5 Million E-Mail Messages -- How the White House Lost Them...
We've all lived through this type of scenario: You're looking for an old e-mail message, maybe one you sent a few years ago, maybe one from an old account or that you sent from an old computer. Despite all your good efforts you can't find the message. It was important but now it is lost.
Imagine losing five million messages. Important messages. Messages you're supposed to keep copies of according to the law.
That's the very real scenario the White House is faced with today, the result of the Bush administration implementing a seemingly haphazard copying and archiving system for all messages sent by executive branch employees between March 2003 and October 2005 -- and this incomplete system is apparently still in place, according to a fascinating explanation on Ars Technica.
When the Bush administration came into power in 2001, it changed the e-mail system from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Exchange, effectively disabling the automatic e-mail archiving process that the Clinton administration had put into place. Instead, the new system relied on manual saving, file naming and archiving of all e-mail, a method that leaves plenty of opportunities for messages to be lost, deleted or even altered.
Now, in response to a lawsuit, a federal magistrate judge has ordered the White House to find all the missing email.
We feel sorry for the poor IT guys who now have to search for all those messages.
If it were up to you, how would you go about finding and preserving all the old White House e-mail? [Source: Ars Technica, via Machinist]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
David427 said 10:07AM on 5-04-2008
Umm, yeah sure MS Exchange doesn't have an option to back up email. You guys sure you write for a tech report?
You think it's more likely they don't want the emails archived? Didn't Nixon have to resign over crap like this?
And how is this breaking news? The White House has been ignoring for years their need by law to archive emails.
Geez, not only are you guys Apple fanboys, your also W fanboys.
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Cecil Jones said 5:43PM on 5-04-2008
The White House is lying because they can't lose any communication that could be considered as a threat to the President of the United States. These transmissions must be vetted for every word and they must be shared with the FBI and probably Homeland Security. More frequent transmissions must establish a file and the threat evaluated for future reference. The problem here is this information could shed light on the truth that is quite ugly to America. Who is the so called "Bush Fly?" What about strategic political information contained in these transmissions? This is potentially very ugly for the WH so it's easier to say they have been lost. Who is going to question their integrity?
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