Lost Whitehouse Emails, Incompetence or Purposeful Obfuscation?
Domino Power Magazine has a great analysis of the information, that was presented in the recent meeting of the House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform, about how the infamous White House Emails got Lost. Reading the whole article will most likely lead you to the same conclusion I did. This was PURPOSEFUL OBFUSCATION.
Some of the Quote Highlights of the article, though I urge you to read the whole thing:
“McDevitt, it turns out, is one of us. He was the IT guy in the White House Office of the Chief Information Officer who was responsible for setting up the new archiving system — and he was pissed. Apparently, all of his best practices recommendations were ignored.”
and
“So, here’s the thing. Let me put on my OutlookPower editor’s hat for a moment. Probably the number one question we get from OutlookPower readers is how to recover corrupted PST files. PST is the file format Outlook uses to store its email in, and is quite explicitly not an enterprise-level archiving technology. There’s also a limit to the PST file format, in that all PST files created by Outlook prior to Outlook 2003 had a 2 gigabyte limit. In fact, Microsoft recommends never, ever letting your PST file get above 1.6 gigs, because of the likelihood of corruption and the difficulty in restoration.
“If, in fact, the bulk of the White House email records are now stored in bundles of rotting PST files, all at or above their maximum safe load-level, well, that ain’t good in a very big way.
“For the record, the 2 gigabyte limit (and the 1.6 gig practical limit) isn’t a secret. Most IT managers running Outlook are very aware of this, and we, here at OutlookPower have written about it numerous times. So to use PST files as a Presidential Records Act archiving methodology is an undeniable worst-practice.”
and
“Let me be clear here. Lotus Notes is anything but dead. Lotus Notes is an active, vibrant messaging technology with many strengths far in excess of Outlook and Exchange. To characterize Lotus Notes as either wooden wagon wheel technology or Betamax tapes is so far off from the technical and commercial reality as to be ludicrous.
“And here’s where it gets dangerous. If you think Lotus Notes is an obsolete technology, then migrating off of it, even in a build-up to war, might make sense. But when you realize that Notes is anything but obsolete, then you must ask deeper questions, like why did a migration occur at such a critical time, or did the White House IT staff know so little about messaging technology to make such a mischaracterization?”
This Administration is currently BULLYING Congress into giving them everything they want– like telecom immunity. One has to wonder whose phones they were tapping, and I’ll go further and speculate that every phone belonging to a member of Congress is on that damn list, and you can bet which congress-critters have things to hide, based on their voting record on the issues important to the People. Congress sure hasn’t gotten the answers to their questions about the Whitehouse emails . . . or any of the Republican National Committee emails we need to see to know for sure what went on, even though we all have a pretty good idea.
