White House: Computer hard drives tossed

[Newsjock]

Source: Associated Press

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.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080321/ap_on_go_pr_wh/white_house_e_mail

[Bonobo]

1. What a coincedence. The Friday News Dump is about Dumping!

[The Stranger]

2. Ode to the Nancy Disaster

(Part the Seventh)

Oh, our Nancy Disaster,
Without impeachment on the table,
They made a fool out of you and everyone,
That sound is their laughing at you,
That sound is our crying at what a disaster you were.

[tridim]

3. This can't be legal.

I don't think the White House can just send their HD's away to be destroyed.

[aquart]

5. I'm pretty sure they're required to save it all.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

61. who actually ordered the hard drives to be destroyed?

[sofa king]

70. I'm sure it was structured in such a way that nobody is responsible.

And even if someone was, the self-investigation will show otherwise.

In a way, I'm sort of happy about it, for a couple of reasons. One reason is that if the data is really gone (which I highly doubt), historians of the future will be forced to draw their conclusions about the Bush Administration from their expressed motivations and the people who benefited from the crimes committed (also the Bush Administration). The destruction of the hard drives will actually be used as primary evidence against them.

A second reason is that as long as the Bush Administration and the GOP continue to pretend that the data is destroyed, they're subject to blackmail from their own sociopathic followers as well as others. The data almost certainly isn't destroyed; NSA and the various incarnations of TIA certainly picked up every one of the transmissions through NRCC and probably the official White House correspondence as well. The Israelis probably got it all, and the Chinese certainly had an interest in trying. For the next three decades the full story will drip, drip, drip out, forever poisoning the Republican legacy.

If they were doing what I think they were doing--diving out of the way of 9/11, building a war on pure falsehood, manipulating oil prices, misdirecting tax dollars into political favors, stealing the elections of 2002 and 2004, hanging their own spies out to dry, and stealing 2.3 trillion dollars--then the direction of the Republican Party will from now on be at the mercy of criminal minds even more directed toward individual success and profit than ever before. Participants in the crimes will be the most vulnerable, and they'll be most subject to blackmail or exposure over the years, precluding their future in Executive Branch politics. That's not going to work for them as a political party, only as a criminal operation, and the GOP will quickly fade from relevance as they bend to the whim of whomever controls the data, rather than to the changing nature of the American polity.

For decades to come the pattern will be that some current low-level divinity school hack in the Bush Administration will aim higher, will wind up before the Senate and, oops! look at these emails that just turned up! Sorry, you'll have to go back to being a guest lecturer at Patrick Henry, but thanks for playing.

Edit: I should add that if the Dems actually win this election there's a small chance that despite GOP efforts, the data will be discovered. At that point, future Democratic leaders will have a difficult choice: total disclosure, or the chance to torpedo virtually every Republican politician who arises in the first quarter of the Twenty-First Century. It wouldn't be a tough call for me, but it will be for them, because they're politicians and politicians love unfair advantage whatever their political stripe.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

72. I hope you right

but can we afford to let this all go on?

[TheMadMonk]

122. If history is anything to go by, neither will happen.

The democrats will be too "principled" to uses anything except the most innocuous of political capital, and too "patriotic" to expose anything which might embarrass the nation.

AND a healthy dollop of self-advantage to stand in the way of rolling back the post 9-11 power grab.

"Water under the bridge."; "Let sleeping dogs lie."; "bygones be bygones." and more of the same will be the platitudes of the day. For whatever dirt might be dug up to bury the GOP once and for all, virtually each and every Democrat will be fearful of that which might be used to take them down individually.


What you see as the death knell of the GOP is all to likely to become the victory tune of the criminal kingpins and corporate rapists.

[Codedonkey]

80. To be fair though...

It's pretty common practice for old hard drives to be destroyed. I know in the past when working for or at government agency we always had some sort of process for destroying old drives.

Not saying there isn't anything funky going on here, but it's not unusual.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

87. it's not that long ago is it?

and there was always several copies made.

[Codedonkey]

88. I would imagine they could look in many places...

Now if turns out that the workstations, servers and all the tape backups were "destroyed", then we all know what's up... It's suspect either way though, given the current situation.

[wordpix]

100. But in the WH, I believe records must be retained for the archives

[Codedonkey]

114. But most likely not on the drives themselves.

There is media better suited for that type of thing. Where is that stuff at?

[jmowreader]

108. You probably didn't work for the White House

The White House is covered by the Presidential Records Act, which mandates saving everything for posterity.

I would imagine that the proper procedure for destroying a serviceable hard drive under PRA includes copying its contents to the 4381 in the basement, so the data will be available to future historians.

[Codedonkey]

113. Ayes.

I wouldn't doubt that files copied somewhere for archiving purposes... Based on what I've heard here, it seems that is required by law to be kept permanently. I'm simply saying that it isn't unusual for old drives to be destroyed when systems get updated/replaced. That's not to say that these guys ain't trying to pull something over on us all... I don't doubt that for a minute... which is sad, but ehnn. Where is the media with the backups, I think is a better question.

There must be quite a few people who are aware of how this works. I find it hard to believe that all the employees involved in these processes are blind sheep who are willing to say/do whatever they are told.

[wordpix]

99. let me guess: some young bimbo/bimba who slobbers over himself at the sight of Dickhead & Chimperor

then up the line to the Dick himself.

[Enthusiast]

118. Ha ha ha!

Now Bush and his cabal can have plausible deniability. Worse that Watergate? LMAO! Treason! Nancy is treasonous! No wonder she looks so bad, she is complicit.

[erebusman]

109. they are probably required to destroy it in fact

I was a member of the armed service and now a government employee. While neither is "working for the white house" In both instances when hard drives were to be taken down because they werent in use we were required by federal law to make sure all data on it was destroye dor the physical drive itself was destroyed.

peace

[DaveJ]

110. Agreed. It's about protecting individual privacy

While the HD's in question may contain incriminating evidence against neocons, even they deserve personal privacy. OTOH, all email correspondence is, in fact, stored on servers as it is distributed to recipients. The real matter is whether the server data is retained.

[cornermouse]

13. When have they ever worried about minor details

like legality, morality, anything without a dollar sign attached to it?

[CrispyQ]

50. That sums them up perfectly.

The party of family values. :eyes:

[orleans]

18. legal!? who the hell is gonna challenge them or call them on it?

us?
democrats?

ha ha!

i don't think so!

[defendandprotect]

86. What we may be saying is that no one now has sufficient POWER to oppose

these criminals . . .

In part, I believe that's true --

This has been a very corrupt, very politically violent, right-wing movement . . .

[tpsbmam]

35. It's absolutely not legal -- Presidential Records Act. But impeachment...

if off the table, doncha know, even for those with multiple violations (starting with lying to get us into war and war crimes). :evilfrown:

[Gonnuts]

39. It's called "obstruction of justice" ...

and if any of us would have done this we would have been in jail by now. But our entire government is now so corrupt that we have gotten to the point that it can commit crimes in the open, admit to them and not worry about being held accountable.

Enjoy what little time you have left, for we don't have much time left before a harder form of fascism comes crashing down.

[sam sarrha]

41. ahhhh..... "Destruction of Justice"

[sam sarrha]

42. we start by putting the people who ordered it in jail.. after the election

[mediaman007]

59. Sorry, but the cases will be tossed out of court...

Right wing judges!

[bahrbearian]

65. I thought Chimpy was going to Rid us of, Activist Judges

[sam sarrha]

73. he replaced them with Machiavellian Corporatist NeoCon Fascist Judges...

[DissedByBush]

47. The white house is lying, and the best lies have truth in them

When a computer that held classified information is end-of-lifed the hard drive is physically destroyed. That is normal, and necessary to protect our security. That is the truth the WH is saying to distract us.

The other truth is that any information that needs to be kept is always transferred to new systems before the destruction.

[jwirr]

66. We even do that in businesses and home computers. They still

really think we are all stupid.

[sam sarrha]

78. we are not bound by Federal Law 'NOT TO' destroy them

[DissedByBush]

96. Bush doesn't think he's bound by

any federal law, or even the Constitution.

[sam sarrha]

107. it is different when the "Voices" tell you you're on a mission from god.. if god tells you to bomb

babies.. you try to get the mothers too... for extra points

[DissedByBush]

97. Not always

You'd be surprised at how much sensitive stuff shows up in government sales of used computer equipment because someone didn't follow the rules.

[mhoran]

84. Legal?

We don't need no stinkin' legal!

[sakabatou]

124. No

I don't believe it is.

[Hekate]

4. Sounds more like destruction of legal evidence, to me. nt

[Tab]

6. Whoa, whoa, WHOA!!!! I want to be a good citizen

Send those hard drives to me, and I will - free of charge, as a service to my country - analyze them and do my best to reinstate them.

[rurallib]

56. destruction probably means pulverized, then burned and the ashes

pulverized just in case some smart ass offered to try to put them back together. Destructing things is something they are good at.

[AlbertCat]

77. I dunno....

If they contracted the destroying out to Haliberton or one of its subsidiaries, they may have just tossed them in the Potomac.

[dixiegrrrrl]

85. Maybe not

Remember the Gov't agency that called The Geek Squad to come in and wipe his hardrive?
( sorry, I can't recall the agency name)

But that kinda convinced me that not all of the offices have used same methods to destroy evidence.

[truthisfreedom]

7. "We were so busy being ourselves we didn't even notice that we broke the law for the millionth time.

So just go look over there!"

[Divine Discontent]

8. K&R 5 for further discussion and evidence of the most corrupt American govt ever EOM

[lligrd]

9. Workstation Hard Drives Ok But What About The Servers

that are routinely backed up and where the emails are stored. Nobody in their right minds keeps documents that are supposed to be saved and backed upped on workstations. Note that I left the current administration an out there.

[greyghost]

11. Look no further than the servers.

[lligrd]

14. Or The Backups Of The Servers

I have yet to see government servers that aren't routinely backed up and saved. If they destroyed all of that then there are always the servers of the addressee's.

[greyghost]

15. Bingo:)

[Pavulon]

51. Cryptographic expiration.

many companies using lotus domino or exchange encrypt mail. They use an AES256 key for each 24 hour day. Mail can then be sub categorized beyond date.

The point is that after 30 - 60 -90days the key is destroyed.

The mail is then unreadable and unrecoverable.

[bluerum]

83. Yes - but then the retention policy means nothing. Official white house

communications are not only not retained, they are purposely destroyed.

One must ask, what is being hidden.

[Supersedeas]

123. Mzzzz Payton says it's too expensive

[barbtries]

20. good catch

i hadn't thought that far. i have however thought many times on how many other people's emails these all could be found. will even one of them ever be upstanding enough to turn over what they have? i still have emails from as far back as 2000 at least. and i'm just a regular person, but i still have every one of my dead or obsolete hard drives. i want my music and my pictures and some day, i'm gonna go retrieve them. i doubt that i am unique in that respect.

[Codedonkey]

81. Ayes... like tape backups...

I'm sure those should still exist.

[vanboggie]

94. That's what I was thinking

Either they think a judge will buy this distraction or they don't know any better.

[Botany]

10. This is breaking the law to cover up criminal actions

God Damn it Nancy what is the matter w/ you?

[Demeter]

27. She's Defending the Civil Liberties of the Dali Lama and Tibet

which is much more important, and what we pay her to do! :sarcasm:

[sce56]

93. Well Nancy should have to answer that and this is the place to get some results!

Shirley is going to put out a full page ad in the San Francisco Chronicle Sunday I believe asking the people of Nancy's district to support Shirley in getting Impeachment back on the table!
http://www.shirley08.com

[bean fidhleir]

12. "the hard drives are GENERALLY sent offsite"

The way I read that story, they're blowing smoke. "Not necessarily all" data is transferred to the new drives, "generally" the old ones are disposed of.

The very idea of replacing machines in that environment is a massive waste of money. It's not like those people are nerds who live or die on having the most massive hardware available. If those evil clowns did nothing their whole time but send email they'd never fill up even a 40GB drive (and the world would be better off, too).

[crimsonblue]

16. What kind of retarded email system is this?

Almost every email system out there saves the emails not on a physical hard drive, but on a central server (gmail, yahoo, msn, etc). I mean, it's not like my gmail account is gonna up and erase itself if i decide to baptize my laptop. Maybe I'm wrong (that's been happening a lot lately), but unless the emails are manually deleted, they should be accessible on some server somewhere. However, I think our boy king has proven that he deserves the benefit of doubt. As President, he has never violated the law (because the Prez is above it!) obvious :sarcasm:

Edit: Once again, I commented without reading the comments, and it seems I am just yet another copy cat. disregard this post.

[InsultComicDog]

17. asdf

[barbtries]

19. that way they can write the history they imagine

instead of the history that happened.

all truth seekers can do is speculate. another impeachable offense?

[cornermouse]

21. Nah.

As another poster said, we don't do the impeachment thing any more; no matter how much they have earned it.

[ooglymoogly]

76. Unless its a dem.

[jmowreader]

22. It's all part of the Bush Institute Master Plan

Part of the Bush Presidential Library (not the piece with the Mission Accomplished banner, the copy of My Pet Goat, the turds from the Katrina cake, the preznit-seal guitar and his 900 pair of preznit cowboy boots, but the other part) is the Bush Institute, whose job is to maintain, preserve, and cut from whole cloth Georgie's precious Legacy. With pesky things around like e-mails proving what a monumental fuckup he was, there's no way they can remake him as An Even Greater Preznit Than Ronald Reagan Or His Daddy.

But if they TRASH those e-mails, his legacy is safe.

[Joanne98]

23. We are going to have to carry investigations into the next administration.

When Bush leaves will will get some more whistleblowers.

[stubtoe]

64. 'Fraid so. But better late than never.

.

[wordpix]

101. my fantasy is * can't stay on the ranch for long---will be called back to court again and again

I wish :evilgrin:

[Algorem]

24. gonna be an eternal screaming shame if we don't put them into jail

[barbtries]

29. great way to put it

an eternal screaming shame. yeah

[muriel_volestrangler]

25. That's a heck of a Ministry of Truth memory hole

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_hole

[Shannon2008]

26. There not a chance in hell that the data wasn't stored someplace else . . .

The White House has maintained it's own domain for sometime. They also maintain a website. The data would not have been solely on workstations. The WH has SAN equipment that is archived.

[wordpix]

102. My guess: check the RNC. Of course, they've probably destroyed their hard drives, too

[Imagevision]

28. The fact that Bushco has been getting away with this shit is a slap in most Americans faces...

[barbtries]

30. my face has been slapped so many times

by this administration it's a bloody pulp.

and my sensibilities are so defiled they're on the verge of abandoning.

[TheCowsCameHome]

31. Laws? What laws?

They do as they see fit in this administration.

[DemoTex]

32. Jack Broughton faced court-martial for destroying 25-ft of F-105 gun-camera film.

Following a questionable bombing run over Haiphong, Broughton removed the film from the F-105 gun camera (after landing in Danang for fuel). He then exposed the film in the headlights of a Jeep. Broughton was brought up on numerous charges relating to the raid, but the destruction of the gun camera film (Destruction of Government Property) was almost tangential. Broughton was acquitted on all charges, except Destruction of Government Property. That charge stuck. Broughton was convicted of Destruction of Government Property by court martial at Clark AFB, Philippine Islands, was fined and reprimanded.

But Col. Jack Broughton was a USAF officer. He was held accountable for his actions, even though committed during the fog of combat. Bu$hco is held accountable for nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Note: Col. Jack Broughton wrote two books about his service as an F-105 pilot in Viet Nam: Thud Ridge and Going Downtown. His court martial is chronicled in Going Downtown.

[Pavulon]

57. Similar with the Gondola cut in Italy

I believe those guys made a bad situation much worse by destroying on board footage.

[jwirr]

69. You bring up a good point. I think that what finally brought Nixon down

was tax evasion. Destruction of government property may be the one thing we can get a conviction on.

[grannylib]

33. Two certainties: 1) this is illegal as hell; 2) NOTHING will be done

about it. Oh, there may be a hearing or two, and subpoenas may be issued, but NOTHING will happen to these corrupt liars and thieves...Chimpy talks a good game about the rule of law; he just doesn't apply it to himself and his sorry-assed, unelected, unqualified mis-administration.

They'll not only get away with it, they'll probably devote an entire room in "celebration" of it at the Bush Liberry.

[Tab]

34. So, let's pretend they're telling the truth

(snicker) (it was so hard to write that)

Let's say that they honestly (stop me!) didn't back up the messages.

If they run their own mail server, there should AT LEAST be server logs, showing who sent something to whom, and when. Even date and times would be most interesting.

So they don't back up their shit, or they destroyed it.

These guys are LIB's, as I've always said. "L"ying, "I"ncompetent, or "B"oth.

I vote for "B"oth.

[Gman]

37. They are NOT stupid, they are NOT incompetent

They are flat out lying and obstructing justice. And, their game is "catch me if you can."

[Tab]

55. I stand corrected

Although, first, I never said they were stupid. They (or at least some of them) are VERY smart and shrewd.

As for incompetent, actually, that's my fault. Meaning my fault to assume they are trying to follow my (our) agenda. They're not. They're following their own agenda and you are correct - they are daring us to call them on it. Incompetency only applies if they are failing miserably at what they are attempting. If I assume they are attempting to elevate America's world reputation, keep the dollar strong, and keep the economy strong and people employed and healthy and happy, then they are incompetent at what MY agenda would be. If their agenda is to maximize self-profit, consolidate power, and pull the wool over people's eyes, then I have to give them credit. They are VERY competent at that. We could do it too, but we were raised better than that. As nice as we are, sometimes in the schoolyard you have to fight. We're not fighting. We're being pissed on.

[Gman]

98. You got it!

[Gman]

36. This is the 21st century equivalent of shredding documents

as they did when Iran-Contra broke.

[The Backlash Cometh]

38. Since when?

They threw the computer out, but left the "W" keys.

[jwirr]

71. LOL. Bill & his staff should have taken all of the letters.

[flyingfysh]

40. the White House uses Microsoft Exchange

and email archival systems have been available for it for a long time. How do I know? I maintain this product for my company. My company sells email archival systems for Exchange and Notes, and so do several other companies.

There is no excuse for the White House not using readily-available off-the-shelf solutions for retaining email.

[Supersedeas]

43. Two Things: how did Fitz do a thorough investigation with this being the case; and

someone needs to look closely at the sworn testimony before Congress earlier this year -- no one revealed this little factoid!?!

[Bandit]

45. What difference does it make?

It really doesn't matter what these criminals do or how many laws they break or how much evidence they destroy. It has already been decided "Impeachment is OFF the table" Democrats absolutely REFUSE to hold these criminals accountable. To them the most important thing in the world is getting re-elected.. Nothing else is of any consequence..They strongly believe if they try and hold them accountable the American people will turn on them..They are so isolated they don't have any feeling at all for how the American people truly feel. I truly feel sorry for the America my grandchildren are going to inherit.

[lovuian]

75. agreed Fitz should have confiscated those Emails and

he looks like he is part of this cover up more and more
the topper for me is when Mupanksy was going to ask him to be his buddy

it looks like the Counsel didn't do his job just gave us Scooter to placate the CIA

[disndat]

44. The only comfort we can take

is that there will be endless tons of books chronicling in great detail all their dastardly deeds and they will go down in history as the greatest criminals that ever got control of the White House by 2 coup d'etat, '00 and '04. Let the generations to follow judge them as the murderers they are, worse than the brutal, corrupt dictators, Idi Amins, Pinochets and Pol Pots of history.

[blogslut]

46. Jesus Christ!

However, note this small detail from the article:

Some, but not necessarily all, of the data on old hard drives is moved to new computer hard drives, the declaration added.

In other words, it was the responsibility of the White House to transfer old files to those new hard drives. The question, did they do it? Or did they just trash records that belong to the American people?

[mahatmakanejeeves]

48. Cheney:

So?

[OhioChick]

49. Hmmmm..

How convenient.

[Bosso 63]

52. Move along people there's nothing to see here.

They went into the memory hole. History is what ever they say it is. Please go back to your work stations.

[snappyturtle]

53. Nothing about this administration surprises me anymore. I suppose

they destroyed the hard drives to keep them out of enemy hands and consequently, we are safer. :sarcasm:

[RoccoR5955]

54. This is a crime!

:kick:
Destruction of Presidential records is a crime. So is destruction of evidence. This constitutes a high crime/misdemeanor, and is grounds for impeachment. No investigation necessary, as it's already been done.

[rurallib]

58. I have a vision of thugs with sledge hammers

taking out every piece of computer equipment on Jan. 19,2009 that may have any thing to do with this administration.

[PuppyBismark]

60. The White House has been under court order to archive emails Since the Oliver North Days

As a result of court actions after the Oliver North email revaluations, WH email messages were declared official government documents and are required to be archived. There is no excuse except the obvious ones discussed here for the messages to be lost. This is just another instance of the Bush White House thumbing their nose at the American People.

Unfortunately, the Dems are sooooooo ineffective at doing anything, this too will pass.

:banghead: :banghead: :banghead:

[pansypoo53219]

62. and the sheeple

don't give a shit again. WHY DO THEY NEED A BJ???

[tinrobot]

63. It's the same as shredding documents...

...and just as illegal.

[Magleetis]

67. They will never

be held accountable. Shrubs legacy will be that he committed the crime of the century and got away with it.

[DeSwiss]

68. Church Lady says:

"The White House destroyed their hard drives, eh? Well, isn't that convenient???"

- K&R!!!

[lovuian]

74. They are Guilty and in your face destroyed evidence

this is just like the Enron shredding

GUILTY as CHARGED

[abq e streeter]

79. Time for more cautiously worded criticism

from a lone congressional Democrat, followed the next day by a contrite statement of apology at the urging of the Party "leadership".

[defendandprotect]

82. Ah . . . but gov't has been capturing ALL our e-mails so someone has this . . . !!

[tinrobot]

89. Brilliant!

Subpoena the NSA!

[wordpix]

103. AT&T no doubt

[fascisthunter]

90. White House Obstructs Justice and Breaks another Law

They have done enough illegal shit to be impeached 10 times over.

[JTucker]

91. WTF

ya'll know they did that on purpose. how much crap is americans going to let them get away with?

[Lorien]

95. Apparantly they can get away with anything and everything

and they know it. :-(


Oh, and welcome to DU!

:hi:

[guyanakoolaid]

92. This alone is impeachable

But as long as Pelosi, Schumer, Feinstein, Clinton, Lieberman, and enough other Republicans still call themselves Democrats, it will never happen.

[blackspade]

104. Completely illegal.

They are required by law to hold onto all of the hard drives from all computers.
I have seen the HDs from the Clinton and Bush I administrations first hand as well as the legacy machines that they retain to access them.
The WH is full of shit if they think that this will pass the smell test.
Most of the HDs from the last 6-8 years can be easily slaved to a newer HD and the info on them accessed.

Utter Bullshit.

[EndElectoral]

105. Most companies back up weekly, some daily. There should be multiple backups of these machines.

[erebusman]

112. yes there should ...

unless your trying to cover up & or obstruct justice

[Maestro]

106. Throwing away hard drives is just like illegally shredding

documents! What am I missing here? :shrug:

[Politicalboi]

111. This is child's play to them

We have Bush/Cheney crimes on youtube in the broad daylight 9/11 and even that didn't really get investigated. Why would these e-mails be anything to them? They stole an election twice, they wiretapped, Bush is a dictator, don't appear in court due to executive privilege Katrina, the list goes on and on and on. They just postpone, postpone, postpone.

[Codedonkey]

115. What kind of email system do they have at the WH?

Who administers it exactly?

[Zambero]

116. Remember the missing Nixon tape recording?

Was it all of 11 minutes or something close? Now we're in the millions of emails destroyed covering a 2 YEAR period. And the grim consequence? Don't worry Mr. Magistrate, be happy! Nixon's apparent fatal error was in not destroying all the tapes while he had the chance!

[Ztarbod]

117. What happened to the Clinton hard drives?

[superconnected]

121. since clinton only log into email 1 time in his whole presidency - the day he

got it and they were showing it to him, there's probably not that much worry.

He dropped a few notches when I first read how computer illterate he was..

[proud2bamerican2]

119. here's the main thing

"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."

Destroying hard drives shouldn't be the focus of objection. It's a normal procedure that has always been SOP for government (and the process by which they do it is pretty interesting, as told to me by a former military technology guy).

What SHOULD be causing concern is the conclusion above -- that because they were destroyed, it's "fruitless" to try to undertake an e-mail recovery plan. That's just absurd. Are they trying to say that they just dumped the hard drives and didn't bother to back up the data somewhere? Of course not. And if they DID try to do that, it clearly smacks of cover-up.

Sidebar: My old colleague told me that he worked in some technology capacity for the military previously. He described the process of the government's destroying its hard drives. They grind em up, shred them, and then smelt them into metal ingots. But here's the catch: They are stacked in secure facilities and remain under armed guard.

Basically, the government could not get their tech gurus to 100% guarantee that a destroyed, smelted hard drive could NOT be reconstituted into some kind of recoverable data.

[superconnected]

120. What else would crooks do?