Lois Lerner e-mails lost due to computer/hard drive crash / NSA

[chrisberb]

So maybe some of you have heard about this:
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/0...il-107850.html

A large swath of emails to and from embattled former IRS employee Lois Lerner during the first year of the targeting controversy was lost in a computer hard drive crash, the agency told congressional investigators.
“The IRS has determined that Ms. Lerner’s computer crashed in mid-2011,” reads a background document attached to an IRS letter to Congress’s investigative panels released on Friday...
Currently, IRS employees have the capacity to store about 6,000 emails in their active Outlook email boxes, which are saved on the IRS centralized network. But the letter and background document sent to the Hill Friday said they could only store about 1,800 emails in their active folders prior to July 2011...
When their inboxes were full, IRS employees had to make room by either deleting emails or archiving them on their personal computers. Archived data were not stored by the IRS but by the individual.
Such archived emails on Lerner’s computer were what were lost when her computer crashed.
“Any of Ms. Lerner’s email that was only stored on that computer’s hard drive would have been lost when the hard drive crashed and could not be recovered,” the letter reads.

Ok lot of text, pretty much TLDR: emails from 2009-2011 were backed up onto the computer, and (documented) hard drive/computer crash in 2011 lost all files.
What i'm curious about is this,
http://www.yourhoustonnews.com/bay_a...c9452a976.html

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congressman Steve Stockman Friday asked the National Security Agency to turn over all its metadata on the email accounts of former Internal Revenue Service Exempt Organizations division director Lois Lerner for the period between January 2009 and April 2011.

Ok, now to my point: I'm not TOO knowledgeable about the NSA's data collection efforts, but isn't the NSA meta-data to be used for national security use only? Can the NSA actually turn over that type of data for these type of purposes?

*The point of this thread isn't to re-hash whether the IRS situation is a scandal or not, just curious about whether they can / you guys think the NSA should be able to supply the data for non-national security situations.

[GFree]

That's awfully convenient.

[Tastyfish]

I don't think any random congress person should just get what they want out of the NSA cause they ask for it. lol

[themightysven]

Well, Steve Stockman is about to have a formal investigation started due to pretty heinous campaign finance violations, so I'm sure he'd like to get people talking about him in a different context.

[taliey]

The 'scandal' resumes.

[The Penguin]

Barrack Obama /casts Vanish.

[twelvethirty]

Bush did it

[TrumpIsPresident]

People should be more concerned when government so blatantly abuses its power like this, if for no other reason than because you or "your side" could be the next target.

When Republicans are back in power should they be able to target groups with keywords like "liberal "leftist" "progression" "equality" "tolerant" "gun control" "LGBT" etc ...call it a phony scandal when they get busted ...then delete the evidence when investigated and walk away clean?

I mean that would be fair right?

And are we seriously expected to believe the IRS doesn't back up it damn files? What a load of crap.

[corebit]

Take the hard drive to computer forensics. They should be able to recover the data intact, unless the drive suffered major physical damage which would raise even more suspicion.

Or better yet, get those e-mails from the NSA. Since they are experts at recording and backup up everything from everyone.

[Wells]

Yeah guys I bet Obama went back in time and made her computer crash 3 years ago.

[Saucexorzski]

Yeah guys I bet Obama went back in time and made her computer crash 3 years ago.

Naw its just what they claim happened now. Obama doesn't need to break the laws of time to cover up these tracks.

[Soeroah]

Take the hard drive to computer forensics. They should be able to recover the data intact, unless the drive suffered major physical damage which would raise even more suspicion.

Or better yet, get those e-mails from the NSA. Since they are experts at recording and backup up everything from everyone.

I was gonna say...I'm not a computer expert by any means, but isn't it actually quite difficult to truly erase data from a hard drive without specifically attempting to do so?

[Mosotti]

They said the HDD was fucked up. But even so, there are companies that will most likely get the data back. Of course the price would be astronomical for some random dude that lost his holiday pictures, but not in the case of "big investigations". There are most likely government facilities that do that too...

[oxymoronic]

I don't think any random congress person should just get what they want out of the NSA cause they ask for it. lol

agreed - we have to have divisions within the government that just dont answer to individuals or groups of politicians.. somebody has to do the dirty work others are not willing too.

- - - Updated - - -

Yeah guys I bet Obama went back in time and made her computer crash 3 years ago.

you must have zero knowledge about computers if you believe this story.

[Spectral]

I was skeptical, then I realized that we have a poster here that is not held in high esteem that works on government databases. If that's the competence level in IT, almost anything could be lost.

[Orlong]

I can see how this thread will play out already. The conservatives will say that the crash was fabricated to cover up the fact that the emails were the smoking gun and as such were intentionally deleted so they couldnt be used in a hearing, and even though data can always be recovered, given the right knowledge and equipment, unless the hard drive is physically smashed, but for some reason they will claim its impossible or not worth the time because there was nothing incriminating in those emails. (what I think). Then the liberals will accept the story for face value, accusing the conservatives of a witch hunt, never questioning the administration because they inherently believe everything this president tells them, while at the same time if this was Bush still in office they would believe the same thing conservatives believe now.

- - - Updated - - -

I was skeptical, then I realized that we have a poster here that is not held in high esteem that works on government databases. If that's the competence level in IT, almost anything could be lost.

Personality and personal beliefs have nothing to do with technical competency

[Stormdash]

I think the IRS activities are a violation of 18 USC 241 --

If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same...

The IRS made an intentional effort to not approve or disapprove status, but to harass and delay and leave citizens in legal uncertainty of their tax status one way or another, for the apparent purpose of keeping them conducting activities up to and including the exercise of their First Amendment rights. The issue of entitlement to tax exempt status is irrelevant, because the criminal conduct was to deny any sure answer at all to keep them from doing anything at all. Abuse of power by government to discourage citizens from exercising their rights is both the letter and spirit of the statute. It is probably the worst conduct by a federal agency I can think of in a couple generations at least.

[Templar 331]

Ok, now to my point: I'm not TOO knowledgeable about the NSA's data collection efforts, but isn't the NSA meta-data to be used for national security use only? Can the NSA actually turn over that type of data for these type of purposes?

I would think if there was a Congressional hearing or investigation they could get the data from the NSA. But some random Congressman? I don't see it happening. He's just stirring up crap.

[Apexis]

I guess the government never heard of backing up their data before, no wonder they screw the pooch on the ACA website. The NSA has all this data on everyone, yet the IRS does not have a backup of someones email account. I can't remember how many times over the years my computer at worked crapped out and they were able to store absolutely everything I lost, except for personal stuff that I backup on my own. This just more crap, it is amazing how many people will buy this story because they have no clue about computers, so they believe stories like this and never question them. First one I asked the TV this morning was, Where is the backup? Sadly it did not talk back, was really hoping for a response to, what a shame

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

I was gonna say...I'm not a computer expert by any means, but isn't it actually quite difficult to truly erase data from a hard drive without specifically attempting to do so?

Nah, 3 passes is enough, takes about half a day depending on the size of the drive. Write it full of zeros, then full of ones, then random ones and zeros and you can't retrieve anything worth looking at.

So long as you don't do that, and there is no actual physical trauma suffered by the disc itself, you can usually retrieve data from it. If the drive was spinning when it hit something, you probably can't retrieve anything.

A simple "computer crash" (i.e. critical software failure) won't make an HDD unreadable (it would cause any data held in the cache to be lost though, and if the drive were in the middle of writing something then that bit of data may be corrupted beyond repair).