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RNC email purge
If you haven't heard, the RNC is now claiming that they accidentally erased an unknown number of the emails sent via their accounts and servers by White House staff - including Karl Rove. Some of those emails may be related to the firing of US Attorneys.
There's a point about this issue that confuses me. No news story that I've seen so far has mentioned it, which I suppose isn't surprising. I'll admit that my technical knowledge is not deep in this area, so if I'm wrong about this, please let me know:
Email is not a secure medium. It passes through many servers on the way to its intended recipient. Even if the RNC deleted the emails, transient copies of those emails should exist on many intermediate servers. And of course mere deletion does NOT actually delete the data from the servers.
Why hasn't anyone made any attempt to track down copies of those RNC emails from intermediate servers? I hope Henry Waxman has impounded the RNC servers and is having them professionally checked for the missing emails!
Another interesting point is that the RNC's supposedly best and brightest - people who are self-proclaimed as the natural ruling class - don't seem to have realized that they were conducting "secret" business in the most insecure format possible. Apparently they didn't even encrypt their mail!
Given the number of news stories about the insecurity of email, I have to wonder what these people were thinking. Was it ignorance? Technophobia? Arrogance? I'd love to see an explanation.
There's a point about this issue that confuses me. No news story that I've seen so far has mentioned it, which I suppose isn't surprising. I'll admit that my technical knowledge is not deep in this area, so if I'm wrong about this, please let me know:
Email is not a secure medium. It passes through many servers on the way to its intended recipient. Even if the RNC deleted the emails, transient copies of those emails should exist on many intermediate servers. And of course mere deletion does NOT actually delete the data from the servers.
Why hasn't anyone made any attempt to track down copies of those RNC emails from intermediate servers? I hope Henry Waxman has impounded the RNC servers and is having them professionally checked for the missing emails!
Another interesting point is that the RNC's supposedly best and brightest - people who are self-proclaimed as the natural ruling class - don't seem to have realized that they were conducting "secret" business in the most insecure format possible. Apparently they didn't even encrypt their mail!
Given the number of news stories about the insecurity of email, I have to wonder what these people were thinking. Was it ignorance? Technophobia? Arrogance? I'd love to see an explanation.