IRS CANCELLED Contract with Email-Storage Firm Weeks After Lerner’s Computer Crash

daily caller ^ | 6/22 | howley

[RummyChick]

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) cancelled its longtime relationship with an email-storage contractor just weeks after ex-IRS official Lois Lerner’s computer crashed and shortly before other IRS officials’ computers allegedly crashed.

The IRS signed a contract with Sonasoft, an email-archiving company based in San Jose, California, each year from 2005 to 2010. The company, which partners with Microsoft and counts The New York Times among its clients, claims in its company slogans that it provides “Email Archiving Done Right” and “Point-Click Recovery.” Sonasoft in 2009 tweeted, “If the IRS uses Sonasoft products to backup their servers why wouldn’t you choose them to protect your severs?

[rolling_stone]

im not convinced sonasoft had contract to back up all irs emails, just those from office of chief counsel-footnote somewhere indicates occ had better email retrieval etc..

interesting lerners first email subject was “careful what you ask for” did that mean she was afraid they might recover her data? also she brought up -”but it may be too late-don’t they send them off to the hard drive cemetery?”

apparently she wanted to know if it had already been destroyed -doesn’t look innocent to me...

http://waysandmeans.house.gov/uploadedfiles/6_13_14_irs_letter.pdf

[rainee]

http://m.nationalreview.com/corner/357456/irs-no-2-set-retire-eliana-johnson

This is who Milhollland reported to back in 2011..looks like she’s a real piece of work. She’s now coveniently “retired”.

[LiveFreeOrDie2001]

If LL & the 6 people/hard drives are all in a coordinating position to carry this out...

...then you can pretty much bet it was a cover-up of guilt.

[skeeter]

Why should American citizens comply with a single damn demand of this outlaw federal government.

[savedbygrace]

Yes, I know all of that. What I’m responding to is the idea many have that the software company is storing the IRS archives. It isn’t and the many people who now seem to believe it does are pretty close to qualifying for the term stupid.

[savedbygrace]

would have to be transferred to the Sonasoft storage server

No, you are wrong. Sonasoft does not provide storage servers. They are a SOFTWARE company.

[QT3.14]

For those that may have missed what I posted yesterday:

Lois Lerner's Hard Drive "Crashed" Ten Days After House Ways & Means Chairman David Camp Made His First Inquiry About Targeting Conservatives

In comment 4, Research99 pointed out this interesting item:

Lois Lerner’s husband is Michael Miles, a Washington-based corporate insurance lawyer and partner at the politically-connected law firm Sutherland, Asbill & Brennan. They now share a $2.4 million residence near Bethesda, Maryland.

Miles previously served as an attorney in the Office of the Chief Counsel of the IRS.

[Qiviut]

Chuck Woolery ‏@chuckwoolery Jun 20 Tell you how important this IRS thing is.If what we believe is true it could bring down the President and whole bunch of others,even the IRS

********************************

Which is exactly why they are going to such lengths, even resorting to ludicrous lies, to do anything & everything to keep those emails from seeing the light of day. I have no doubt the targeting plan goes straight to the WH. Does Congress REALLY want to know the truth (i.e. Issa could do more .... why is he not?) If the actual truth comes out, it will be so egregious, Congress will have to DO something about it ... and they don't have the political will/courage. So it's little truth - ok for optics; full truth, no matter where it leads - not so good for Congress in their present state of "bending over" on all things Obama.

[skeeter]

Since the mainstream media is clearly ignoring it, there is no awareness.

Its deeply ominous what is happening here is. We have clear evidence of not only politicization of federal agencies but obvious lawbreaking sanctioned at the highest levels as well. More obvious than anything thats happened before.

And a MSM STILL determined to protect the state from the consequences of their lawlessness.

There have been incidences of this kind before but never anything so clearly illegal and dangerous to there republic. I was still hoping that if things got bad enough - and embarrassing enough for the toads in the news media - they would suffer a pang of consciousness and do their damn jobs but that apparently is not going to happen.

[savedbygrace]

The hardware solution they offer is a set of hard drives by Rorke, set for RAID5, that would be installed at the customer’s location.

RAID5 allows for the set to lose one drive and still be recoverable.

RAID6 would allow 2 drives to go down and still be recoverable.

[null and void]

IRS Awards Contract to Unisys to Deliver On-Demand Storage Service via Private Cloud Solution

[I am Richard Brandon]

"Since the mainstream media is clearly ignoring it"

NPR's Judy Woodruff was on Fox News Sunday as a panelist and they were discussing the lost e-mails. She said "I'm not reporting it" and nether of the 'right of center' panelists asked why not - we're doomed!

[CivilWarBrewing]

Congress should be VERY public about discussions with Sonasoft, and a subpoena is in order.. Sonasoft COULD end up embarrassing itself and harming it’s reputation if it doesn’t cough up Lerner’s Emails WHICH THEY 100% SURELY MUST STILL HAVE.

[Viennacon]

NOBODY WOULD BELIEVE THIS!

[I am Richard Brandon]

Watching Juan Williams on Fox News Sunday claiming that the drive crashed BEFORE Congress became interested in the case was very instructive (a teachable moment!) in how Dems think and act, “If I lie it is not a lie. How dare you accuse me of it.”

[DAC21]

“Since the mainstream media is clearly ignoring it, there is no awareness”

Which is why some Republicans in DC need to grow a pair and call a spade a spade. I’d say calling out the Odingo Administration as a Fascist tyrannical Organization and the Media it’s enablers would get a lot of outrage and Nightly News cover of indignation. As long as the Repubies stand behind it and defend it with the evidence that is all around us it will get some of the LIV attention at which point it could snowball.

[CyberAnt]

So .. where is the archived material ..??

This mess just gets deeper and smellier.

Just fire the whole lot of them .. no benefits .. no unemployment .. NO NOTHING.

SUCH A WANTON DISREGARD FOR AMERICA .. it’s stunning.

[CyberAnt]

I agree .. that was my first concern .. where is the archived data ..??

[Lorianne]

I bet Edward Snowden could find those emails

[tired&retired]

People need to read about "Spoliation" and how it is a Federal criminal offense to delete any communications including electronically stored data after there is any indication that there might be an investigation and proceedings.

The duty to preserve information – especially Electronically Stored Information (ESI) – when litigation is foreseeable. While the legal doctrine of spoliation (pronounced spoh-lee-ay-shən) has been long recognized, federal courts especially are now applying it with greater frequency in connection with information stored in electronic format.

Spoliation refers to the destruction (or material alteration) of evidence or to the failure to preserve property for another’s use as evidence in litigation that is actually pending or reasonably foreseeable at the time of the destruction or alteration. If a party either fails to preserve or destroys potential evidence in foreseeable litigation, it risks sanctions for the spoliation of evidence.

One of my many hats is as a Forensic CPA. A notice concerning spoliation is one of the first things to be done, even before a suit is filed. The destruction of electronically stored data is also a criminal offense, not just civil.

Federal Rules of Civil Procedure › TITLE V. DISCLOSURES AND DISCOVERY › Rule 37.
Failure to Make Disclosures or to Cooperate in Discovery; Sanctions

RULE 37. FAILURE TO MAKE DISCLOSURES OR TO COOPERATE IN DISCOVERY; SANCTIONS

(a) Motion for an Order Compelling Disclosure or Discovery.

(1) In General. On notice to other parties and all affected persons, a party may move for an order compelling disclosure or discovery. The motion must include a certification that the movant has in good faith conferred or attempted to confer with the person or party failing to make disclosure or discovery in an effort to obtain it without court action.

............
(e) Failure to Provide Electronically Stored Information. Absent exceptional circumstances, a court may not impose sanctions under these rules on a party for failing to provide electronically stored information lost as a result of the routine, good-faith operation of an electronic information system.

(f) Failure to Participate in Framing a Discovery Plan. If a party or its attorney fails to participate in good faith in developing and submitting a proposed discovery plan as required by Rule 26(f), the court may, after giving an opportunity to be heard, require that party or attorney to pay to any other party the reasonable expenses, including attorney's fees, caused by the failure.

Rule 37(f) applies to information lost due to the routine operation of an information system only if the operation was in good faith. Good faith in the routine operation of an information system may involve a party's intervention to modify or suspend certain features of that routine operation to prevent the loss of information, if that information is subject to a preservation obligation. A preservation obligation may arise from many sources, including common law, statutes, regulations, or a court order in the case.

The good faith requirement of Rule 37(f) means that a party is not permitted to exploit the routine operation of an information system to thwart discovery obligations by allowing that operation to continue in order to destroy specific stored information that it is required to preserve. When a party is under a duty to preserve information because of pending or reasonably anticipated litigation, intervention in the routine operation of an information system is one aspect of what is often called a "litigation hold." Among the factors that bear on a party's good faith in the routine operation of an information system are the steps the party took to comply with a court order in the case or party agreement requiring preservation of specific electronically stored information.

Whether good faith would call for steps to prevent the loss of information on sources that the party believes are not reasonably accessible under Rule 26(b)(2) depends on the circumstances of each case. One factor is whether the party reasonably believes that the information on such sources is likely to be discoverable and not available from reasonably accessible sources.

For those who choose to read the details of the law, here is the link:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcp/rule_37