National Archives "Lost" Clinton White House Computer Record Tapes

[leveymg]

A lot of this sort of thing going around in recent times. Just ask Turdblossum and Darth, they know how easily these things just get lost.

http://government.zdnet.com/?p=4835
ZDNET
May 21st, 2009
National Archives lost 2TB drive from Clinton years
Posted by Richard Koman @ May 21, 2009 @ 5:13 PM

Categories: Government technology

“The nation’s record keeper” - the National Archives and Record Administration - has lost a two-terabyte hard drive containing digital records from Bill Clinton’s presidency.

In a statement, NARA said that it “takes very seriously the loss of an external hard drive that contained copies of electronic storage tapes from the Executive Office of the President of the Clinton Administration.” The agency said that it has reviewed its internal information controls and improved its security processes. (InfoWeek)

It’s not just Clinton’s privacy that’s affected. It contains names and SSNs of an untold number of visitors. It contains snapshots of the hard drives of departing administration officials, information that had been stored on 113 4mm tape cartridges.

Proof positive, it’s fair to say, that NARA’s security procedures are “fatally flawed,” as a panel of records management folks told a House hearing today, reports NextGov.

“NARA’s use of technology appears to be focused on making NARA a museum, rather than a lead agency on life-cycle management of records for public access and government accountability,” said Patrice McDermott, director of OpenTheGovernment.org, a group advocating more transparency in government. “The issue of records management of e-mail is the iceberg below this tip. NARA’s policy in this area is fatally flawed.”

Meredith Fuchs, general counsel for The George Washington University’s National Security Archives, said:

been passive trying to update records management practices at most federal agencies. The result is that not much changes in federal records management until there is a scandal, such as the public exposure of the loss of millions of federal record e-mails at the White House.

All of which makes proposals for agencies to embrace social networking seem far distant. “That’s a whole new level of complexity that I don’t think we even had in the Bush administration,” she said.

As a lawyer and technology writer, Richard Koman brings a unique perspective to the blog's intersection of law, government and technology. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.

[babylonsister]

1. Who's running this show, and why are they so inept?

And what are they still doing there, if they are? How do you 'lose' info like that?
And why does this make me so suspicious? I know, nevermind.

[lapfog_1]

3. Unfortunately, it's run by folks who think that computer records

are the same a filing cabinet of papers.

When I arrived at NASA, my first assignment was to retrieve the data from the 1970s space probes (Mariner and Viking missions). mostly stored on 7 track tape and thrown into cardboard boxes and left to rot in the basement of the administration building. The oxide was literally falling off the mylar backing. Fortunately, many of the tapes had duplicates at JPL, and those that did not we rescued... a few of time by using iron dust to sprinkle over the tape and a magnifying glass to read the bits.

Long term "storage" of computer records is actually an active process, with everything copied forward to new technology every few years and multiple copies at geographically distant locations. Policies that simply weren't in place in any federal agency in the 1990s.

The government is both 10 years ahead AND 10 years behind industry. 10 years ahead in areas of research, 10 years behind in applying research to operation. A lot has to do with procurement. A lot has to do with "policy and procedures are written down... there is no need to change" attitude.

[babylonsister]

5. What a mess, huh.

I worked for the FAA in the 90s and remember the cry to 'go paperless'. They got partly there then. Did a weekly back-up on all the computer info, but I don't honestly know what happened from there.

Maybe this new cyberwarfare program that's going to be implemented will help, or at least help to modernize. From today:

Contractors Vie for Plum Work, Hacking for the United States

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=5749628&mesg_id=5749628

[napi21]

2. If I read that right, the originals still exist. To me, that means

get the duffus's who failed to control that tape to work overtime "free" to recreate the damn thing!

[kenny blankenship]

4. AFAIK, the only 2tb harddrive came into commercial existence about 6 mo. ago

The Western Digital WD20EADS

So they dumped the tape backups onto ONE harddrive, and only one harddrive, which they promptly misplaced.
Awesome.

Some additional thoughts: destroying originals before your backup is out of its infant mortality period is irresponsible. Combining over one hundred source tapes into a single disk, without multiple copies risks all the data with a single catastrophic failure. Ultra Large IDE harddrives that cram ever larger numbers of media sectors on a given platter size multiply the chances of data loss, and have a very unproven record so far. The Seagate 1.5Tb drive has been a disaster, and the 2Tb WD drive is too new to be trusted. Only a fool would commit a terabyte of critical irreplaceable data to single drive, let alone drives at the bleeding edge of storage capacity. To chalk this up to administrative incompetence strains credulity.

Why if I didn't know better, between "inexplicable losses" and blanket classification of prior Administrations' papers, I'd swear someone was trying to erase the Government's publicly accessible memory.

[lapfog_1]

6. I think they meant to say

"1 external device" which had a capacity of 2TB.

Probably something like a multi drive external RAID. They've been around for quite a few years. USB and firewire.

And no, the original should have been kept until there were at least 3 copies, 2 in geographically distributed locations and which are NOT easily "checked out" of the facility.

[KoKo]

7. kick...let's see what comes out about this...interesting

[leveymg]

8. There couldn't possibly be even the smallest blackmail potential here, could there?

Let's say one had a vested interest in proving that certain unfortunate events that occurred early in the Bush years actually had their genesis during the previous Administration. Let's say there was a new Democratic Administration coming in, and one wanted to gather what leverage one could put one's hands on just in case the new occupant of the White House might choose to, gasp, actually start a real, public investigation of certain events that occurred during the previous eight years . . . might there be a plausible motive here? Naw, couldn't happen like that.

These are all honorable men, right?

[PainPerdu]

9. Israeli techs

If my memory serves me correcty,didn't you do a Kos Diary a few years ago about electronic equipment being set up in the GWB White House by Isreali operatives?

[leveymg]

10. More in the vein of Abramoff's role in a GOP "One-Stop Shop for Political Dirty Tricks"

Israel was almost extraneous to that, but it is difficult to ignore some facts, such as Bill Clinton's remarks to Monica that he believed their phone sex was being wiretapped out of a certain Washington Embassy. Another was the concern that Bob Ney had improperly steered contracts for House cell phone service to an Israeli company, and the flap over Amdocs access to toll call records for virtually every long-distance call made in America, and that company's alleged role in a 1997 tipoff to a pending LAPD drug bust of an Israeli ecstacy ring.

I recently made reference to the fact that much of the CALEA compliance equipment in place at US telco switching hubs is of Israeli manufacture and that maintaining that may have something to do with AIPAC's seeming enthusiasm for domestic wiretapping. But, all this is pretty widely-known and accepted.

Don't recall ever writing anything about electronic equipment being set up in the GWB White House by Israeli agents. Monitoring of government electronic communications is an inherent part of routine espionage work of virtually every country that has diplomatic facilities or a commercial presence in the US, and vis-a-versa. "Gambling, in this establishment? I'm shocked. Shocked, I say."

[PainPerdu]

11. MUST reading

Democracy Going Dark: The Electronic Police State
The FBI's Multi-Billion "High-Tech Surveillance" Program


by Tom Burghardt

.
Global Research, May 21, 2009
Antifascist Calling...

[leveymg]

12. Thanks for that

Useful info. Is that your work?

[kentuck]

13. No backup copies?

:shrug: