Okay, for those of us who are not computer savvy, explain the gwb43 stuff in extreme

[Skidmore]

lay terms. I gather that Rove's operations were hosted by a server not located at the WH. I'd just like to understand what some of the more technical aspects of this research over the past couple of days has been accomplished. I now know what WhoIs? is used for but how do you investigate beyond that information you find there?

[blogslut]

1. For me

I used a pay service that lists all the domain names that reside on a server. That's how I got this:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=465980&mesg_id=465980

[Skidmore]

3. Thanks. I missed that thread.

It is useful to know that there is a service to use for such an investigation. I was totally mystified as to how all that information was obtained so quickly.

[blogslut]

4. someone else

used this:

http://www.robtex.com/

[MissWaverly]

2. Okay, I am not technical either BUT

I was listening to the News and they said that Rove had been using a blackberry that had
been issued to him by the RNC so it is apparently going through their server instead of
the official White House computer server, so I think it would be like taking your laptop
to work and getting all your mail not through your company's server but through your
own ISP, how that is covered through Executive Privilege is beyond me.

[rumpel]

5. excellent point on the executive privilege

thanks...

:)

[MissWaverly]

7. and what about classified information and national security?

if they have done government work using the RNC servers how secure it that, I mean aren't they the ones who constantly talk about national security and all that.

[rumpel]

14. in order to to circumvent presidential archiving and

covering their tracks of evidence - they seem like they have undermined their own privilege -

shot themselves in their feet - again


priceless :)

[MissWaverly]

16. yes, it looks that way to me

although John Dean, who is the Dean of White House legal issues, says that executive privilege only covers conversations with the president, I could see them trying
to milk it, but this way they do not have the argument. And thanks to the security
checks in place the DOJ have captured all these e-mails, I wonder if it would have
done so if they had used their in-house system.

[WinkyDink]

29. Didn't expect to get caught.

[paparush]

6. Lets say Verizon is your ISP. Verizon would handle all your email.

BUT, you could go get an account with another ISP, and do all of your 'secret' email through them and Verizon would never be the wiser.

So, in this analogy, the Whitehouse mail server is Verizon. That's the account they are SUPPOSED to use, so that we the people, can have the records.

Bush/Rove, et al, have been using another ISP's mail server, if you will, and routing some of their mail traffic through THAT server, well away from the peering eyes of Congress and the people.

This is a big NO NO.

Now, the company that owns the domain gwb43.com is a company called Smartech. They are based in Chattanooga, TN. They are a network services company. They do all kinds of net related stuff. Stuff like, hosting the website for the 2004 RNC convention, they hosted a site showing 2004 election returns for Ohio, little things like that. In other words, they have STRONG republican ties.

This arrangement reeks of cronyism. Smartech provides a means for the Bush admin to circumvent proper email channels.

[MissWaverly]

9. yes, and what about security checks

doesn't this circumvent security checks that the govt. has in place to protect their info.

[paparush]

11. Absolutely! The smartech employees have access to ALL of the traffic

that flows through their pipes.

[MissWaverly]

13. my neice was a Red Cross volunteer for Katrina

she had to have a background check before she went down there apparently handing out water
bottles to folks is risky business. I wonder what background checks the Smartech people
went through.

:-)

[paparush]

19. I'm guessing...ZILCH!

I'd love to see some $$ figures on what Smartech was paid for these hosting contracts.

[MissWaverly]

20. yes, and didn't they also handle election nite in Ohio

I would like to see the price tag for that item.

[paparush]

23. yes..they sure did. Something is rotten..rotten to the core.

Look at all the other domains they host:

2004nycgop.com
2004nycgop.net
2004nycgop.org
Africanamericansforbush.com
Africanamericansforbush.org
Agendaforamerica.com
Agendaforamerica.net
Agendaforamerica.org
Arabamericansforbush.com
Arabamericansforbush.org
Asianamericansforbush.com
Asianamericansforbush.org
Barackosama2008.org
Bushenergy.com
Bushenergy.net
Bushenergy.org
Bushfarmandranchteam.com
Bushfarmandranchteam.org
Bushfarmteam.com
Bushfarmteam.org
Bushforpresident.com
Catholicsforbush.com
Debatefacts.com
Debatefacts.net
Debatefacts.org
Demfacts.com
Demfacts.net
Demfacts.org
Democratsforbush.com
Democratsforbush.info
Democratsforbush.net
Democratsforbush.org
Democratsforbush.us
Educatorsforbush.com
Educatorsforbush.org
Farmersandranchersforbush.com
Farmersandranchersforbush.org
Flippercam.com
Flippercam.net
Flippercam.org
Georgebush.com
Gop.com
Gop.net
Gop.org
Gopconvention.com
Gopemail.com
Gopnet.com
Gopnet.net
Gopnet.org
Gopteamleader.com
Gopteamleader.net
Hitechforbush.com
Hitechforbush.org
Iamaliberal.net
Imaliberal.com
Imaliberal.net
Imaliberal.org
Imforlowertaxes.com
Investorsforbush.com
Investorsforbush.org
Johnkerryliberalrecord.com
Johnkerryliberalrecord.net
Johnkerryliberalrecord.org
Johnkerryoniraq.com
Johnkerrysliberalrecord.com
Johnkerrysliberalrecord.net
Johnkerrysliberalrecord.org
Kerryliberalrecord.com
Kerryliberalrecord.net
Kerryliberalrecord.org
Kerrysliberalrecord.com
Kerrysliberalrecord.net
Kerrysliberalrecord.org
KerryWrongForAsianAmericans.com
KerryWrongForAsianAmericans.net
KerryWrongForAsianAmericans.org
KerryWrongForAsians.com
KerryWrongForAsians.net
KerryWrongForAsians.org
KerryWrongForCatholics.com
KerryWrongForCatholics.net
KerryWrongForCatholics.org
KerryWrongForEvangelicals.com
KerryWrongForEvangelicals.net
KerryWrongForEvangelicals.org
KerryWrongForLatinos.com
KerryWrongForLatinos.net
KerryWrongForLatinos.org
KerryWrongForMormons.com
KerryWrongForMormons.net
KerryWrongForMormons.org
Laborforbush.com
Laborforbush.org
Lawenforcementforbush.com
Lawenforcementforbush.org
Militaryfamiliesforbush.com
Militaryfamiliesforbush.org
Militaryforbush.com
Militaryforbush.org
Mytaxrefund.org
Mytaxrelief.org
Nativeamericansforbush.com
Nativeamericansforbush.org
Prolifeforbush.com
Prolifeforbush.org
Proudrepublican.com
Republicanconvention.org
Republicanvictoryteam.com
Republicanvictoryteam.net
Republicanvictoryteam.org
Republicrooks.com
Rnc.org
Rnccab.com
Rncchairman.com
Rncchairman.net
Rncchairman.org
Rncconvention.com
Rncconvention.net
Rncconvention.org
Rnceagles.com
Rncfc.com
Rncfc.net
Rncfc.org
Rnchq.org
Rncmajorityfund.com
Rncpresidentialvictoryteam.com
Rncpresidentsclub.com
Rncpvt.com
Rncpvt.org
Rncregent.com
Rncregents.com
Rncsustainingmembers.com
Rncteam100.com
Seniorsforbushcheney.org
Smallbusinessownersforbush.com
Smallbusinessownersforbush.org
Sportsmenforbush.org
Studentsforbush.com
Teachersforbush.com
Teachersforbush.org
XFX-3D.com
Your-congress.com
Your-congress.net
Your-congress.org
Youthforbush.com
Youthforbush.org

[MissWaverly]

24. I am offended at their hate sites

the liberal Kerry sites, the sites attacking Osama, this is dirty and I am tired of it.

[HCE SuiGeneris]

32. "attacking Osama" ?

might need a quick edit there...

[MissWaverly]

36. too late, now they have me confusing the two

I was off watching All the Presidents Men, didn't know that the term rat f***king, meant
infiltrating the democrats.

:-)

[jmowreader]

43. The Republicans would do that shit too

They'd have a field day with the fact that OSama and OBama are "only one letter apart."

Oh, and they're both liberals and they both like to hang around with guys that have "Hussein" in their names.

[MissWaverly]

49. that's what confused me

I think the domain list had Barackosama2008.org up there and I typed it that way, they are deliberately matching the two together.

[Ezlivin]

74. I don't see "BillionairesForBush.com"

:)

Now that would be a great domain to own!

(And it is already owned and being used by some decidedly un-Bush people. Yeah!)

[napi21]

77. Ssomething in that list is quite interesting!

It's obvious someone registered each name as .com .net & .org

What is interesting is that there are several that register only two of those and sometimes only one. Now I I think that means someone else has already registered the others. Does that not seem strange to you?

[MissWaverly]

80. yes, but isn't that how they redirect folks

people think they are going to website say Kerry for Prez and they don't get the
real site but a shadow site that list reasons for not voting for Kerry but voting
for Bush or Newt or some other republican.

[L. Coyote]

60. WRONG SmrtTech provided server space for the Ohio SoS Office.

Ohio would have posted their election results to the SmartTech server. SmartTech just provided the server. Te Ohio server is not capable of handling the volume of election night traffic.

[MissWaverly]

67. Question for you

if the client's data is KNOWN and accessible ONLY to him, how is it that the FBI has been
going to ISP providers for information and I heard on Tv that the government considers
e-mail as transparent as a postcard, they feel that the user has no privacy rights at all,
so how inaccessible is the data once it is on the server.

[L. Coyote]

70. Of course, IT workers can access non-encrypted material

on the servers they maintain. That is why the USG can view it by warrant, NSLs, or by illegal NSLs. The server provider can view it if they wish.

I am not maintaining the Host or ISP cannot access the data. I'm saying that Ohio SoS controlled the site on SmartTech on election night until otherwise demonstrated. Since this was an official act of the State of Ohio, the logs of that domain should, in fact, be subject to scrutiny by the current Ohio SoS.

Communications on non-USG servers/hosts SHOULD be beyond reach of investigators until there is evidence that they were used to conduct USG business. The implications of that fact should be obvious. Our right of privacy needs to be protected from improper government intrusion, period.

There may be a real scandal in all this. Meanwhile, it is important to correct the false statements made in response to the question, so investigators, researchers, journalists, etc. are not misdirected.

[MissWaverly]

73. I am not accusing SmartTech of anything

Since 2000, the average Joe has had to jump through hoops for security checks yet we have seen again and again, the government is clueless about security issues even in the election process.

[jmowreader]

44. A very thorough background check.

They needed to be ABSOLUTELY POSITIVE that not one shred of sympathy or relation to Democrats existed in any member of Smartech's staff.

[MissWaverly]

51. yes, like the employment test for Iraq

who did you vote for in the 2004 presidential election?

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

27. As regards security checks...

These checks are easily circumvented 1000 different ways. Trust me. You may not know how, but a geekishly inclined person with middlin' network skills can get around most, if not all of those instrumentalities.

It can be as simple as a Separate Blackberry or laptop or just connecting from home, to all sorts of weird and wonderful software.

On edit: If there is a seperate set of servers out there that are being used for nefarious means, you can be sure that their domain names are not reflective of their intent. If in fact they have domain names, as such, as all. They can be on a sub-domain or just an IP address that does not map a domain name to any DNS root server.

[MissWaverly]

28. understand but they know they have been hacked

and it makes the news, I know that people make a career of hacking into the Pentagon, et al
but it's secure enough to have some system in place but this is circumventing the system,
ignoring the safety checks in place for a private agenda and since 9-11; the average person
has had to jump through hoops for "security issues"

[loudsue]

26. AND allows them to gerrymander elections w/ the RNC server.

And many of us believe that is exactly what Rove did on election night 2004 to swing Ohio from Kerry to bush, when all of a sudden the numbers started switching at 1:30 a.m.

:kick::kick::kick:

[MissWaverly]

30. yes, I believe it as well.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

39. I doubt the RNC server was used.

On the contrary, if that hacking of the election occurred(yet to be proven conclusively. Statistically and anecdotally, yes), it happened from a server well off the beaten path and pretty well buried behind a lot of network obfuscation.

Trust me on this one. It is what I would have done. I know a little about networks and computers, too.

[MissWaverly]

41. Yes, but if they did get caught -they're innocent

they can claim what any true blue ceo does: "it was outsourced, we didn't know anything about it."

[L. Coyote]

62. WRONG The Ohio SoS site for election night was only hosted.

I updated my web site today. It is all autiomated, and the host has nothing to do with it, except to provide the server in a secure environment. Likewise, Ohio SoS had control of the site. They posted their results. SmartTech is just the server that they used to post online. There was some interface software involved, of couse, that had to reside somewhere, likely within the domain folder, but that would be controlled by the domain owner, Ohhio SoS.

[MissWaverly]

65. are you saying that there is no way that a Smart Tech

employee could have done tampered with the data?

[L. Coyote]

69. NO. Do you have evidence they did?

There is good reason to use a non-government server, for example, to request a contribution to a campaign.
It would be illegal to do that on a USG server.

Let's keep the facts correct, that's all I'm saying.

[MissWaverly]

71. well, I understand your point BUT

a number of races have had miracle turn arounds in the last hours after the polls have
closed, it happened in the 2004 election with Kerry and it also happened in the Mexico
election last summer: Obrador vs Calderon.

[jazzjunkysue]

40. Hey-Great name! I think that 11:30 live footage of the chimp in the oval office

was the signal. I really do.

Remember those shots of him and Laura and the twins on the sofas watching the TV? He didn't say anything. Not a word. But he had a really 9/11 wierd look on his face. Maybe it was the signal to turn the back-up program on on the RNC's server.

[MissWaverly]

42. or he knew that it was automated ready to go

remember those computer viruses scheduled to go on earth day, they can write commands that
set them to work at a certain time, how many here have scheduled a virus scan to run
at 2:00 am, it's very possible that a program was already in place and was set to go based
on the pre-election polling, they had the basic program ready, they just needed to tweak
it.

[L. Coyote]

61. WRONG The Ohio SoS had control of the election results and was resaponsible for posting

them to the Internet, unless otherwise demonstrated. Look to Blackwell for an explanation of any results irregulaities.

[L. Coyote]

59. WRONG Domain anf Host are different.

SmartTech is a hosting provider. The domain is owned by the RNC. SmartTech just provides the server online.

[tulsakatz]

8. for one thing.........

...I'm sure the WH's servers have much better security.

A good hacker could probably hack into an email address on the blackberry which would violate national security issues. Therefore if he's already discussed a national security issue (on the blackberry), he can't claim executive privilege since he has already addressed the issue in an unsecure location.

[MissWaverly]

10. yes, that's just what I was thinking

not to mention the fact that you can leave your blackberry some place and the whole
system would be at risk.

[paparush]

12. There's really no such thing as a completely secure network, if it has any

connectivity to the larger internet.

There's good security.
There's better security.
There is no perfect security.

Encryption is the key. Strong encryption.

[MissWaverly]

15. yes, and you should have classified stuff in-house

a server run by people with background checks and security clearance.

[paparush]

18. Yep

[TahitiNut]

17. The firewall surrounding the whitehouse.gov domain COULD block such email.

The workstations inside the White House, as well as Blackberry (WiFi) devices served by the whitehouse.gov servers, COULD be fairly easily blocked from establishing SMTP/POP connections to mail servers outside the whitehouse.gov domain. I'd be fascinated to perform an in-depth management review of the instructions given to the network administrators. It seems obvious to me that something's amiss ... and perhaps we've not heard about logging and monitoring of such connections. There's a LOT of information we're not hearing.

On edit: Clearly, if they're using a web interface ("drill down") to the email service on gwb43.com then it may be that the firewalls actually do block SMTP/POP3 ... and they're circumventing it. Like I say, I'd love to have access to all the instructions given to network administration. That's got to be a techie job that would be crazy-making.

[MissWaverly]

22. not to mention that everybody was getting e-mails from them

how did they really know that they were talking to Bush, Rove, etc. Why didn't someone
complain that they didn't have the standard address, haven't we
had to go through tons of extra security checks since 9-11? Oh, throw away your
personal bottle of Purell, it might be dangerous.

[jmowreader]

45. Okay, let me ask you something

Let's say you were an evil, heartless, corrupt man. Let's also say you were a Republican working at the White House and you knew there was a 4361 sitting in the basement waiting to intercept all of your most heartfelt communications about the need to remove prosecutors who are throwing Republican Members of Congress in jail so you could replace them with more-compliant Bush cronies. These guys CAN learn, and the most important thing they learned from Iran-Contra is to not use the White House e-mail system if you're committing intentional malfeasance.

I know what you're thinking: if you're a Republican working at the White House, isn't being evil, heartless and corrupt part of the job description? Well yeah, but that's beside the point.

The point here is, if you KNOW the big iron is sitting in the basement just waiting to scarf up all that nasty evidence against you, you're NOT going to use a computer that's plugged into a 3174 cluster controller because--surprise, surprise--ANYTHING on the SNA backbone is going on tape.

Their options for talking to the gwb43.com server are laptops, Blackberries and Palms, not the government-provided workstation. They could do this shit over dial-up; POP3 isn't the most bandwidth-intensive service on the internet.

[TahitiNut]

47. Do you think they're using token ring?

:silly:

OK ... seriusly ...

I'd actually LIKE to believe that they're using wireless modems, not wireless internet. Once upon a time I knew who some of the folks working on WH internet and office technologies were - apolitical and anal-retentive techies who had strong ethical resistance to the bastardization of technology. I actually have a hard time thinking that the WH 'intranet' would be compromised by demands from political hacks that the 'membrane' (firewall and associated defenses) be permeable to illicit uses. I'd LIKE to think that even the most politically corrupt would regard the 'family jewels' sacrosanct as long as alternatives (wireless dial-up) existed.

There exists, however, an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach that the corruption may have created rot to the degree that such technology administration might be compromised. I have experience with corrupt IT Departments - one where the IT Director actually had his 'pocket techie' who'd go in and bypass what (superficial) technical barriers existed to make 'tweaks' to order files and financial transaction files - totally outside of the purported management controls erected to satisfy auditors who didn't care to look more closely. (Executive management was corrupt - engaging in stock fraud. Fortune 50 company. Hundreds of millions pocketed.)

That's why I say it'd be fascinating to go in with a good audit team and a carte blanche and take a look at it.


(FWIW, it'd be astonishingly easy to monitor all the wireless dial-up traffic to/from 1600 Pennsylvania - it'd not even show up in the rounding for the NSA's facilities.)

[MissWaverly]

53. well, although I am not technical

I have seen on Tv where people were able to access people's wireless internet accounts
by driving around in their cars, so I do not think it is rocket science.

[TahitiNut]

54. That's a parlor trick ... not at all mysterious to network folks.

If you're on a broadband connection (e.g. cable TV), then it's likely you can actually 'look at' everything anyone on your subnet (perhaps even more than 2,000 subscribers) is doing on the internet ... including email, web surfing, or anything else. Very rarely is it encrypted. It's merely a matter of putting your Internet adapter into 'promiscuous mode.' It's the same thing on a wireless internet connection, without the trouble of running coax.

That's a function of CSMA/CD bus topology where "everyone on the bus shares the air." (A poor little pun there.)

Clearly, one of the downsides to any limited range wireless technology, whether it's CB, 900MHz wireless phones, wireless modems, or whatever is the fact that anyone with a receiver can 'listen in' to what's going on if they're within range.

There are technical ways of protecting such networks using encryption (at very low levels), tempest technologies, and a multitude of tricks ... but it's not done much in the consumer realm.

[MissWaverly]

55. thanks, all I know is what I hear at work

as long as the information stays on our "in house" server, it is safe, but once it
leaves for parts unknown then it is vulnerable, thanks for the heads up.

[jmowreader]

64. I know what they're probably NOT using

"I'll take Unshielded Twisted Pair for $1000, Alex."

I know TEMPEST (the shielding standard used for computers that handle classified information) used to call for quad-shielded coax, or twinax if the network physical layer calls for it. These days, they should be running fiber.

The cabling plant can be damn near anything in SNA--they're probably using Ethernet over fiber to the terminals because the cabling cost is lower than token ring.

[TahitiNut]

68. Clearly, fiber covers it. They have to connect 1600 with the OEB.

I'm guessing the OEB is where the on-site techies hang out. I'm dubious they're doing Blue/SNA ... "back in the day" they were DIX. (When I was a Xeroid and some of my coworkers were doing "office of the future" stuff there on a prime hush-hush contract.)

[jmowreader]

75. When the stories of Ollie's undoing came out...

it was disclosed that the White House was running the PROFS e-mail package. That pretty much came standard with all IBM System/370 mainframes, along with the DB/2 database, the operating system (mine ran OS/VM 370 but there was also MVS; the difference is that VM is made for people who interact with the machine, and MVS is for people who run batch transactions) and the pale guy who lives in a broom closet behind the disk drives.

The thing is, these computers cost several million apiece, and you have to lease the software on a monthly basis and bring food to the pale guy because he refuses to come out. You don't do this because it's cool to let the whole basement of your company be taken over by equipment no one understands or because the kind of people who would willingly lock themselves into a broom closet until they look like Johnny Depp in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory deserve to eat too; you do it because you KNOW that when you put data on this thing it's going to be there tomorrow. That kind of reliability is seen in very few other kinds of computer equipment--certainly Windows won't do it. And that's why they put one of these in the White House basement.

This is a 4361--the piece in the middle of the frame that looks like a deep freeze is the computer.

[TahitiNut]

76. I was an MVS systems programmer ("back in the day").

I remember when we installed our first water-cooled mainframes. Fun. HUGE pipes from our 4th floor computer room to the roof where the evaporators were. Yikes. My time was before the OO ("object only") days when we'd design our own PTFs - and submit the APARs with the PTFs. My focus was access methods and comm - and then HASP. (Loved HASP.) I was one of those "pale guys" - 36-hour shifts sometimes.

[MissWaverly]

81. well, I did a little program writing back then

strictly small stuff but there was no software and the work still needed done, I remember
getting a laser printer and there was no software to make it print, I had to write tons
of code to make it print my letters, I used to work 12 hour days at a grunt job just to
get the database humming and churning out letters, labels, statistical stuff and greenbars.

We had a printer called el diablo and it was aptly named.

[jmowreader]

82. Our pale guy decorated his broom closet with Grateful Dead posters

Ours actually wasn't all that pale. And he was the coolest guy in the field station--everyone liked him.

This guy (his name was Joe) was an Army programmer working in our basement writing a LOT of code for the various mainframes we had. He was coming up on ETS and looking for a job; someone fairly high up at IBM told him "look, these guys just bought a 4361; if you want to stay here and fulfill the service contract on it, we'll pay you three times what the Army is and give you a housing allowance to boot." So let me see...a tripling of his paycheck, free housing AND you get to live in Berlin. How could you POSSIBLY pass that up?

There's a real good war story behind the 4361 they hired him to run. Perhaps another time.

[murloc]

72. I would hope they arent using token ring

That has been obsolete for almost a decade now.

[MissWaverly]

50. yes, but there is a war on now

What about loose lips sink ships, they already had 1 spy caught in Cheney's office, and
even if I was heartless and hated "Dems" would I want to think that my carelessness
had already compromised the intelligence community with the Plame incident and endangered people lives and then go ahead and use an RNC blackberry that was a security risk, NO, and I don't think most Americans would do that either.

[blogslut]

52. Here's what I wonder

From what I can tell, the White House website, the dot GOV one, is hosted by Akamai Technologies. Wouldn't that mean their servers were offsite?

[TahitiNut]

57. The physical location is somewhat independent of the topological location.

The web server for whitehouse.gov is unlikely to be co-located with the email server or any internal web servers. Such a public web server is usually located in what's called a "DMZ" - on the border between what's 'inside' the firewall and what's 'outside.' Akamai may, in fact, have an M&O (management and operations) contract to keep the hardware (host equipment) on which the web server runs. (Let's ALWAYS remember that 'server' means software.) The hosts for such high volume services are often tightly-coupled arrays fronting for other arrays running SQL servers which may also have alternative access paths.

There are many ways of configuring the equipment (and software) to offer the physical flexibility to achieve both reliability and physical security. Connections between geographic locations can be high bandwidth and physically protected, giving the topological 'appearance' of being local and co-located.

(I haven't done this stuff in years so I apologize if the terms I use are fuzzy.)

[blogslut]

58. Oh, I would imagine

That there is an on site box/wireless router/thingy for internal stuff at the WH. But do you really think they have the email server box dealy on site?

See, I always used to wonder why the White House of all places would have their websites at Akamai. I don't think the other dot govs do. My best guess would be that Akamai's massive racks are teh best at handling the massive traffic the WH site gets.

[Bozita]

21. This thread is quite helpful. Thanks to all.

[jazzjunkysue]

25. Simple. They can read your email but you can't read your government's.

Now, be a good little minimum wage earner and get back to work. Nothing to see here. Move along. You can trust us. Would we lie to you? It's our job to protect the motherland. Homeland. Whatever...

[WinkyDink]

34. Vaterland.

[KT2000]

31. Glad you asked that

thanks to all for the explanations

[left is right]

33. It's really not a matter of security, alone

it was established during watergate that all government communication belongs to the people. Nixon pushed forward the idea that his secret tapes were above the purview of the special prosecutor. When ordered to turn them over he mangled one--hince, the 18 minute gap.
Now, our technology is way beyond hidden tape recorders, but government communication still belongs to the people. By using an outside server, Rove, et.al., are essential "mangling the tapes" and even "sneaking the tapes out in their lunch boxes". They are preventing the people from having any oversight over the governments communication by hiding the fact that it even exists. There are only criminal motivations for doing this.

[jmowreader]

35. It's an attempt to thwart the recordkeeping laws

We The People have paid a hell of a lot of money to give the president (or Bush, in this case) an e-mail system. It's housed on an IBM 4361 mainframe that lives in the basement of the White House, it runs an e-mail package called PROFS, and it retains every e-mail ever sent to, from or within the White House. This is the system that nailed Oliver North.

According to federal recordkeeping laws, any e-mail pertaining to Official Government Business that is sent to or by a government official or a contractor is supposed to go through a government server, so that it can be properly archived.

The administration broke the federal recordkeeping laws by using the gwb43.com e-mail server, which is offsite. Let's throw in another complication: because the Republican National Committee aided and abetted the crimes committed here--and yes, breaking the recordkeeping laws is an Authentic Crime--they're up to their asses in this too.

It also occurs to me that these e-mails may have been, or should have been, classified documents. If this is so, we've got us a whole PASSEL of crimes to nail these fuckers on: improper storage of classified information, improper release of classified to persons not entitled to receive them (Smartech backs its servers up, therefore maintains tapes that will contain this classified information), storage of classified information on a computer system not certified to process classified information...

[MissWaverly]

37. a deliberate act that put our national security at risk

and since we know that Rove leaked classified info, why does he still have security clearance?

[jmowreader]

46. It's more than just that

Not only did it put our national security at risk, it clearly demonstrated just how little this administration cares about security.

If you go to one of the three Military Intelligence training bases, you'll find thousands of slick-sleeve privates walking the grounds who know better than to store classified information on an unsecured server.

Come to think of it, right now I really feel sorry for a lot of company commanders who are having to give a training program to all these young impressionable recruits. Its title: "Just because the president of the United States doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground about security, doesn't mean we're going to let YOU get away with it."

[MissWaverly]

48. yes, you are quite correct

After 9-11, we have all become more conscious of the need for security precautions, how
can we expect these precautions to be taken seriously when this administration is
clueless on security procedures and classified information.

[Disturbed]

38. "Smartech provides a means for the Bush admin to circumvent

proper email channels." I believe it as clear and simple as that.

[MissWaverly]

56. well, I wondered about that greatly in the last 2 days

seems that I remember calls from Patrick Fitzgerald for them to turn over their e-mails,
I wonder if any of the e-mails from their RNC accounts were submitted, if Karl Rove
by his own admission does most of his work on the RNC blackberry, I wonder if he was
in compliance with the order if he did not submit e-mails from his blackberry.

[L. Coyote]

63. WRONG SmartTech provided server space , RNC owns the domain

So, the RNC is responsible for anything happening on that domain.

[MissWaverly]

66. well, I still think the point is a valid one

If the e-mail that Rove, Cheney, Libby, et al. sent concerning Plame, Novak, Russert,
Fitzgerald, etc. were on the RNC server and they did not hand them over then I would
assume that they did not comply with the order by Fitzgerald to hand over their e-mails

[Kingofalldems]

78. I hope Mr. Fitzgerald is paying attention

He might be interested in this little matter.

[MissWaverly]

79. yes, indeed, there could be "gold" in those e-mails