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

[Doc Savage Fan]

They really aren't. I'm a little distressed about you as well, it seems like you've been having increasing difficulty evaluating this in a rational matter. Saying "I recommend you send this to x" and saying "I can't do anything with this but you could ask someone else" are two hugely different things.

I would have thought that was obvious.

Experts said that they thought the drive was recoverable, but the IRS said they couldn't do it, and recommended/suggested outside help. Instead the drive was recycled. Is anyone disputing this testimony?

I have no idea as I don't take the statements of spokesmen as factual. Considering you do and you are unbiased however I can only assume that you are equally willing to accept this as factual. In that case to you that should mean case closed.

I don't see any committee Democrats or Republicans (who were present during testimony) denying that IRS technicians thought the damage was accidental; therefore, I believe it's highly probable that this is factual in regard to what was testified....nothing more, nothing less. I never said nor implied a "case closed" position based on this testimony. That's all you...as usual.

 

[xBiffx]

Lerner's hard drive was only scratched and was considered recoverable by IRS technicians. In fact, they recommended using an outside service to recover the emails. Instead, the hard drive was recycled. Hmmm.

http://thehill.com/policy/finance/213038-gop-lerners-emails-could-have-been-recovered

This comment on that article was highly enlightening. Even if his original figure for hard drive failure in a given month is debatable. The fact that the odds get compounded to a ridiculous number aren't.

The odds of winning the Florida lottery are 1 in 22,957,480.

The odds of winning the Powerball is 1 in 175,223,510.

The odds of winning Mega Millions is 1 in 258,890,850.

The odds of a disk drive failing in any given month are roughly one in 36.

The odds of two different drives failing in the same month are roughly one in 36 squared, or 1 in about 1,300. The odds of three drives failing in the same month is 36 cubed or 1 in 46,656.

The odds of seven different drives failing in the same month (like what happened at the IRS when they received a letter asking about emails targeting conservative and pro-Israeli groups) is 37 to the 7th power = 1 in 78,664,164,096. (that's over 78 Billion)

The odds of eight different drives failing (the 8th hard drive was disclosed by Koskinen during his June 20, 2014 hearing before Congress) in the same month (like what happened at
the IRS when they received a letter asking about emails targeting conservative and pro-Israeli groups) is 37 to
the 8th power = 1 in 2,910,574,071,504. (that's nearly 3 Trillion)

In other words, the odds are greater that you will win the Florida Lottery 126,759 times than having those eight IRS hard drives crashing in the same month.

Yeah, "not a smidgen of corruption," just a 2.9 Trillion to one
shot

 

[Jhhnn]

Experts said that they thought the drive was recoverable, but the IRS said they couldn't do it, and recommended/suggested outside help. Instead the drive was recycled. Is anyone disputing this testimony?

Why bring in testimony over spilled milk of recycled hard drives? Oh, I remember- Conspiracy! Of course IRS techs said the drive "should" be sent to an outside lab for recovery- standard bureaucratic CYA. The notion that the drive was recoverable because it was "only scratched" is pure hogwash, reflecting a very poor understanding of how drives work & how information is stored on them. It's bullshit.

Given all the dead ends, when will Lerner be forced to testify under immunity?

That presumes Repubs actually want to get to the bottom of it rather than tossing out bits of red meat scandal! scandal! scandal! for the faithful.

That would, apparently, be asking too much of Camp, Issa & the rest, I suppose.

 

[xBiffx]

Why bring in testimony over spilled milk of recycled hard drives? Oh, I remember- Conspiracy! Of course IRS techs said the drive "should" be sent to an outside lab for recovery- standard bureaucratic CYA. The notion that the drive was recoverable because it was "only scratched" is pure hogwash, reflecting a very poor understanding of how drives work & how information is stored on them. It's bullshit.

Its a conspiracy to bring testimony about people breaking federal laws at the IRS?

Also, I think you are the one reflecting poor understanding of how hard drives work. If, in fact, one of the platters was merely scratched, that doesn't mean all the data is unrecoverable. I've dealt with several scratched platters where data was easily recovered.

Oops, I forgot, you and Bowfinger belong in a drawer together.

 

[Doc Savage Fan]

Looks like the backup tapes have been found.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...estigators-have-found-backup-tapes-in-lerner/

 

[xBiffx]

Looks like the backup tapes have been found.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...estigators-have-found-backup-tapes-in-lerner/

This might be a case of (Obi-Wan voice) these aren't the tapes you are looking for. If not, what a bunch of fuckups we have working at the IRS.

 

[Bowfinger]

This comment on that article was highly enlightening. Even if his original figure for hard drive failure in a given month is debatable. The fact that the odds get compounded to a ridiculous number aren't.

Yes, they are not only debatable, they are indisputably wrong. What was it Bill Clinton said about Republicans and arithmetic? The person who dreamt up that calculation made two huge errors. First, he assumed all the drives failed in a single month. They did not. They failed over at least a three year period, beginning with Lerner in 2011 and ending with the most recent failure earlier this year.

More importantly, however, this whiz assumed there were exactly seven drives, i.e., the odds of seven out of seven drives failing in a single month. Unfortunately for him (and the nutters so desperately craving a smoking gun), there were hundreds of drives not just seven. The odds of seven drives out of one hundred failing sometime during a three-year window are pretty good, making this angle a complete fizzle.

 

[TerryMathews]

This is a... selective reading of the article to say the least. Doesn't it seem odd to only report what one side of the committee said and not the other?

Additionally, do you think that the IRS should send all crashed hard drives to external agencies for expensive recovery work?

When there is potentially discoverable information, it should be preserved according to retention guidelines.

Please note this does not mean that the drive must be IMMEDIATELY recovered. Storing the drive until subpoenaed or until retention time was up would have been sufficient.

 

[TerryMathews]

What's also mentioned is that the techs concluded the hard drive damage was accidental. Considering that such a finding basically precludes any possibility of conspiracy to hide data, that seems like an awfully interesting finding, wouldn't you think?

I would love to know what qualifications these technicians possessed in order to make such a determination.

 

[Bowfinger]

Its a conspiracy to bring testimony about people breaking federal laws at the IRS?

Also, I think you are the one reflecting poor understanding of how hard drives work. If, in fact, one of the platters was merely scratched, that doesn't mean all the data is unrecoverable. I've dealt with several scratched platters where data was easily recovered.

You are lying ... And laughably ignorant about IT. In IT, "scratch" is jargon for recycling (roughly). For example, "I scratched that tape." means I logically deleted its data -- akin to a high level "format" -- and either put it back in the scratch pool for reuse or disposed of it. If this IRS tech said the disk was "scratched", he likely meant it was sent to recycling, not marred by Lerner's fingernail.

Unfortunately, as usual with these partisan leaks, that is merely speculation without a full transcript. My guess is this story got perverted as it passed from the original source through a technically ignorant, partisan Congressman to an equally ignorant, partisan blogger/reporter. We need the transcript to be sure, however.

Oops, I forgot, you and Bowfinger belong in a drawer together.

Po' baby. You're just jealous because you aren't sharp enough to go in a drawer, not even as a butt-hurt spreader. All you have is a bus. A very, very short bus. Don't be sad, sweetie. You are truly special.

 

[Bowfinger]

Looks like the backup tapes have been found.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...estigators-have-found-backup-tapes-in-lerner/

Good. I hope it pans out. Of course Republicans will spin it into a negative no matter how it plays out. If the tapes contain no Lerner email, it will be "proof" of the conspiracy to cover up the scandal. If they include only some email, it will be proof of the same. If they include all of Lerner's missing mail, it will be proof of the cover up, but the cover up failed ... at least until they find nothing incriminating in Lerner's mail, at which point they start the conspiracy cries all over again. And in the odd chance that they recover Lerner's email and they discover some new incriminating evidence, not in the million-plus pages and hundreds of thousands emails already produced, we all win because the IRS should never be used for partisan purposes.

 

[First]

Lerner's hard drive was only scratched and was considered recoverable by IRS technicians. In fact, they recommended using an outside service to recover the emails. Instead, the hard drive was recycled. Hmmm.

http://thehill.com/policy/finance/213038-gop-lerners-emails-could-have-been-recovered

WTF? They're effectively saying the same thing. I'm starting to worry about you...again.


Do you believe this is factual?

Last week, agency officials said under oath in court filings that Lerner’s hard drive couldn’t be restored, and was then destroyed to protect confidential taxpayer information.

“It is unbelievable that we cannot get a simple, straight answer from the IRS about this hard drive,” Camp said in a statement.

“The Committee was told no data was recoverable and the physical drive was recycled and potentially shredded. To now learn that the hard drive was only scratched, yet the IRS refused to utilize outside experts to recover the data, raises more questions about potential criminal wrong doing at the IRS.”

A Democratic spokesman for Ways and Means charged that the GOP was twisting the analyst’s words. Democrats say that the analyst made multiple unsuccessful efforts to recover the lost data, and merely said the IRS could choose to send it to outside specialists for one final try.

“What’s more, he told investigators that he did not think Lerner’s hard drive crash was deliberate,” Josh Drobnyk, the spokesman for Rep. Sandy Levin (D-Mich.), said in a statement. “Once again, Republicans are misrepresenting the facts in their never-ending quest to create a scandal.”

Really, that's your conclusion DSF? Fo real or shens?

How about a "Hmmmmmmmmm"

 

[Doc Savage Fan]

Good. I hope it pans out. Of course Republicans will spin it into a negative no matter how it plays out. If the tapes contain no Lerner email, it will be "proof" of the conspiracy to cover up the scandal. If they include only some email, it will be proof of the same. If they include all of Lerner's missing mail, it will be proof of the cover up, but the cover up failed ... at least until they find nothing incriminating in Lerner's mail, at which point they start the conspiracy cries all over again. And in the odd chance that they recover Lerner's email and they discover some new incriminating evidence, not in the million-plus pages and hundreds of thousands emails already produced, we all win because the IRS should never be used for partisan purposes.

I hope it pans out as well...this has been going on for way too long.

 

[Jhhnn]

This comment on that article was highly enlightening. Even if his original figure for hard drive failure in a given month is debatable. The fact that the odds get compounded to a ridiculous number aren't.

You quote some random commenter's motivated reasoning as fact? Really?

That's desperation.

 

[Jhhnn]

Its a conspiracy to bring testimony about people breaking federal laws at the IRS?

Also, I think you are the one reflecting poor understanding of how hard drives work. If, in fact, one of the platters was merely scratched, that doesn't mean all the data is unrecoverable. I've dealt with several scratched platters where data was easily recovered.

Oops, I forgot, you and Bowfinger belong in a drawer together.

Nobody claimed all the data was unrecoverable except for Repubs. You can quit pretending that they did.

I suspect that your hard drive experience is in listening to them. That pretty much covers your reasoning abilities when listening to Issa & Camp, as well. Mesmerizing, isn't it, when they tell you what you want to hear, huh?

 

[cabri]

I am less interested in the email chain vs getting to the bottom of the IRS incompetence in handling the information and why?

The attitude of the IRS that they are above the law/investigations is very troubling. Rules need to apply to them that they apply to us.

 

[werepossum]

Yes, they are not only debatable, they are indisputably wrong. What was it Bill Clinton said about Republicans and arithmetic? The person who dreamt up that calculation made two huge errors. First, he assumed all the drives failed in a single month. They did not. They failed over at least a three year period, beginning with Lerner in 2011 and ending with the most recent failure earlier this year.

More importantly, however, this whiz assumed there were exactly seven drives, i.e., the odds of seven out of seven drives failing in a single month. Unfortunately for him (and the nutters so desperately craving a smoking gun), there were hundreds of drives not just seven. The odds of seven drives out of one hundred failing sometime during a three-year window are pretty good, making this angle a complete fizzle.

Assuming the drives were cheap consumer models, they would likely have an MBTF of 100,000 hours. If they were instead enterprise hard drives, that time is likely 250,000 hours. Assuming Lerner works 24 hours a day, 365 days a year promoting the Democrat Party's interests, and always from her office, that equates to 8,760 hours per year, for 50% failure times of 11.4 years and 28.5 years respectively.

Two other things. Here is a study from all the way back in 2007 which showed annual replacement rates for consumers of between 2% and 4%, with a very occasional outlier up to 13%. Note also that of the replaced drives, approximately 50% have no actual failures, and of the other 50%, by far the majority have at least some data easily recoverable by any competent tech without expensive software, much less hardware or clean room. The vast majority of us have been that guy, either professionally or personally, and we well know this. http://www.pcworld.com/article/129558/article.html

Here is an analysis of Backblaze's 2009 to 2013 results by brand showing failure rates of between <1% and 14%. http://www.pcworld.com/article/2089...eals-the-most-reliable-hard-drive-makers.html
Couple very important things here. First, these are striped RAID drives used in a file server farm, so they see a level of use not seen in even the hardest working workstations. Second, these include a lot of refurbs, which drives down reliability. Third, the high failure rates include green drives resigned to spin down when not being used, smart choices for home and office but horrid choices for a file server farm as Backblaze admits. Even so:

Over a 36 month span, Hitachi drives had a 96.9 percent survival rate, followed by WD at 94.8 percent and Seagate way below that at 73.5 percent.

Note especially that the Seagate drives which failed at high rates were both green drives (powering down after reading/writing, then immediately powering back up) AND refurbs. The other Seagate drives had failure rates only slightly higher than their competition.

tl/dr: Use real world math, not head and shoulders deep in Obama's colon math, Foamy. The only people on a tech site who are stupid enough to be fooled are already on your side.

 

[werepossum]

I would love to know what qualifications these technicians possessed in order to make such a determination.

ESP, obviously.

 

[xBiffx]

You quote some random commenter's motivated reasoning as fact? Really?

That's desperation.

You said I stated something as fact when I did not.

That's being a tool.

 

[xBiffx]

Nobody claimed all the data was unrecoverable except for Repubs. You can quit pretending that they did.

I suspect that your hard drive experience is in listening to them. That pretty much covers your reasoning abilities when listening to Issa & Camp, as well. Mesmerizing, isn't it, when they tell you what you want to hear, huh?

Guess you haven't been listening to the IRS then. They have said that nothing could be recovered from the drives so they were recycled.

Tool number two.

 

[xBiffx]

I am less interested in the email chain vs getting to the bottom of the IRS incompetence in handling the information and why?

The attitude of the IRS that they are above the law/investigations is very troubling. Rules need to apply to them that they apply to us.

Been my issue from the first post in this thread on. The IRS broke the law and severely fucked up its data handling. Whether that was intentional or not is up for debate and to be determined but people still need to be held accountable either way.

 

[werepossum]

Guess you haven't been listening to the IRS then. They have said that nothing could be recovered from the drives so they were recycled.

Tool number two.

Amusingly, the IRS says that no data could be recovered so the hard drive was destroyed to protect the confidential taxpayer data that, um, could not be recovered . . .

 

[fskimospy]

This comment on that article was highly enlightening. Even if his original figure for hard drive failure in a given month is debatable. The fact that the odds get compounded to a ridiculous number aren't.

Whoever did the math for that comment is... really bad at understanding probability.

 

[Fern]

I hope it pans out as well...this has been going on for way too long.

And that's the fault of the IRS.

From Fast & Furious to this we have a pattern of non-cooperation, foot dragging, conflicting info, changing stories and lies (or to be kindly, 'mistaken statements' under oath).

The IRS just should've produced all relevant data up front/asap.

Fern

 

[xBiffx]

Amusingly, the IRS says that no data could be recovered so the hard drive was destroyed to protect the confidential taxpayer data that, um, could not be recovered . . .

That's ok since we've got a tool posting that "scratched" means recycled in this case. So the IRS recycled the drive and then tried to recover the data and then when they weren't successful, they recycled the drive again, just to be sure that the unrecoverable data wasn't recoverable for sure this time. Seems legit.