The dog ate the IRS's homework.

[Trausti]

Heh.

1.15.6.9 (03-27-2014)
Retention and Disposition of Electronic Records

The IRS Records Officer is the liaison with NARA and customer organizations for ensuring that electronic records and the related documentation are retained for as long as needed by the IRS. These disposition and retention procedures shall include provisions for:

Scheduling all electronic records, as well as related documentation and indexes, by submitting an SF-115, Request for Records Disposition Authority to NARA or, in some instances by applying NARAs General Records Schedules. The information in electronic information systems, including those operated for the IRS by a contractor, will be scheduled as soon as possible, but no later that one year after implementation of the system.

Transferring a copy of the electronic records and related documentation and indexes to NARA at the time specified in the records control schedule for permanent records.

Note:

SF-115 is completed by the IRS Records Management staff only.

Records created within e-mail systems, which meet the criteria of a federal record, are subject to the same retention periods as the paper or hard-copy versions. Therefore, these records must be retained electronically according to the NARA-approved disposition authority or printed and associated with the appropriate recordkeeping system. Temporary e-mail records can be deleted only when they are eligible for destruction or when they have been printed and associated with the appropriate recordkeeping system. See additional information on the retention and transfer of permanent electronic records in subsection IRM 1.15.6.11.

At the direction of a management official as to what is considered a record, the E-mail/Systems Administrators will establish procedures for regular recopying, reformatting, and other necessary maintenance to ensure the retention and usability of electronic records throughout their authorized life cycle.

The responsibility for instructing users on how to copy and archive electronic mail records rests with the E-Mail/Systems Administrators at the user levels. With the proper direction from a management official, the user and/or end recipient should possess the expertise to identify and determine which records are worthy of preservation and/or archiving.

The disposition of electronic mail records that have been relocated to an appropriate recordkeeping system is governed by schedules that control the records in that system. If the records in the system are not scheduled, contact the Area Records Manager or the RIM Program Office to get them scheduled and approved by NARA.

Note:

Approved disposition authorities for electronic records created as part of tax processing systems are included in separate Records Control Schedules 8 through 37 based on their use and/or associated activity (published in Document 12990). Many other administrative systems are included in the General Records Schedules 38 through 64 (published in Document 12829). Questions concerning the scheduling of an electronic system should be directed to the IRS RIM Program Office.

http://www.irs.gov/irm/part1/irm_01-015-006.html#d0e438

 

[Horatio Parker]

Ya, if they're going to make stuff up, they really need to put more effort into it. It's tough to be a partisan hack who vehemently defends the party line when the party line is this dumb.

So, in 2009, certain IRS officials knew that certain actions of their underlings would result in a congressional investigation years down the road, and so destroyed their hard drives?

You guys have too much time on your hands...

Lois Lerner's hard drive crashed 10 days after receiving the first congressional inquiry about IRS targeting of conservative groups.

Got a cite for that?

 

[prideandfall]

Ya, if they're going to make stuff up, they really need to put more effort into it. It's tough to be a partisan hack who vehemently defends the party line when the party line is this dumb.

So, in 2009, certain IRS officials knew that certain actions of their underlings would result in a congressional investigation years down the road, and so destroyed their hard drives?

You guys have too much time on your hands...

Lois Lerner's hard drive crashed 10 days after receiving the first congressional inquiry about IRS targeting of conservative groups.

Got a cite for that?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...irs-lost-emails-from-key-witness-lois-lerner/

the crash happened in 2011, and lost emails from 2009 to 2011.
also, as i predicted, the IRS uses Microsoft Exchange - which means that the emails definitely would have been moved off the server to a .pst file sitting on the hard drive, and absolutely could have been lost during a full or even partial system crash.
in fact, when her system crashed in 2011, lerner engaged IT to try and recover the data, and they were unable to do so, which i can tell you is extremely common.

this development in the "scandal" shows no evidence of being nothing but smoke and mirrors, just like every aspect of this "scandal" has been.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

They don't claim they have a 6 month retention policy.

They claim that Lois Lerner (and independently, 6 other people's) local desktop machine crashed wiping out their e-mail.

Ignoring for the moment it's probably been a decade or two since I've had an email system had much of anything stored on a local desktop, and it's not particularly likely that a crash would completely wipe out a local hard drive or seven, if you're going to be a hack apologist you must attempt to contort your defense to follow the official excuses.

The problem is they had only 500mb on the main system. Given the attachments people throw around that doesn't go too far. It's not an official 6 month policy but it does limit how much people keep other than in local storage.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

in 20 years of working IT, i've seen hard drive's crash 10 hours before a regional manager was going to give a huge shareholder presentation on the company's plans to implement change in their Medicare processing policy.

I've had a motherboard decide to destroy any drive connected to it 4 hours before an international trip. I spent as much time as possible burning what I needed to CDs (this was before flash was big enough to do the job) and picked up a replacement as we drove past the store on the way to the airport.

- - - Updated - - -

If she is telling the truth then she is admitting utter incompetence and should be fired
And person who hired her should be fired too.
And no, I did not expect her to backup that crap herself, I expected her to make sure it was backed out by competent people. We know she can't count, now we know she can't really organize an office.

That probably requires spending that's outside her control. (Namely, in the storage capacity of the mail system.)

 

[prideandfall]

They don't claim they have a 6 month retention policy.

They claim that Lois Lerner (and independently, 6 other people's) local desktop machine crashed wiping out their e-mail.

Ignoring for the moment it's probably been a decade or two since I've had an email system had much of anything stored on a local desktop, and it's not particularly likely that a crash would completely wipe out a local hard drive or seven, if you're going to be a hack apologist you must attempt to contort your defense to follow the official excuses.

The problem is they had only 500mb on the main system. Given the attachments people throw around that doesn't go too far. It's not an official 6 month policy but it does limit how much people keep other than in local storage.

even then, a 6 month storage policy in terms of tape backups doesn't do anything for the current situation where in 2014 they are being asked to produce copies of emails from 2009-2011.
i've worked for lockheed martin, northrop grumman, cigna, agilent technologies, IBM, and toyota - not a single one of them kept server backups of the email system for that length of time.

 

[Horatio Parker]

Ya, if they're going to make stuff up, they really need to put more effort into it. It's tough to be a partisan hack who vehemently defends the party line when the party line is this dumb.

So, in 2009, certain IRS officials knew that certain actions of their underlings would result in a congressional investigation years down the road, and so destroyed their hard drives?

You guys have too much time on your hands...

Lois Lerner's hard drive crashed 10 days after receiving the first congressional inquiry about IRS targeting of conservative groups.

Got a cite for that?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...irs-lost-emails-from-key-witness-lois-lerner/

the crash happened in 2011, and lost emails from 2009 to 2011.
also, as i predicted, the IRS uses Microsoft Exchange - which means that the emails definitely would have been moved off the server to a .pst file sitting on the hard drive, and absolutely could have been lost during a full or even partial system crash.
in fact, when her system crashed in 2011, lerner engaged IT to try and recover the data, and they were unable to do so, which i can tell you is extremely common.

this development in the "scandal" shows no evidence of being nothing but smoke and mirrors, just like every aspect of this "scandal" has been.

That's the same article I linked to.

Dismal is implying that Lerner knew that Congress was interested in her emails before the crash. I've not seen any precise date for Lerners crash, only that it was in 2011.

According to Forbe's timeline, the IRS commissioner didn't testify until March 2012. So what congressional investigation was running before Lerner's crash and where is something about it in the lame stream media?

 

[prideandfall]

That's the same article I linked to.

ya, sorry, that was the point - that was a cite that directly contradicted dismal's claims.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

They don't claim they have a 6 month retention policy.

They claim that Lois Lerner (and independently, 6 other people's) local desktop machine crashed wiping out their e-mail.

Ignoring for the moment it's probably been a decade or two since I've had an email system had much of anything stored on a local desktop, and it's not particularly likely that a crash would completely wipe out a local hard drive or seven, if you're going to be a hack apologist you must attempt to contort your defense to follow the official excuses.

The problem is they had only 500mb on the main system. Given the attachments people throw around that doesn't go too far. It's not an official 6 month policy but it does limit how much people keep other than in local storage.

even then, a 6 month storage policy in terms of tape backups doesn't do anything for the current situation where in 2014 they are being asked to produce copies of emails from 2009-2011.
i've worked for lockheed martin, northrop grumman, cigna, agilent technologies, IBM, and toyota - not a single one of them kept server backups of the email system for that length of time.

Exactly. If the server space was inadequate (and since it's government the standards were probably old and thus too small) the mail would be lost in a crash.

 

[Enigma]

I don't suppose anyone has asked the NSA if they happen to have a backup of the emails?

 

[barbos]

And no, I did not expect her to backup that crap herself, I expected her to make sure it was backed out by competent people. We know she can't count, now we know she can't really organize an office.

if that were any sort of actual requirement anywhere that uses email, there would be maybe 500 employed individuals in the US.

My point is, she is incompetent to run an office if she can't hire a reasonably competent IT person.

 

[barbos]

If she is telling the truth then she is admitting utter incompetence and should be fired
And person who hired her should be fired too.
And no, I did not expect her to backup that crap herself, I expected her to make sure it was backed out by competent people. We know she can't count, now we know she can't really organize an office.

That probably requires spending that's outside her control. (Namely, in the storage capacity of the mail system.)

Give me a fucking break.
Even If what people say about outlook is true (which I doubt) any halfcompetent IT person would tell her "We need to backup all office computers weekly" that would include all email stored locally.
Now about 6 months. I don't believe it's true at all, otherwise FOIA would have been pointless.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

If she is telling the truth then she is admitting utter incompetence and should be fired
And person who hired her should be fired too.
And no, I did not expect her to backup that crap herself, I expected her to make sure it was backed out by competent people. We know she can't count, now we know she can't really organize an office.

That probably requires spending that's outside her control. (Namely, in the storage capacity of the mail system.)

Give me a fucking break.
Even If what people say about outlook is true (which I doubt) any halfcompetent IT person would tell her "We need to backup all office computers weekly" that would include all email stored locally.
Now about 6 months. I don't believe it's true at all, otherwise FOIA would have been pointless.

The usual policy is that office computers aren't supposed to contain things that matter. And adding storage to the mail server would be a lot cheaper than backing up the office machines.

Anyway, in either case the budget needs to be available.

 

[prideandfall]

And no, I did not expect her to backup that crap herself, I expected her to make sure it was backed out by competent people. We know she can't count, now we know she can't really organize an office.

if that were any sort of actual requirement anywhere that uses email, there would be maybe 500 employed individuals in the US.

My point is, she is incompetent to run an office if she can't hire a reasonably competent IT person.

if that's your point it's an odd one because it's not remotely supported or even contextualized by the facts of this situation or by anything resembling reality.

 

[maxparrish]

And no, I did not expect her to backup that crap herself, I expected her to make sure it was backed out by competent people. We know she can't count, now we know she can't really organize an office.

if that were any sort of actual requirement anywhere that uses email, there would be maybe 500 employed individuals in the US.

My point is, she is incompetent to run an office if she can't hire a reasonably competent IT person.

if that's your point it's an odd one because it's not remotely supported or even contextualized by the facts of this situation or by anything resembling reality.

Quite aside from the issue of Ms. Lerner's or others competence, I am mildly surprised that a few in this thread are so generous with excuses, sanitizing speculations, and apologisms for the IRS and perhaps the administrations malfeasance. When appealing to reality and context, one might start with the self-evident:

1) How do you know when there is a coverup? When the subject of investigation covers up! When they lie, mislead, delay and refuse to cooperate with an investigation.

A) Lie about participants, actions, and circumstances. IRS leadership and Washington officials, including Ms. Lerner in a contrived Q and A, tried to claim that the targeting was merely a problem with a few workers in a field office, trying to get focus off of Washington. They covered up.

B) Refuse to testify before Congress without immunity - Ms. Lerner is covering up.

C) Delay by falsely claiming that would take "years" to produce requested emails and correspondence, and refuse to provide all of those records.

D) After dragging and delaying full compliance, claim they will provide ALL emails of seven officials under investigation, and then many months later claim "they are lost", and all "unrecoverable", in the seven individual computer crashes for the time period in question.

E) Having no explanation why after delaying providing the information for a year, the IRS "just now" discovered they lost them long ago.

F) Intentionally failing to comply with Federal and SOP procedures for printed and archived record storage.


A tutorial should not be necessary:

Rosemary Wood's missing 18 1/2 minutes of taped conversation was a coverup.
Ollie North's refusal to testify without full immunity was a coverup.

And yes folks, two years of missing emails, lies about participants and actions, and refusal to cooperate by important players and the IRS with Congress is also a coverup. You do know that a coverup is when people actually 'cover up'? Right?

 

[dismal]

It's worth noting there is a spate of hard drive crashes destroying e-mails of people relevant to this case. One of the seven crash victims appears to have been to the White House 30+ times during the relevant period, and is on record discussing the prosecution of conservative groups with Lois Lerner.

Flax was one of seven IRS employees including ex-official Lois Lerner whose emails to and from White House officials and other Obama administration agencies were purportedly deleted and could not be handed over to congressional investigators.

Flax held personal meetings with a top assistant to President Obama and also colluded with Lerner to prosecute conservative activists.

Flax made 31 visits to the White House between July 12, 2010 and May 8, 2013, according to White House visitor logs. Flax’s visits started in the early days of the IRS targeting program and ended just two days before the IRS scandal broke on May 10, 2013.

On May 8, 2013, the day that Flax made her last recorded White House visit, Lerner sent Flax an email asking for advice about a plan to coordinate with the Department of Justice to criminally prosecute conservative activists.“I think we should do it,” Flax replied on May 9. “also need to include CI [Criminal Investigation Division], which we can help coordinate. Also, we need to reach out to FEC [Federal Election Commision]. Does it make sense to consider including them in this or keep it separate?”

http://dailycaller.com/2014/06/19/irs-lost-emails-from-official-that-met-with-top-obama-assistant/

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

And yes folks, two years of missing emails, lies about participants and actions, and refusal to cooperate by important players and the IRS with Congress is also a coverup. You do know that a coverup is when people actually 'cover up'? Right?

...W not testifying in front of the 9/11 Commission alone... a cover up?

 

[ksen]

You do know that a coverup is when people actually 'cover up'? Right?

Yes, I remember the whole CIA rendition/torture thing too.

 

[prideandfall]

Quite aside from the issue of Ms. Lerner's or others competence, I am mildly surprised that a few in this thread are so generous with excuses, sanitizing speculations, and apologisms for the IRS and perhaps the administrations malfeasance.

even assuming there was malfeasance, which there has been zero evidence presented to support that being so, who has been excusing it?

When appealing to reality and context, one might start with the self-evident:

oh this should be good...

D) After dragging and delaying full compliance, claim they will provide ALL emails of seven officials under investigation, and then many months later claim "they are lost", and all "unrecoverable", in the seven individual computer crashes for the time period in question.

"you - give us the emails for these people during this period"
"sure thing, will do"
...
"uh, okay, after going to get them it turns out several of them aren't there, i can't give you what doesn't exist, sorry"
"MALFEASANCE LYING BETRAYER!"

do i need to even explain how stupid this sequences of events is?

as for you replying to what i said with that list... i honestly have no clue what in the shit you're on about, because nothing in your response has anything to do with what i have been talking about during my entire participation of this thread and what i was talking about in the post that you quoted - which is a discussion on the purely IT related aspects of whether or not it's possible to honestly lose that kind of data, and if possible how common.

 

[dismal]

even assuming there was malfeasance, which there has been zero evidence presented to support that being so, who has been excusing it?

It has already been established and acknowledged there was malfeasance.

The only question is the extent of it and who directed it.

The attempt to fob it off on low level people in Cincinnatti has been exposed as a blatant lie.