IT experts call BS on IRS claim to have lost Lois Lerner emails

American Thinker ^ | 06/15/2014 | Thomas Lifson

[SeekAndFind]

The cover-up is always worse than the crime, the conclusion drawn from Watergate, does not seem to have been learned by the IRS or whoever directed it to make the claim late Friday that emails from Lois Lerner to outside agencies (including most notably the White House) were lost in a computer “crash.” That claim is risible according to various experts.

Jason Howerton of The Blaze interviewed veteran IT expert Norman Cillo, “an Army veteran who worked in intelligence and a former program manager at Microsoft,” who laid out six reasons, complete with charts, why he believes Congress is being lied to. Among them:

1. I believe the government uses Microsoft Exchange for their email servers. They have built-in exchange mail database redundancy. So, unless they did not follow Microsofts recommendations they are telling a falsehood. (snip)
2. Every IT organization that I know of has hotswappable disk drives. Every server built since 2000 has them. Meaning that if a single disk goes bad it’s easy to replace. (snip)
3. ALL Servers use some form of RAID technology. The only way that data can be totally lost (Meaning difficult to bring back) is if more than a single disk goes before the first bad disk is replaced….

 

He notes “All email servers in a professional organization use TAPE backup. Meaning if all the above fails, you can restore the server using the TAPE backups.”

[RIghtwardHo]

My cat calls BS on it.

[Parmy]

Heck! Just go to NSA because they record everything. Bet they could find them in a snap.

[TigersEye]

A woman called in to the Mark Levin show who said she worked for the private contractor who supplies IT to the IRS. She said the IRS has never reported any crash or loss of data with their systems to her company.

[upchuck]

Hey Mr. Lifson, I was hoping to read some original reporting. Guess not. I’ve already read the Blaze article.

[miliantnutcase]

We use Barracuda Networks to archive our exchange. Someone would have to intentionally log in as admin and manually delete the email from there *after* it was deleted from the user’s exchange inbox. I call BS as well.

[Vendome]

Don’t forget Mx files.

purjury. ...

[molson209]

Don’t forget these are the same people that created the Most Excellent Obamacare site ,they know what they’re talking about, Dude

[Robwin]

I am no computer expert but knew when the claim was made it was a complete falsehood. Both redundancy and an inherent inability to truly lose files (they can be recovered) militate against any such occurrence.

This administration, starting at the top, exist on lies.

[Conspiracy Guy]

Let’s see, I know the emails are here somewhere. Nope they’re gone. Dag nabbit.

[seowulf]

The cover-up is always worse than the crime

I would disagree with the "always" part.

Maybe this time even a blatantly obvious coverup is better than the crime.

[roadcat]

I am no computer expert but knew when the claim was made it was a complete falsehood.

Yup, all lies from the IRS. I was responsible for hundreds of servers. One of the musts is to have redundancy. We had RAID hard drives go out from time to time. I would pull the drive, put in a new one, and the system would rebuild the missing one. Backups were redundant. If a daily backup failed, you had the weekly ones, and you could recover from monthly ones. Grandfather backups. Then there were the tape backups that went offsite to a secure location. We would request those if needed to get at data that was many years old. There was no losing data unless it was intentional.

[AzNASCARfan]

Pure BS is right... If it got sent through the internet I have always heard its impossible to delete completely... not to mention I am sure the NSA has a backup copy of every email ever sent...

[uncommonsense]

There is continuous backup through RAID (redundant storage), incremental, and full backups. I designed hosted banking systems that ran > $100 billion in loans per year. We never lost a bit or a byte. We also had to manage email communications to a similar level.

There are local, on-site, and off-site copies / backups - especially if the emails are more than a couple of seconds apart (backups occur continuously on-site, and periodically off site - probably nightly or during off-peak times).

[ArtDodger]

Funny how the MSM have no interest in letting any IT experts near a camera or mic concerning this topic.

[onona]

I think Ms. Lerner had better start sleeping with one eye open, and stay out of small airplanes.

She gets to be too big of a liability, she just might end up sleeping with the fishes.

[TalBlack]

Somebody HAS to be the “Custodian” of these things. Haul him in, grill him, then toss his sloppy inconsiderate ass into jail. Unless of course the data happen then to turn up...

[tet68]

I expect Mr. Obama to find the missing emails on his
dresser as he comes out of the bathroom...

Why not, it worked for Herself...

[smoothsailing]

The Evil TEA Party stole all Miss Lerner's e-mails!!!

[piytar]

I run a couple small businesses. Not wealthy. Not a lot of resources.

EVERYTHING I send by email or create on my computer is automatically backed up off site. EVERYTHING. And it does not cost squat.

This claim by the IRS is beyond ridiculous!