IRS Scandal explodes. "no evidence that would support a criminal prosecution."

[Attic]

So what other function should the IRS stop doing to have the proper IT infrastructure you demand?

None.

Recovering a hard drive != billion dollar+ IT budgets

We are not talking about a massive undertaking in a technical or IT administrative sense.

 

[fskimospy]

Exactly. Our government is effectively playing "the dog ate my homework".

Ridiculous.

If you're invested enough in a certain outcome I'm sure you can bend any set of facts to be 'common sense'. That doesn't mean you're actually using common sense though.

 

[fskimospy]

None.

Recovering a hard drive != billion dollar+ IT budgets

We are not talking about a massive undertaking in a technical or IT administrative sense.

So are you claiming that the techs who said they weren't able to do it were part of the conspiracy?

BTW: I now work for a large, bureaucratic agency. I absolutely guarantee you that if my hard drive crashed today that I would lose large quantities of archived emails that would not be easily recovered, if recoverable at all.

My agency has a budget that is more than twice the size of the IRS.

 

[nageov3t]

So are you claiming that the techs who said they weren't able to do it were part of the conspiracy?

BTW: I now work for a large, bureaucratic agency. I absolutely guarantee you that if my hard drive crashed today that I would lose large quantities of archived emails that would not be easily recovered, if recoverable at all.

My agency has a budget that is more than twice the size of the IRS.

knowing typical government hiring, the techs who said they weren't able to do it may have been unqualified and/or basic user admins who are able to install Windows and setup printers but may have never heard of enterprise-level data recovery services.

if this happened after they had knowledge that her emails were wanted as part of the investigation, not sending out the drives for data recovery is a pretty black mark.

 

[Attic]

So are you claiming that the techs who said they weren't able to do it were part of the conspiracy?

I'm only claiming that there were no real efforts to recover the hard drive contents.

Email history is critical in any business, recovering them would have undergone a real recovery effort which would have recovered them.

Either the techs were completely incompetent or didn't try to recover the contents of the drive.

 

[Jhhnn]

Cliffs: The emails were intentionally lost, that is clear to anyone with a shred of common sense who has been paying attention to this scandal.

So, uhh, how much other email was lost from the period in question?

Perhaps you're attributing motives to a specific incident that was merely part of a systemic problem. Not that you'd want to know that, of course.

Common sense? Believers have no common sense. They have faith in what they believe.

 

[fskimospy]

if this happened after they had knowledge that her emails were wanted as part of the investigation, not sending out the drives for data recovery is a pretty black mark.

It didn't.

 

[Bowfinger]

Not much to interpret the language in the law in question is plain. The Federal Records Act (started in 1950 and amended many times since) requires all federal employees to keep any records pertaining to their official duties. Furthermore is stipulates that each agency provide general and specific requirements regarding how records should be created and maintained at that agency. As such, the IRS has such a requirement/policy which I link before, but I'll link again for the truly useless in here.

http://www.irs.gov/irm/part1/irm_01-010-003.html

That document requires there to be a backup printout. This didn't happen and was a breach of the Federal Records Act requiring the IRS to maintain its records according to policy. Also, one might say that the server is the backup in most cases. Although that may be the case, and was likely the case here. The fact that no effort was taken to recover said backups when a problem occurred with original records is also a violation of the law seeing is how there was effectively no backup at that point, which again is required under their own policy which in turn is mandated by the Federal Records Act

As I've explained before, the problem with your claim is it ignores facts and relies on supposition. The Federal Records Act does NOT require all email be preserved. It requires "official records" be preserved. Further, "official record" is somewhat subjective. Also, we do not know how many of these emails Lerner did print and file, to comply with this law. She may have ignored it entirely and printed nothing -or- she may have file cabinets full of printed email from that period. We simply do not know one way or the other because nobody has provided this information to the public.

That said, I do find it interesting there was reportedly no attempt to recover at least the latest six months of lost email from those backup tapes. Given the email chain documenting Lerner's effort to work with IT to recover her drive, it seems unlikely nobody thought of it. I can speculate different circumstances where that might make sense, e.g., technical limitations, but I do agree this could also be someone dropping the ball. It should be further investigated.

 

[fskimospy]

I'm only claiming that there were no real efforts to recover the hard drive contents.

Email history is critical in any business, recovering them would have undergone a real recovery effort which would have recovered them.

Either the techs were completely incompetent or didn't try to recover the contents of the drive.

Earlier you claimed that the emails were deliberately lost. Can you explain the chain of events that led to this? Did the IRS deliberately hire incompetent technicians that would be unable to recover email in case they needed to destroy it? Were the techs competent but part of the conspiracy? What?

I'm sorry, but the facts available don't even come close to supporting your contention that it's clear the emails were deliberately lost. Like, not even remotely close.

 

[Genx87]

So are you claiming that the techs who said they weren't able to do it were part of the conspiracy?

BTW: I now work for a large, bureaucratic agency. I absolutely guarantee you that if my hard drive crashed today that I would lose large quantities of archived emails that would not be easily recovered, if recoverable at all.

My agency has a budget that is more than twice the size of the IRS.

Your agency doesn't do off site email archiving? My budget is a fraction of a % of the IRS and we archive email for 24 months. My exchange server can burn to the ground. My users .pst's can be destroyed. But I can get email back from 24 months ago.

The question I have is why didnt the IRS have this capability?

 

[Attic]

So are you claiming that the techs who said they weren't able to do it were part of the conspiracy?

BTW: I now work for a large, bureaucratic agency. I absolutely guarantee you that if my hard drive crashed today that I would lose large quantities of archived emails that would not be easily recovered, if recoverable at all.

My agency has a budget that is more than twice the size of the IRS.

Understood, i'd only emphasize that though not probable, your hard drive can crash at anytime.

 

[fskimospy]

Your agency doesn't do off site email archiving? My budget is a fraction of a % of the IRS and we archive email for 24 months. My exchange server can burn to the ground. My users .pst's can be destroyed. But I can get email back from 24 months ago.

The question I have is why didnt the IRS have this capability?

Sure doesn't. I'm not familiar with all the logistical difficulties but it's a sprawling organization with thousands of sites. That might make it difficult. Regardless, it definitely doesn't.

I agree it is foolish for the IRS not to have such a capability, particularly for such a records driven organization.

 

[Attic]

Earlier you claimed that the emails were deliberately lost. Can you explain the chain of events that led to this? Did the IRS deliberately hire incompetent technicians that would be unable to recover email in case they needed to destroy it? Were the techs competent but part of the conspiracy? What?

I'm sorry, but the facts available don't even come close to supporting your contention that it's clear the emails were deliberately lost. Like, not even remotely close.

You're misunderstanding my argument.

The emails were recoverable. We're not talking about a kitty picture collection, emails are important, if efforts were taken to recover (as IRS claims) they would have been recovered.

 

[fskimospy]

Understood, i'd only emphasize that though not probable, your hard drive can crash at anytime.

I didn't say I worked for an intelligent, large, bureaucratic agency, haha. They are aware of this, but I have no authority to copy these emails anywhere else as they contain a lot of private information, etc.

 

[xBiffx]

The Federal Records Act does NOT require all email be preserved.

Correct it does not.

It requires "official records" be preserved. Further, "official record" is somewhat subjective.

How can emails regarding active cases and regarding policy be considered anything but official records? Again, I'll point to the IRS site.

1. All federal employees and federal contractors are required by law to preserve records containing adequate and proper documentation of the organization, functions, policies, decisions, procedures, and essential transactions of the agency. Records must be properly stored and preserved, available for retrieval and subject to appropriate approved disposition schedules.

All of this pertains to the emails in question.

Also, we do not know how many of these emails Lerner did print and file, to comply with this law. She may have ignored it entirely and printed nothing -or- she may have file cabinets full of printed email from that period. We simply do not know one way or the other because nobody has provided this information to the public.

Exactly. They've had almost a year and we've seen nothing with respect to original printouts. That's pretty telling and any sane person could assume at this point that they don't exist. Why wouldn't they have been produced already if they did exist? It would at least keep Congress busy reading for quite some time if they had been.

 

[Genx87]

Sure doesn't. I'm not familiar with all the logistical difficulties but it's a sprawling organization with thousands of sites. That might make it difficult. Regardless, it definitely doesn't.

I agree it is foolish for the IRS not to have such a capability, particularly for such a records driven organization.

It amazes me in 2014 and our litigation climate when companies don't archive email. Some courts make it difficult for the party that cant produce emails. Some courts will regard lack of an email as proof what the other party said is true. If this were a litigation case the IRS could be up shit creek without a paddle.

Second I am curious about what they did in an attempt to recover said .pst. The companies I work for have lost a few hard drives over the last 15 years. We were always able to recover files using a 3rd party. Provided the platters of the hard drive aren't physically destroyed. These data recovery companies can get back most data. In our case they were always able to recover the data we needed.

I can see how some can bring up a conspiracy. 6 hard drives fail. Not a single one was able to have data recovered? Seems a bit far fetched to me. I am not saying there is proof of any conspiracy. Only that is some really wild aligning of the stars imo.

 

[fskimospy]

You're misunderstanding my argument.

The emails were recoverable. We're not talking about a kitty picture collection, emails are important, if efforts were taken to recover (as IRS claims) they would have been recovered.

We know that efforts were made to recover it, even enlisting outside help. Perhaps if they had thought the emails were important enough they would have recovered them, but at that time that wasn't the case.

Again, using myself as an example, if my hard drive crashed and I lost everything I'm sure the IT department would make an effort to get them back, but they certainly wouldn't move heaven and earth.

 

[xBiffx]

We know that efforts were made to recover it, even enlisting outside help.

So now you know more than the acting IRS commissioner? (Admittedly, that wouldn't be difficult. )

Again, his words:

“Because that six month tape is a disaster recovery tape that has all of the emails on it and is a very complicated tape to actually extract emails for, but I have not seen any emails to explain why they didn’t do it, so it would be difficult, but I don’t know why,” replied the IRS boss.

Please tell me what steps were taken if you know that steps were taken, as you said.

 

[fskimospy]

It amazes me in 2014 and our litigation climate when companies don't archive email. Some courts make it difficult for the party that cant produce emails. Some courts will regard lack of an email as proof what the other party said is true. If this were a litigation case the IRS could be up shit creek without a paddle.

Second I am curious about what they did in an attempt to recover said .pst. The companies I work for have lost a few hard drives over the last 15 years. We were always able to recover files using a 3rd party. Provided the platters of the hard drive aren't physically destroyed. These data recovery companies can get back most data. In our case they were always able to recover the data we needed.

I can see how some can bring up a conspiracy. 6 hard drives fail. Not a single one was able to have data recovered? Seems a bit far fetched to me. I am not saying there is proof of any conspiracy. Only that is some really wild aligning of the stars imo.

I of course have no idea what their data retrieval procedures are but I do know that recently they recently asked for Microsoft to extend windows xp support because they couldn't upgrade their machines. That speaks to some mighty old IT infrastructure.

 

[Jaskalas]

So now you know more than the acting IRS commissioner?

Again, his words:

Please tell me what steps were taken if you know that steps were taken, as you said.

Two separate issues:

1. The actual HDD.
2. The backup tapes.

They tried and failed to recover the HDD. They made no attempt to restore from the backup tapes.

 

[fskimospy]

So now you know more than the acting IRS commissioner?

Again, his words:



Please tell me what steps were taken if you know that steps were taken, as you said.

Why don't you go read the emails in question? Lerner sent her hard drive to IT. They weren't able to recover her data and they reached out to HP for help, who was also unable to do so.

 

[xBiffx]

Two separate issues:

1. The actual HDD.
2. The backup tapes.

They tried and failed to recover the HDD. They made no attempt to restore from the backup tapes.

Gotcha.

 

[xBiffx]

Why don't you go read the emails in question? Lerner sent her hard drive to IT. They weren't able to recover her data and they reached out to HP for help, who was also unable to do so.

As Jaskalas pointed out, I was asking about a different issue than the one you were addressing. My mistake.

 

[Genx87]

I of course have no idea what their data retrieval procedures are but I do know that recently they recently asked for Microsoft to extend windows xp support because they couldn't upgrade their machines. That speaks to some mighty old IT infrastructure.

We have some XP machines due to old applications. That is what typically slows adoption of newer technologies. The inability to get funding or resistance to move past some accounting program written in 1993 and wont work on Vista, Windows 7 or 8s security model.

 

[TerryMathews]

I wonder if the SEC would accept a financial institution "losing" financial records via a hard drive crash and failing to recover them via tape, then overwriting the tapes?