Lois Lerner's conveeeeeeeeeeniently-lost emails.
Note: I wonder what kind of email system would be: 1. Used by the Federal Government. 2. NOT be regularly backed-up. 3. Would lose up to two (2) years of emails in a crash. Jim Bell [article follows] http://news.yahoo.com/lawmakers-fume-over-lost-emails-irs-probe-080830845--p... WASHINGTON (AP) — Congressional investigators are fuming over revelations that the Internal Revenue Service has lost a trove of emails to and from a central figure in the agency's tea party controversy. The IRS said Lois Lerner's computer crashed in 2011, wiping out an untold number of emails that were being sought by congressional investigators. The investigators want to see all of Lerner's emails from 2009 to 2013 as part of their probe into the way agents handled applications for tax-exempt status by tea party and other conservative groups. Lerner headed the IRS division that processes applications for tax-exempt status. The IRS acknowledged last year that agents had improperly scrutinized applications by some conservative groups. "Do they really expect the American people to believe that, after having withheld these emails for a year, they're just now realizing the most critical time period is missing?" said Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight Committee. "If there wasn't nefarious conduct that went much higher than Lois Lerner in the IRS targeting scandal, why are they playing these games?" The Oversight Committee is one of three congressional committees investigating the IRS over its handling of tea party applications from 2010 to 2012. The Justice Department and the IRS inspector general are also investigating. Congressional investigators have shown that IRS officials in Washington were closely involved in the handling of tea party applications, many of which languished for more than a year without action. But so far, they have not publicly produced evidence that anyone outside the agency directed the targeting or even knew about it. If anyone in the Obama administration outside the agency was involved, investigators were hoping for clues in Lerner's emails. "The fact that I am just learning about this, over a year into the investigation, is completely unacceptable and now calls into question the credibility of the IRS' response to congressional inquiries," said Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. "There needs to be an immediate investigation and forensic audit by Department of Justice as well as the inspector general." The IRS said technicians went to great lengths trying to recover data from Lerner's computer in 2011. In emails provided by the IRS, technicians said they sent the computer to a forensic lab run by the agency's criminal investigations unit. But to no avail. The IRS was able to generate 24,000 Lerner emails from the 2009 to 2011 because Lerner had copied in other IRS employees. The agency said it pieced together the emails from the computers of 82 other IRS employees. But an untold number are gone. Camp's office said the missing emails are mainly ones to and from people outside the IRS, "such as the White House, Treasury, Department of Justice, FEC, or Democrat offices." Anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist called the episode "the worst attempt to blame technology in service of a cover-up since the infamous 18-minute gap" in former President Richard Nixon's Watergate tapes. The IRS said in a statement that more than 250 IRS employees have been working to assist congressional investigations, spending nearly $10 million to produce more than 750,000 documents. Overall, the IRS said it is producing a total of 67,000 emails to and from Lerner, covering the period from 2009 to 2013. "The IRS is committed to working with Congress," the IRS said in a statement. "The IRS has remained focused on being thorough and responding as quickly as possible to the wide-ranging requests from Congress while taking steps to protect underlying taxpayer information." Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, called Friday's disclosure "an outrageous impediment" to the committee's investigation. "Even more egregious is the fact we are learning about this a full year after our initial request to provide the committee with any and all documents relating to our investigation," Hatch said. Lerner has emerged as a key figure in the tea party probe. In May 2013, she was the first IRS official to publicly acknowledge that agents had improperly scrutinized applications. About two weeks later, Lerner was subpoenaed to testify at a congressional hearing. But after making a brief statement in which she said she had done nothing wrong, Lerner refused to answer questions, invoking her constitutional right against self-incrimination. The IRS placed Lerner on administrative leave shortly after the congressional hearing. She retired last fall. In May, the House voted to hold Lerner in contempt of Congress. Her case has been turned over to the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.
On Jun 15, 2014, at 2:48 AM, jim bell <jamesdbell9@yahoo.com> wrote:
Note: I wonder what kind of email system would be: 1. Used by the Federal Government. 2. NOT be regularly backed-up. 3. Would lose up to two (2) years of emails in a crash. Jim Bell [article follows]
Generously giving them the benefit of the doubt, I'm under the impression that the backup is what failed. I would assume the target of the investigation deleted her inbox.
I assume she was using Outlook and probably Exchange. Does anyone using Outlook really expect to be able to reliably have access to their old email very long? I think "those people" are idiots... I'd guess that Outlook / Exchange versioning issues, curruption, periodic rebuilds / restarts, and general Windows / Microsoft related confusion led periodic lossage that is just the cost of using such technology. I have a continuous archive of email spanning more than 20 years, and something like 25-30GB, online and always accessible to me. And with numerous backups, all easy to make and restore. And all using mbox format, around since essentially the beginning of email, which is resilient to corruption, truncation, etc. In multiple cases, at multiple companies, people have needed access to old email and documents which I had but were long ago lost to everyone else (who mostly used Outlook). In one case, it allowed a new contract worth probably more than a million or two. Email is my most reliable source of stored and organized knowledge. I've been hard at work, in my fragmented spare time, working on a true knowledgebase app / interchange format / distributed security system. (The key problem really is a much better user interface paradigm.) You can bet there will be a couple ways to represent and archive it that is as resilient as mbox. Stephen On 6/15/14, 8:05 AM, Henry Rivera wrote:
On Jun 15, 2014, at 2:48 AM, jim bell <jamesdbell9@yahoo.com <mailto:jamesdbell9@yahoo.com>> wrote:
Note: I wonder what kind of email system would be: 1. Used by the Federal Government. 2. NOT be regularly backed-up. 3. Would lose up to two (2) years of emails in a crash. Jim Bell [article follows]
Generously giving them the benefit of the doubt, I'm under the impression that the backup is what failed. I would assume the target of the investigation deleted her inbox.
On Sun, Jun 15, 2014 at 09:34:01AM -0700, Stephen D. Williams wrote:
I assume she was using Outlook and probably Exchange. Does anyone using Outlook really expect to be able to reliably have access to their old email very long? I think "those people" are idiots... I'd guess that Outlook / Exchange versioning issues, curruption, periodic rebuilds / restarts, and general Windows / Microsoft related confusion led periodic lossage that is just the cost of using such technology.
I have a continuous archive of email spanning more than 20 years, and something like 25-30GB, online and always accessible to me. And with numerous backups, all easy to make and restore. And all using mbox format, around since essentially the beginning of email, which is resilient to corruption, truncation, etc.
In multiple cases, at multiple companies, people have needed access to old email and documents which I had but were long ago lost to everyone else (who mostly used Outlook). In one case, it allowed a new contract worth probably more than a million or two.
Email is my most reliable source of stored and organized knowledge. I've been hard at work, in my fragmented spare time, working on a true knowledgebase app / interchange format / distributed security system. (The key problem really is a much better user interface paradigm.) You can bet there will be a couple ways to represent and archive it that is as resilient as mbox.
Stephen
This is from another thread, from awhile ago, but it popped up in my mutt window today. At my last 'full-time employee' gig, I was at a company that effectively lobotomized themselves with an idiotic "data retention policy". One test engineer had 20 years of email going nearly back to when the company was started, and 'policy' was that it must be deleted. The problem with that policy is that now you incentivize your employees (and contractors) to run their own mail infrastructure and duplicate everthing off-site because that is what any good attorney representing the employee or the contractor would advise you to do. Now the company attorney can, with a straight face, say "we deleted that email, per our document retention policy". But anyone that can read between the lines can (or should) know that the good engineers will have off-company backups, and that email should be easily acquireable with an appropriate targeted spear-phishing expedition if you want to be covert, or a 'better job offer' if you want to be overt. So what's the economic cost of lobotomizing your company by using exchange and delete-this data retention policies? really I think it's just a game venture capitalists play where they tell investors that this company A really has unique new fancy IP when it all just came from company B because you hired all their engineers and their email archives. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Troy Benjegerdes 'da hozer' hozer@hozed.org 7 elements earth::water::air::fire::mind::spirit::soul grid.coop Never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel, nor try buy a hacker who makes money by the megahash
On 6/15/14 2:48 AM, jim bell wrote:
Note: I wonder what kind of email system would be: 1. Used by the Federal Government. 2. NOT be regularly backed-up. 3. Would lose up to two (2) years of emails in a crash.
The one run by the lowest bidder subcontractor. Outside of The Fort, the concept of the USG actually employing IT people with the Right Stuff is rapidly fading in the rear view mirror. [I obviously don't know the specifics of this case, but in general....] More amusing to me is the Fort telling His Honor they can't obey an order to NOT delete records, because that's too complicated.... <http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/06/09/nsa-our-systems-are-so-complex-we-cant-stop-them-from-deleting-data-wanted-for-lawsuit/>
On Sun, 15 Jun 2014 11:56:23 -0400 David <wb8foz@nrk.com> wrote:
On 6/15/14 2:48 AM, jim bell wrote:
Note: I wonder what kind of email system would be: 1. Used by the Federal Government. 2. NOT be regularly backed-up. 3. Would lose up to two (2) years of emails in a crash.
The one run by the lowest bidder subcontractor.
Ah yes. The stingy taxpayers are to blame actually. Not willing to pay higer taxes.
Outside of The Fort, the concept of the USG actually employing IT people with the Right Stuff is rapidly fading in the rear view mirror.
[I obviously don't know the specifics of this case, but in general....]
More amusing to me is the Fort telling His Honor they can't obey an order to NOT delete records, because that's too complicated....
Dnia sobota, 14 czerwca 2014 23:48:07 jim bell pisze:
Note: I wonder what kind of email system would be: 1. Used by the Federal Government. 2. NOT be regularly backed-up. 3. Would lose up to two (2) years of emails in a crash. Jim Bell [article follows]
I'm sure they'd be able to find backups in a serverfarm in Utah, eh? -- Pozdr rysiek P.S. Originally sent just to Jim, due to a keyboard SNAFU.
From: rysiek <rysiek@hackerspace.pl> Dnia sobota, 14 czerwca 2014 23:48:07 jim bell pisze:
Note: I wonder what kind of email system would be: 1. Used by the Federal Government. 2. NOT be regularly backed-up. 3. Would lose up to two (2) years of emails in a crash. Jim Bell [article follows]>I'm sure they'd be able to find backups in a serverfarm in Utah, eh?
Could somebody whose Representative (or Senator) is involved in IRS-gate contact their staff, and remind them that due to a lucky confluence of karma, Lois Lerner's emails may not be permanently lost after all! Jim Bell
From: jim bell <jamesdbell9@yahoo.com> To: rysiek <rysiek@hackerspace.pl>; 'cypherpunks' <cypherpunks@cpunks.org> Sent: Subject: Re: Lois Lerner's conveeeeeeeeeeniently-lost emails. From: rysiek <rysiek@hackerspace.pl> Dnia sobota, 14 czerwca 2014 23:48:07 jim bell pisze:
Note: I wonder what kind of email system would be: 1. Used by the Federal Government. 2. NOT be regularly backed-up. 3. Would lose up to two (2) years of emails in a crash. Jim Bell [article follows]>I'm sure they'd be able to find backups in a serverfarm in Utah, eh?
Could somebody whose Representative (or Senator) is involved in IRS-gate contact their staff, and remind them that due to a lucky confluence of karma, Lois Lerner's emails may not be permanently lost after all! Jim Bell ------------------------ Looks like they're already on this! Notice, however, that Stockman is only asking for metadata, not the actual content of the email. Curious. Jim Bell ------------------------------ GOVERNMENT The Clever Way GOP Congressman Is Pushing Back After IRS Claims Lois Lerner Emails Were ‘Erased by a Glitch’ Jun. 13, 2014 5:56pm Jason Howerton Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas) asked the National Security Agency on Friday to turn over all the metadata it has collected on the email accounts of former IRS official Lois Lerner from January 2009 to April 2011. Stockman’s clever move comes hours after the tax agency apparently claimed it had lost Lerner’s emails from that same time period due to a computer glitch. “I have asked NSA Director Rogers to send me all metadata his agency has collected on Lois Lerner’s email accounts for the period which the House sought records,” Stockmansaid in a press release. “The metadata will establish who Lerner contacted and when, which helps investigators determine the extent of illegal activity by the IRS.” “The claim incriminating communications were erased by a glitch conjures memories of Rose Mary Woods,” the congressman added. “Barack Obama has brought us Jimmy Carter’s economy and Richard Nixon’s excuses.” Congress requested all emails sent from Lerner to and from other IRS employees from early 2009 to April 2011. After promising to turn them over, the IRS said Friday it can’t find any of those emails. Stockman isn’t the only member of Congress who isn’t buying the excuse. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) asked, “If there wasn’t nefarious conduct that went much higher than Lois Lerner in the IRS targeting scandal, why are they playing these games?” TheBlaze has reached out to Frederick R. Chang, a recognized national expert in cyber security and SMU professor, to see if there are ways the emails “lost” due to a glitch or crash could be recovered. We will update this story should he respond. Read Stockman’s letter to NSA Director Admiral Michael Rodgers below: June 13, 2014 Admiral Michael S. Rogers
Director, National Security Agency Fort Meade, MD 20755 Admiral Rogers: First, thank you for your 33 years of, and continued service to, our country. Second, as you probably read, the Internal Revenue Service informed the House Ways and Means Committee today they claim to “lost” all emails from former Exempt Organizations division director Lois Lerner for the period between January 2009 and April 2011. According to chairman Camp, “The IRS claims it cannot produce emails written only to or from Lerner and outside agencies or groups, such as the White House, Treasury, Department of Justice, FEC, or Democrat offices” due to a “computer glitch.” I am writing to request the Agency produce all metadata it has collected on all of Ms. Lerner’s email accounts for the period between January 2009 and April 2011. The data may be transmitted to our Communications Director at Donny@mail.house.gov. Your prompt cooperation in this matter will be greatly appreciated and will help establish how IRS and other personnel violated rights protected by the First Amendment. Warmest wishes, STEVE STOCKMAN Member of Congress
From: jim bell <jamesdbell9@yahoo.com> To: rysiek <rysiek@hackerspace.pl>; 'cypherpunks' <cypherpunks@cpunks.org> Sent: Subject: Re: Lois Lerner's conveeeeeeeeeeniently-lost emails. From: jim bell <jamesdbell9@yahoo.com> To: rysiek <rysiek@hackerspace.pl>; 'cypherpunks' <cypherpunks@cpunks.org> Sent: Subject: Re: Lois Lerner's conveeeeeeeeeeniently-lost emails. From: rysiek <rysiek@hackerspace.pl> Dnia sobota, 14 czerwca 2014 23:48:07 jim bell pisze:
Note: I wonder what kind of email system would be: 1. Used by the Federal Government. 2. NOT be regularly backed-up. 3. Would lose up to two (2) years of emails in a crash. Jim Bell [article follows]>I'm sure they'd be able to find backups in a serverfarm in Utah, eh?
Could somebody whose Representative (or Senator) is involved in IRS-gate contact their staff, and remind them that due to a lucky confluence of karma, Lois Lerner's emails may not be permanently lost after all! Jim Bell ------------------------ More stuff! Jim Bell ------------------------------ http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-06-14/congressman-asks-nsa-restore-two-ye... Congressman Asks NSA To Restore Two Years Of "Lost" Lois Lerner IRS Emails Submitted by Tyler Durden on 06/14/2014 21:47 -0400 Yesterday, the republican campaign to get to the bottom of IRS' targeting of conservative groups was dealt an absolutely idiotic blow when the IRS, in all seriousness, announced that it had lost two years worth of emails to and from the chief subject of the investigation: former agency official Lois Lerner. As House Ways and Means Commitee chairman Dave Camp said, "The fact that I am just learning about this, over a year into the investigation, is completely unacceptable and now calls into question the credibility of the IRS’s response to congressional inquiries,” he said in a statement. "There needs to be an immediate investigation and forensic audit by Department of Justice as well as the Inspector General." According to NRO, the agency informed Camp that a computer crash resulted in the loss of e-mails between January 2009 and April 2011 sent between Lerner and outside agencies such as the White House and the Department of Justice. "Those messages are particularly relevant given revelations earlier this week that the agency in 2010 transmitted a database to the FBI containing confidential taxpayer information, potentially in violation of federal law." The IRS said in a separate statement that it has or will produce 24,000 e-mails from the period between 2009 and 2011 using the files of 82 individuals with whom Lerner corresponded, and that it has produced nearly all of the 67,000 e-mails sent and received by Lerner during her time at the agency. Apparently lack of document (and email) retention is a crime for everyone, but not for the IRS. And furthermore, only when it comes to the IRS, can a single computer crash destroy the entire email path history, even as it crosses through countless servers across the world, and ultimately lands in somebody else's inbox. It goes without saying that for the IRS to even assume someone would believe this particular, and quite spectacular, lie is beyond insulting to even the most gullible idiot among the US population. So we won't say it. What, however, was simply a bizarre, if idiotic, lie has just been taken to a whole new level of ridiculousness, when moments ago, representative Steve Stockman (R-Texas) announced he would request that the National Security Agency help in the hunt for missing emails to and from the IRS’s Lois Lerner, and recover two years worth of "lost" emails. From the Hill: In a letter to NSA Director Michael Rogers on Friday, Stockman requested that the NSA turn over information it has about emails between Lerner and outside groups between January 2009 and April 2011.
Stockman’s request for the NSA’s “metadata” on the emails comes as congressional Republicans probe whether the IRS mishandled applications for tax-exempt status from Tea Party and conservative groups. In a statement, Stockman said the NSA’s information “will establish who Lerner contacted and when, which helps investigators determine the extent of illegal activity by the IRS.” “Your prompt cooperation in this matter will be greatly appreciated and will help establish how IRS and other personnel violated rights protected by the First Amendment,” Rogers wrote. Turns out all those jokes about people calling the NSA and asking for backups of lost emails and of course files (because remember, courtesy of complicit megacorporations, the NSA has full backdoor access to everything anyone does) - they weren't jokes at all. And now the NSA is caught between a rock and a hard place: because if it refuses an officialcongressional demand, it shows once again that the spy agency is entirely separated from any concept of checks and balances and accountability; if it complies, it confirms that all the NSA is, considering it can't even tap into a bunch of Al Qaeda phones and figure out what the jihadists' strategy is in Iraq, is just a massive data repository of all US electronic information, to be abused at will by corrupt, criminal government workers, some of whom will likely have to resort to the "dog ate my emails" excuse in the immediate future.
All of the comments so far are playing into the red herring of the technical issues of email backups. You're forgetting that losing email access is now modus operandi to stonewalling investigations: - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_White_House_email_controversy - http://www.propublica.org/article/nsa-says-it-cant-search-own-emails What people should be talking about instead is the drafting of a bill for record retention following the requirements of Sarbanes–Oxley, specifically for government communications to be used in criminal investigations against the government. To be explicit, all government communications should be duplicated into a read-only archive and kept there for at minimum seven years. And to borrow from a now well-known NSA program, an XKEYSCORE system should be developed where criminal investigators can use "selectors" to target people and keywords. The government shouldn't be worried if they have nothing to hide. Alfie On Sun, Jun 15, 2014, at 06:48 PM, jim bell wrote:
Note: I wonder what kind of email system would be: 1. Used by the Federal Government. 2. NOT be regularly backed-up. 3. Would lose up to two (2) years of emails in a crash. Jim Bell [article follows]
http://news.yahoo.com/lawmakers-fume-over-lost-emails-irs-probe-080830845--p...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Congressional investigators are fuming over revelations that the Internal Revenue Service has lost a trove of emails to and from a central figure in the agency's tea party controversy. The IRS said Lois Lerner's computer crashed in 2011, wiping out an untold number of emails that were being sought by congressional investigators. The investigators want to see all of Lerner's emails from 2009 to 2013 as part of their probe into the way agents handled applications for tax-exempt status by tea party and other conservative groups. Lerner headed the IRS division that processes applications for tax-exempt status. The IRS acknowledged last year that agents had improperly scrutinized applications by some conservative groups. "Do they really expect the American people to believe that, after having withheld these emails for a year, they're just now realizing the most critical time period is missing?" said Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight Committee. "If there wasn't nefarious conduct that went much higher than Lois Lerner in the IRS targeting scandal, why are they playing these games?" The Oversight Committee is one of three congressional committees investigating the IRS over its handling of tea party applications from 2010 to 2012. The Justice Department and the IRS inspector general are also investigating. Congressional investigators have shown that IRS officials in Washington were closely involved in the handling of tea party applications, many of which languished for more than a year without action. But so far, they have not publicly produced evidence that anyone outside the agency directed the targeting or even knew about it. If anyone in the Obama administration outside the agency was involved, investigators were hoping for clues in Lerner's emails. "The fact that I am just learning about this, over a year into the investigation, is completely unacceptable and now calls into question the credibility of the IRS' response to congressional inquiries," said Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. "There needs to be an immediate investigation and forensic audit by Department of Justice as well as the inspector general." The IRS said technicians went to great lengths trying to recover data from Lerner's computer in 2011. In emails provided by the IRS, technicians said they sent the computer to a forensic lab run by the agency's criminal investigations unit. But to no avail. The IRS was able to generate 24,000 Lerner emails from the 2009 to 2011 because Lerner had copied in other IRS employees. The agency said it pieced together the emails from the computers of 82 other IRS employees. But an untold number are gone. Camp's office said the missing emails are mainly ones to and from people outside the IRS, "such as the White House, Treasury, Department of Justice, FEC, or Democrat offices." Anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist called the episode "the worst attempt to blame technology in service of a cover-up since the infamous 18-minute gap" in former President Richard Nixon's Watergate tapes. The IRS said in a statement that more than 250 IRS employees have been working to assist congressional investigations, spending nearly $10 million to produce more than 750,000 documents. Overall, the IRS said it is producing a total of 67,000 emails to and from Lerner, covering the period from 2009 to 2013. "The IRS is committed to working with Congress," the IRS said in a statement. "The IRS has remained focused on being thorough and responding as quickly as possible to the wide-ranging requests from Congress while taking steps to protect underlying taxpayer information." Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, called Friday's disclosure "an outrageous impediment" to the committee's investigation. "Even more egregious is the fact we are learning about this a full year after our initial request to provide the committee with any and all documents relating to our investigation," Hatch said. Lerner has emerged as a key figure in the tea party probe. In May 2013, she was the first IRS official to publicly acknowledge that agents had improperly scrutinized applications. About two weeks later, Lerner was subpoenaed to testify at a congressional hearing. But after making a brief statement in which she said she had done nothing wrong, Lerner refused to answer questions, invoking her constitutional right against self-incrimination. The IRS placed Lerner on administrative leave shortly after the congressional hearing. She retired last fall. In May, the House voted to hold Lerner in contempt of Congress. Her case has been turned over to the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.
-- Alfie John alfiej@fastmail.fm
participants (8)
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Alfie John -
David -
Henry Rivera -
jim bell -
Juan -
rysiek -
Stephen D. Williams -
Troy Benjegerdes