Is there any way to retrieve those missing Whitehouse emails?

[Quixote1818]

Did they delete all the temp files too? Does the server have them still? Did they wipe EVERYTHING clean or are they out there someplace?

[smiley_glad_hands]

1. Im sure.

Im sure the NSA has the capability. Plan for 2008.

[goddess40]

2. It would take a criminal act - with full intent to get rid of those e-mails

and I still think that they are around. What about the people that received them, wouldn't they have had to do the extraordinary deletion process as well?

[MiniMe]

25. They would not only have to erase them off the server, they would have to

erase them from the backup tapes. It partly depends on if they were archiving the tapes or not. That is pretty much standard practice, but who knows with this white house. And there is the server that it was received on. And the person's email to whom it was sent. The problem with getting the email that was, is that you would have to know where the email was sent. This could get interesting.

[Solo_in_MD]

36. Actually it would not be illegal and be fairly easy to do

[MNDemNY]

3. Nonsense. They never existed. Now, go back to sleep.

[yy4me]

4. Come on, all you computer experts. We all need you to tell us

that real experts can find and retrieve these things. Send the solution to certain of our Reps and Senators who are on our side. They might want to know that there are options out there. Just because 50 e-mail address records are gone, are they still floating around for some good doobie to find?

[Quixote1818]

8. We know Greg Palast has a few of them. nt

[Solo_in_MD]

32. This was beat to death earlier, but here goes

- Emails can easily be deleted in a manner that they are not retrievable on the server
- It is not illegal to delete emails, especially if the is the defined data retention policy on the server
- Sarbanes-Oxley is not applicable here
- Systems can be configured to as to insure deleted data can not be retrieved forensically
- Using RAID it is quite safe not to do backups

All of the above is not rocket science. Your average geek guy could such a system together easily

[blogslut]

5. Yes

And congressman Waxman said as much in his most recent report. The emails exists on the servers of other government agencies.

heehee

[Quixote1818]

10. So are they just trying to slow down the investigation?

NT

[blogslut]

24. Actually now, it's a different matter

They deleted emails in order to slow down investigation. In doing so, they have obstructed justice and destroyed evidence. Waxman is very much on the case. From the report:

"The committee has already written to 25 federal agencies to inquire about the email records they may have retained from the White House officials who used RNC and Bush Cheney '04 e-mail accounts. Preliminary responses from the agencies indicated that they may have preserved official communications that were destroyed by the RNC."

link: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/docs/oversight-report-presidential-records/?resultpage=2&

[Solo_in_MD]

39. Some, not the all

The receiving servers *may* have been setup to retain copies. Those that are could be searched to for anything from the domains in question. Same of users who saved email. However, there is no mandatory retention laws across all of the Federal Gov, so some of those may be lost as well. Note that the presidential data retention rules do not apply to the recipient.

[BlackHawk706867]

6. For the most part, any information can be retrieved from a hard drive...

unless the drive has been reformatted and overwritten it is retrievable. There are companies that specialize in doing exactly that in all countries....

ww

[Solo_in_MD]

37. Those are for accidental deletions only

Its easy enough to configure a system to insure that deleted data can not be retrieved forensically.

[BlooInBloo]

7. What's an "email"?

[DearAbby]

9. I bet they could produce each & every one of my e-mails

if homeland security needed them...whats the problem here?

[BlackHawk706867]

11. If you google "Lost Data Retrieval" you will see the companies/products...

that can and do, do this... It's similar to a Black Box on an airplane...

ww

[Frustratedlady]

12. Just look at all the govt laptops that have been stolen...Google Search

http://tinyurl.com/32r8mc

[patrice]

13. With the money that the RNC has, I expect they could buy the

technical expertise to make those emails disappear, complete with a virus strain appropriate to erasing any recipients' copies.

[Quixote1818]

14. Thats what I was worried about

Thanks for bringing that up.

[BlackHawk706867]

17. Sorry, but thats impossible unless they have over written the data... eom

[Warpy]

20. I had a program a couple of years ago that promised to wipe

a hard drive by overwriting all the 1s and 0s with nothing but 0s. The program had to run at least five times over the period of two days. Some message boards suggested the program run over and over again for two weeks, and cautioned that some data would still be retrievable.

The only way to destroy data is to physically destroy the disk.

I never bothered with that prog. I just put cheap new HDs into the puters I was donating and I still have the old HDs.

[patrice]

28. Why would they draw the line at destroying HDs?

These ARE criminals.

[Warpy]

31. Untrustworthy people won't trust each other, either

Why do you think the Mafia kept two sets of books?

They will want to refer to this stuff, themselves.

Those discs are still out there, believe it.

[patrice]

27. Why do you think anyone doing such a thing wouldn't know that

s/he must also overwrite the truncated data after formatting the drive?

[BlackHawk706867]

29. I expect they probably would know that actually.... eom

[C_U_L8R]

15. Call the NSA

They've scooped up every email ever.

[WilliamPitt]

16. Probably

1. Sent email exists in the server it was sent from, and the server/s it was sent to. Were they able to gather and destroy all emails within the sending servers and recieving servers, plus any recieved email that was printed and filed?

2. Nothing is ever deleted unless you reformat the hard drive, rub the computer with a large magnet, or just throw the whole thing into a fire.

BUT...

If the RNC and White House made the required effort to control all sent emails, and went the next step and reformaatted every involved hard drive...that's pretty elegant proof of a large, deliberate cover-up.

[BlackHawk706867]

18. Reformated hard drives can be recovered as well! eom

[Solo_in_MD]

34. Depends on how it was done...

[Quixote1818]

22. Could they be prosecuted for having taken such deliberate and obvious steps

to wipe the computers clean?

Are they just trying to stall this investigation to where they have left office before any indictment is handed down? What is the purpose of deleting these e-mails if they can eventually be found?

Is this more of Roves BS leading us on a wild goose chase so they can turn this around on the Dems? What the hell are they up to?

[Solo_in_MD]

35. That depends...

This got batted around a lot when this first broke, but IIRC there was some indication of an auto deletion policy (mail older than 60 days kind of thing). If that was the established policy, then deleting it was not a crime.

Having a system setup that makes it impossible or close to it to retrieve erased data is not a crime either, and its pretty easy to do.

Deleting data *AFTER* you know its going to be part of an investigation is indeed obstruction.

[Solo_in_MD]

38. Not necessarily

Its easy enough to block forensic recovery on the server side without destroying hardware. It can be done automatically and without user knowledge or intervention and while the system is running.

It is not illegal or a cover up as long as it was the server policy and had been in place before they were notified of any investigation.

[Warpy]

19. Unless the hard drives have been incinerated at a high temperature

there is always a way to retrieve at least part of the data. My guess is that those drives are secreted someplace far, far away. There would be too much blackmailable material on them to delete it or to destroy those disks. Remember, such untrustworthy people aren't going to trust each other, either.

The data are out there. The trick is going to be somebody who is willing to squeal about where those disks are being hidden.

[BlackHawk706867]

21. Bingo.. You have hit the nail on the head... I'm certain you won't find the..

original Hard Drives... but probably clones that have had only the undeleted data copied to them...

ww

[patrice]

30. Good point. They'd be too valuable to destroy.

Or perhaps there's somekind of agreement amongst the parties involved to keep everyone quiet - mutually assured blackmail?

Plus the information could be useful for further development (later) of the original projects.

It's mad though, no matter what was agreed, to NOT destroy them would simply be crazy.


hhhmmmmmm . . . .

[Solo_in_MD]

33. Nonsense, its easy to have running drives where deleted data can not be retreived forensically

A competent sysadmin can insure that

[DS1]

23. The disk drives are somewhere at the bottom of the Atlantic ocean

[Orsino]

26. We may never know.

I suspect that the tracks were not covered completely, and that some server, somewhere, could retain the records.

I suspect even more strongly, though, that we'll never know--not for decades, anyway. They'll be deemed presidential records and sealed away forever, if they aren't destroyed outright.