White House Says It Destroyed Millions of E-Mails
The White House is no stranger to controversy surrounding lost e-mail, but the latest bit of information might be the most shocking yet. Following a court ruling, the Bush administration must institute a recovery plan to restore what U.S. Magistrate Judge John Facciola fears may be large volumes of missing communications from 2003 to 2005.
In an effort to deter the court from pushing forward with the recovery plan, the White House revealed details about how it disposes of computer equipment that is to be retired. The White House revealed in January that it recycled backup tapes from 2003, taping over existing data. In other words, they're saying the millions of e-mails are gone forever.
Now, according to the Associated Press, the administration is claiming that any data on older computers is lost for good as well. When retiring older workstations White House Information Technology (IT) staff transfers some, but not all data from the old hard drive to the new PC. The old hard drive is then sent off to another government agency where it is physically destroyed.
Whether the White House is telling the truth or lying to conceal evidence of misdeeds, it seems to be up to no good. If the White House is telling the truth and the e-mails are simply lost, then the administration is not keeping proper archives and records. The data loss is at best a sign of the ineptitude of the White House IT staff, and at worst a flagrant disregard for business record retention laws.
If the White House is lying and is hiding the e-mails, or intentionally destroyed them, then that is a whole other can of worms that could put the administration and its IT staff in legal jeopardy.
From AP/AOL News (via Slashdot)
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