RNC email purge

[bobquasit]

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.

Comments

[bobquasit.livejournal.com]

A Crooks & Liars comment that I made:

I'm sorry, but I don't believe that the RNC is competent or tech-savvy enough to have completely removed all copies of those emails.

First of all, I'll bet there are backups - it's a virtual certainty.

Second, unless they either physically smashed the hard drives of every server those emails passed through - and there could be hundreds of them - copies of those emails still exist out there.

Third, the Blackberries and PCs that the emails were composed on could have the data forensically recovered, probably without much difficulty.

That info is out there. The question is, will the Democrats move strongly and quickly to recover it before the RNC manages to track down all or most of it (which I doubt is possible) and destroys it?

From what Senator Leahy and Representative Waxman have said today, I'm actually getting my hopes up!

[bobquasit.livejournal.com]

Good thread on Crooks and Liars about this now.

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/04/12/deleting-wh-emails/trackback/

[bobquasit.livejournal.com]

http://www.haloscan.com/comments/crooks/100116220/?a=13527#1642470

e-mails

[(Anonymous)]

I'll vote for a form of arrogance which usually leads to sloppiness. I'm prayin' that some key individual in the current administration, at whateve level, has a sever crisis of conscience and decides to cooperate on the technology side. OK...I'll settle for a key individual experiencing an ultra-severe case of fear-induced ulcerative colitis. As long as the result is the same.
Hang 'em out to dry, Senator Leahy. The majority of the nation is behind you on this one.

[klyfix.livejournal.com]

I would say that arrogance is the big problem, combined with willful stupidity. The White House and the GOP have had several years when they could do as they please, and probably figure that they can keep doing it. While I'm more concerned that these people be removed from positions where they can do damage than with vengeance or revenge, I'd like to see them brought to justice but at this point I'm not sure anybody but a few foot soldiers will go to trial, and they might get pardons.

One wonders what's with pardons anyway? Obviously this has a long history; recall the bit in the New Testament where Pilate has the crowd choose between Jesus and Barabbas. But why really should the President be able to pardon anybody he pleases with no restrictions or checks on it? Seems like a royal prerogative extended to the President to me.

[dancing-kiralee.livejournal.com]

That's the one thing that baffles me about this whole thing... if they were worried enough about being found out to use an illegitimate server, why on earth would they use such an insecure medium?

Kiralee