IRS says hard drive that lost emails destroyed
Source: AP-Excite
By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER
WASHINGTON (AP) The IRS said Friday that Lois Lerner's computer hard drive was destroyed three years ago, ending any chance of retrieving her lost emails.
In court papers, the IRS said the hard drive was destroyed after two sets of trained technicians tried to retrieve the data. The tax agency said it was standard procedure to destroy old data storage equipment that may have contained confidential taxpayer information.
The IRS says Lerner's computer crashed in 2011, destroying an untold number of emails. At the time, Lerner headed the division that handles applications for tax-exempt status.
Lerner is a central figure in congressional investigations into the handling of applications by tea party and other conservative groups.
FULL story at link.
Read more: http://apnews.excite.com/article/20140718/us-irs-investigation-51e2305a17.html
BlueCollar
(3,859 posts)Hey Issa...
F**K you...
AngryAmish
(25,704 posts)Demeter
(85,373 posts)I am surprised, however, that no one has approached the NSA. Or maybe they have.
alp227
(31,959 posts)Gen Discussion thread: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025259992
One comment after the Cincinnati.com story suggested that the Cincinnati employees could have copies of Lois Lerner's "lost emails".
bluestateguy
(44,173 posts)Meanwhile we have a refugee crisis on the border, 300 people killed in a likely terrorist act over Ukraine, and a war in Israel/Palestine.
So you know what?
I DON'T CARE.
Niceguy1
(2,467 posts)That are ours is the border....
gvstn
(2,805 posts)That is what you would do with a damaged HDD. The fact that any IT expert looked at it would point to the fact that there was no process in place to backup individual computers in the department. If there had been some type of backup then the backup could have been restored to a new HDD. (All that makes sense in that there are millions of Federal employees and it would be unfeasible to backup everyone's HDD.) So she loses some of her recent work-product.
I did think that emails would be recorded somewhere else. Since the Federal government has the eventual goal of going paperless, I would think they have a vigorous way of storing electronic correspondence. Three years it not that long to save emails, especially if they are relating to various particular cases being handled by the office. If I had had dealings with the IRS, say 4 years ago) and corresponded with an agent electronically then I would expect them to have a copy of that correspondence and not just on that agent's computer.
I don't know if this loss is due to incompetence/lack of planning or some sort of stalling thing but it just doesn't sound correct to me.
It does seem odd there wasn't any kind of backup, even on a tape-based media system. But, gov't agencies have often been slow to adapt to newer technologies, so it's entirely feasible. Still, if the emails existed, they'd prove the buttheads wrong yet again.
lastlib
(22,978 posts)With backups.
mwrguy
(3,245 posts)Give them something to cry about.
Grassy Knoll
(10,118 posts)Wanna play a game ?
El Shaman
(583 posts)boy. He's on his new project: 'illegal (or otherwise) immigrant kids investigation' of PBO.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/19/darrell-issa-contempt_n_5600789.html
rickford66
(5,497 posts)The sender and receiver each have a copy. So, unless all her interesting emails were sent to herself alone, why can't they find the others?
Karl Rove.
creeksneakers2
(7,468 posts)The IRS was able to recover 24,000 E-mails from their recipients. They've all been turned over to Issa.
Response to Omaha Steve (Original post)
cerveza_gratis This message was self-deleted by its author.
El Shaman
(583 posts)too much 'cerveza gratis' during the tax perpetration time. I hate it when I do that.
Response to El Shaman (Reply #15)
cerveza_gratis This message was self-deleted by its author.
The Magistrate
(95,237 posts)"Fuck Issa!"
Iliyah
(25,111 posts)so yes find the e-mails and pour salt on the make believe cuts that the tea party aka conservatives groups claim which is bogus bullshit.
Response to Omaha Steve (Original post)
Veilex This message was self-deleted by its author.
BadGimp
(4,009 posts)Sunlei
(22,651 posts)probably a huge number of republican generated, spam, whining emails that could very easily be re-produced by the sender if they were anything important.
blackspade
(10,056 posts)"Lerner is a central figure in congressional investigations into the handling of applications by tea party and other conservative groups."
What about the liberal groups targeted and denied? What a bunch of crap.
bemildred
(90,061 posts)mitty14u2
(1,015 posts)What Sen. Sanders explained in the video above is what the Republican Party and the Koch brothers dont want the American people to understand. The IRS scandal isnt about the targeting of conservative groups. The scandal is a Republican attempt to scare the IRS off of looking into their dark money groups and the billionaires who fund them. Republicans are trying to protect their money machine.
The GOP is extremely dependent on large donors for their funding. They dont have the small donor base that fuels the Democratic Party. This is why Republicans are pushing for more unlimited contributions in politics. More unlimited contributions mean more direct spending by billionaires to buy their candidates, and when a billionaire owns a member of Congress, that member no longer works for the American people.
The Republican majority in the House is an example of a billionaire owned legislative body. House Republicans arent interested in passing legislation to extend unemployment benefits, help veterans, and create jobs. Their top priority is to take away programs that help the non-wealthy (Obamacare, Medicare, food stamps, school lunches, etc.) and replace them with tax breaks for the wealthy and deregulation.
Speaker John Boehner loves to refer to the House as the Peoples House, but really it is a billionaires lounge. The Koch brothers and the other billionaires are trying to purchase our representative democracy. The last thing they want is for people to catch on to their newfound purchasing power.
http://www.politicususa.com/2014/07/15/bernie-sanders-sends-shudders-koch-spines-explaining-republicans-attack-irs.html
GOP Cut Funding to IRS by $1.1 Billion to Protect Rich from being Audited!
Stryder
(450 posts)It's called "Playing the refs." And looky there, it worked.
http://www.asaecenter.org/Resources/ANowDetail.cfm?ItemNumber=441476