I am a senior executive. If (and it has *never* happened) my hard drive crashed, this kind of broadcast email would never be sent. First of all, people who sent me emails would not be affected at all. They wouldn't need to know my hard drive crashed, and if they sent me emails, the server would accept them as usual. My IT guys would have a new PC up and running within a couple hours and I would be back in business. [In my organization, we are not to use our C: drives. I would not lose a single business-related computer file of any kind. I do have personal files on my C: drive like bank statements and documents related to when I refinanced a mortgage a couple years ago, but quite honestly, nothing would change for me if I lost those files.]
In those two hours or so it took the IT guys to set me up with a new PC, I would have access to my emails through multiple means. Again, no one would receive an email like this at all about my hard drive crashing. It also goes without saying that no mention of my email capability would be sent to anyone, either.
According to the IRS, current emails of IRS employees are received by the server. Ms. Lerner's email account would be able to receive emails even in the event of a hard drive crash. This notice -- particularly with its conspicuous mention of emails -- is extremely suspicious.
I agree, this is extra fishy. Why would your hard drive crashing affect the email other than the record keeping if it saves to the hard drive. You can still presumably access your email from any computer with the internet.
I continue to contend the entire thing is a massive cover-up job, and Obastard is intimately involved.
Agreed.
What does your hard drive have to do with emails?
Presumably what’s on your hard drive is your work product (documents, spreadsheets, etc.).
Email system is something run by the IT department, assuming it’s her work email address.
This looks like a p*ss poor attempt to create a documented record of the hard drive crash and relate it to email for the uninformed.
This is almost comic how stupid they are. This should be right up there with Bush one being surprised at a bar code checkout.
Nobody, would send out an email, to someone’s entire email list, saying I cannot be contacted by email because my computer crashed. Who in their right mind associates a computer crashing with, “I can no longer check my email from anywhere else”?
As the hip hop culture says,,,”bitch please,,”
But believers in Obama are buying it, because it is the best excuse they have to sell.
Disgraceful
FWIW, as an IT guy, I can say that “her hard drive crashed” is meant to mean “her computer is unavailable”, and therefore “will be without email” means she only gets her emails through her own PC (though we now know this is false, since she had a Blackberry), and wouldn’t be able to read or respond to emails until her PC is back up.
Many of the executives I supported cared *only* about access to their email. Without it, many would at least claim they couldn’t work at all. Since Lerner was the head of the agency, she’s not likely to have much to do other than communicating with other management within the agency, and so access to her email is the only real issue with her PC crash.
From what I’ve come to understand, the IRS used Microsoft Exchange for their email system, and had just about the worst, least-useful data policy out there. Even senior executives like Lerner were only allocated 150MB for their mailbox, with no archive. Backups of the system were only kept 6 months, and then the tapes were overwritten. There was a policy in place that required all “relevant” emails to be printed off and preserved as hard copies, but “relevant” probably had a very plastic definition within the IRS, and it’s all too easy to “forget” to print off incriminating email that would look bad during a later investigation.
The whole thing stinks, and the IRS deserves to be hung out to dry. No ordinary member of the public facing IRS audit could ever get away with the kind of record-keeping the IRS feels is acceptable for its own operations.
They really think that this will “prove” that her email crashed? Even if we accepted it at face value, it would only succeed in making her more of a blithering idiot, than a full criminal. (which she is)
Lies, lies, lies. All they do is lie.
“In my organization, we are not to use our C: drives. I would not lose a single business-related computer file of any kind”
Not only best practice but pretty well standard practice, probably followed by the vast majority of networks having any more than a few dozen workstations.
Also, the specific reference to the hard drive failure is very, very unusual. I’m sure if you took a poll of I.T. Administrators virtually none ever get into specifics like that when sending out a notification of any kind of outage or failure.
In addition, I find it odd that only 14 people were notified and not a mass emailing to all her contacts.
If it’s a problem that the I.T techs can fix quickly, then no notification at all is required. Incoming emails would queue up and be delivered as soon as it was fixed. If not, then surely she would have had many dozens of contacts that should have been notified.
It’s called lying. It’s that simple.
What about the hard drives of every one of those people on the list?
Obviously all of her sent e-mails are in their in box and the e-mails to her are in their sent box.
IOW, all of her e-mails are somewhere other than her supposedly crashed hard drive.
And.. LOIS' OFFICE NOTIFIED CO-WORKERS BUT NOT THE APPROPRIATE RECORDS PEOPLE?
These lies are so stupid that a child wouldn’t tell them.
I agree, this is a stupid email and fools nobody except those willing to be fooled.
If Ms Lerner wanted to access her email she could simply log in to ANOTHER computer. From there she could both send and receive email.
In the unlikely event that her computer actually did crash, when they gave her another one (since she was SES, that would be near immediately) to replace it, they would promptly restore all her software and access to any folders she had set up in the system (they’d be on the server with her emails).
Not to mention the fact that, if a hard drive did crash on a server, they are as easily replaceable as a toner cartridge is on a laser printer.
I am sure Ms. Douglas does not want to go to jail. She would be a good place to start with a subpoena.
People occasionally say to me, “ oh you have friends in high places” when I pull off a mind boggling organizational move. I say no, I have friends in low places. They usually know the systems better than their bosses and know where the bodies are buried.
This needs to be vetted by Doug from Upland.
I have had hard drives crash with irretrievable data lost (with the exception of back-ups).
Still, I never sent a broad distribution e-mail to the effect that my computer had crashed. Only a select few, if any who might have sent e-mails which were downloaded very recently would be notified, if anyone.
The IRS e-mails were legally required to be backed up and preserved.
The documents should have been on the server when she got back up and running with another computer or hard drive, should have had separate back-ups, and should still, if official, have been present on another set of hard drives as well (those of the other computers sending or receiving the e-mails.
Multiple redundancies should have ensured these documents were not lost, as they are legally required to be preserved.
The absence of those e-mails isn't a case of "oops, my drive crashed", but the result of purging them from multiple computer systems.
Yep—they’re trying to make sure nobody puts anything else incriminating in their email records.
So, I’m wondering exactly how they inserted this email retroactively into the time stream. Did they just reset the clock on the desktop? Did the change the complete system clock for a few seconds? My guess is when Congress demands access to the server logs, they’ll ‘lose’ that one too.