Aside from the multitude of general Government and IRS specific regulations on data preservation, the data was given special status for both collection of potentially responsive information , as well as that informations preservation and secure storage to prevent evidence tampering because of lawsuit filed in 2010 for obstruction of a view point advocacy, tax exempt non profit.
In late 2010, IRS was being sued by an organization called Z- Street, a pro Israel group, and that suit was filed in 2010, well before the momentous crash of 20 or so high level Obama Administration and IRS operatives.
Lerner's computer and her information regarding obstruction and biased treatment of organizations opposed by the Obama Admin was subject to this special handling of litigation responsive information.
Even if her drive (and all the others that “crashed” ) had been considered damaged beyond repair and unrecoverable, they should have been preserved in secure storage pending trial., not destroyed .
Furthermore, there would have been a flurry of reports notifying responsible parties in the court system and the IRS that litigation hold data was compromised and asking for direction on how to proceed with chain of custody, documentation and data preservation procedures.
This should have been reported to the presiding Judge immediately to inform both him and the litigants as well as to get his direction on how to proceed.
The fact that there was no correspondence on this at the very implies that there was no loss of data because full back ups were available and the data storage devices were restored with a verified no loss of information.
At any rate, this whole sequence of events,if they actually happened, should have been reported to the Federal Judge presiding over the Z- Street case as soon the crashes occurred.
This is really serious stuff and the only explanation is that the IRS is stalling in order to give them time to evaluate what is on the back ups and to doctor and sanitize the backed up data to remove any damaging evidence.
Or that one or more of the IRS IT people involved kept their own private clean copies of the back ups as insurance to make sure that they would not go to jail if the IRS scandal heated up.
A $5mil cash reward would flush that guy out.
If one reads/downloads the answers given to True the Vote case
https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1227881/92-2-2.pdf
Case l:13-cv-00734-RBW Document 92-2 Filed 07/18/14
STEPHEN L. MANNING … June - September of 2011, my position at the Internal Revenue Service was Associate Chief Information Officer, Enterprise Networks.
. . . Information Technology Specialist (Customer Support) (hereinafter “the Specialist”) was assigned and inspected the laptop assigned to Lois Lerner and determined that the hard drive on the laptop was not operating properly. ..
6. Because the Internal Revenue Service IT inventory control
system does not place bar code property tags on computer
component parts like the hard drive and because the Internal
Revenue Service has no business purpose for recording the
serial numbers of the numerous internal component parts of
desktop and laptop computers, to the best of my knowledge no
one at the Internal Revenue Service has first-hand knowledge
of the serial number on the hard drive that was in the laptop
computer assigned to Lois Lerner at the time of the Help Desk
complaint on June 13, 2011.
7. In response to recent inquiries made by the Internal
Revenue Service to the 3rd party IT hardware support vendor who
supplied the laptop computer at issue, the 3rd party vendor
advised the Internal Revenue Service that the hard’ drive that was in the computer assigned to Lois Lerner when the
Specialist responded to the June 13, 2011 Help Desk call
contained the serial number 2AGAH01E1XN0ON.
8. According to the June 13th Help Desk Ticket, after
determining that there were problems with the operation of the
hard drive, the Specialist made the initial efforts at data
preservation and/or data recovery with respect to the hard
drive in Lois Lerner’s laptop computer and all of the
Specialist’s efforts to recover any data were unsuccessful.
. . . According to the IRS Enterprise Learning Management System, the Specialist has received regular IT technical training going back to 2008…
. . . According to the Specialist, prior to joining the Internal Revenue Service, from 2004 to 2005, formal Microsoft training was completed through ****Lions World Services for the Blind,***** a certified Microsoft training and testing center, which included the following curriculum: CompTia A+ Hardware 2000, CompTia A+ Software 2000, Microsoft MCP 2000, Microsoft MCSE 2000, Microsoft MCSA 2000, . . .
IT APPEARS that the IT specialist may have been blind or had very poor vision. That would not stop him from running standard software tests on lerner computer..
What is not knosw is who removed hard drive and supposedly sent it to CI while installing a new drive for Lois. EG no credible chain of evidence other than a ticket
Now in same case DECLARATION OF TODD O. EGAAS
” 3. In July of 2011 at the request of the User and Network
Services branch of the Internal Revenue Service Information
Technology business unit, a Senior Investigative Analyst in
the CID Electronic Crimes Technology & Support Center
(hereinafter “the Analyst”’) received a hard drive that had
been removed from a laptop assigned to an IRS employee and
attempted to recover data from the hard drive on July 22, 2011
and August 4, 2011.’
NOTE no serial number noted- - could well have been a really trashed HD - not that of lerner.
” 4. The hard drive had been removed from a laptop assigned to
Lois Lerner by an employee of the User and Network Services
branch of the Internal Revenue Service Information Technology
business unit before it was received by the Analyst.
How did he determine that - What proof it was the lerner hard drive ?
5. All of the Analyst’s attempts were unsuccessful in
recovering any data from the hard drive at issue.
6. On August 5, 2011 the Analyst sent the hard drive back to
the User and Network Services branch of the Internal Revenue
Service Information
NOTE OK it was sent back - but again no serial number
COULD THERE HAVE BEEN SOME SLIGHT OF HAND RE HARD DRIVE(S)