In White House email cases, "the original preservation order doesn't go far enough"

Submitted by crew on 19 March 2008 - 9:52am. Emails Presidential Records Act Without A Trace

The MoJo Blog examined the rulings in the cases against the White House over missing emails and the steps the Bush administration is supposed to be taking to preserve its emails. CREW's Anne Weismann interprets the latest court actions to mean that the judge doesn't think the orders to preserve the emails have gone far enough:

Facciola's ruling indicates that he takes the plaintiffs' concerns seriously and understands that time is of the essence, since every day that goes by makes it increasingly likely that potentially recoverable email data will be permanently lost. If Facciola does order copies made, it will mean that "while the clock is ticking [the emails] are not going to disappear," explains Meredith Fuchs, the NSA's General Counsel.

There is already a court order that asks the administration to preserve emails, but it's now "pretty clear that the court seems concerned that in fact the original preservation order doesn't go far enough," Anne Weismann, CREW's Chief Counsel, told me this afternoon.

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To avoid permanent loss immediate action is essential

Submitted by Anonymous on 21 March 2008 - 10:35pm.

Any agencies that may have copied ('wiretapped') White House email transmissions (e.g., FBI, NSA, CIA) must be ordered to preserve these emails (and any ghost images), including their backups, hard drives, etc., as well.

Anyone (e.g., person, institution, embassy or foreign governmental entity) corresponding with the White House must be ordered (or requested) to preserve these emails (and any ghost images), including their backups, hard drives, etc., as well. This includes anyone (e.g., person, institution, embassy or foreign governmental entity) who may have been copied on an email sent from or to the White House (or parties within the White House).

These are forensic and historical necessities; audits of all kinds (e.g., accounting, financial), agreements (legal and otherwise) with other entities (domestic and foreign), etc. depend on (records of) these written communications.

And please, launch a complete investigation of White House practices to recommend new and better practices going forward (e.g., for the next Administration).

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so would they be making

Submitted by Anonymous on 20 March 2008 - 3:51pm.

so would they be making copies of the hard-drives, or would they be taking all the hard-drives themselves, 'cause I thought you needed the actual hard-drives to recover lost data; anyone know enough to explain?

also, I'm curious if the EOP is not already in the process of a re-format of all their HDDs, and how would the judges react if it was discovered that they did this before the HDDs had to be copied

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