized Jeffereson's records last year?

But you are right--maybe they're just making evidence of obstgruction, forensically recorded on the drives.bwa ha ha!

Nerds will save us all!

Don't wait on them to produce just start the impeachment for obstruction of justice.

and love puppies and kittens, by the way, did you get my last email? Regards, K."

...wherever information they base decisions on is concerned.

It shouldn't need to be said: Waxman needs to secure the servers.

Boy, talk about the fox guarding the friggin' henhouse!

This stinks to the heavens.