IP: Fmore on From the White House that Invented ..

[David Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

> X-Sender: jwarren () mail well com
> Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2000 19:32:40 -0800
> To: farber () cis upenn edu
> From: Jim Warren <jwarren () well com>
>
>
> BTW, last night (Friday), C-SPAN was airing the complete congressional
> hearing where the White House's email-system programmers and administrators
> were testifying and being questioned ... and in some cases directly
> contradicting each other.
>
> VERY interesting!
>
> Knowing how C-SPAN operates, it wouldn't surprise me to find that they are
> being re-aired on the other of their two channels, today or tommorrow.
>
> > From the sound of the testimony and comments however,
>
> (1) there *was* a misplacing -- though probably not a loss (probably still
> available on routine system backup tapes) -- of many thousands, and perhaps
> a few hundred thousand! -- messages, involving 400-500 staffers;
>
> (2) the loss apparently was NOT intentional; just another programming error
> ... like the one that sent one of the Mars probes blasting off into
> never-never land;
>
> (3) there apparently *was* many months of stone-walling and foot-dragging
> by the political overseers, once the problem was discovered -- although one
> of their legitimate quandries was how to pay for the significant programmer
> and staff time that it would [will!] take to find, retrieve and properly
> file these *public* records;
>
> (4) there was definately a consist effort to keep it hidden from the press,
> the public, Ken Starr's investigators, and congressional investigators -- a
> cover-up effort that included at least 3-4 off the tech staff being
> threatened with jail if they dared to disclose the problem to anyone
> outside of their group (not even to their own supervisors!); and,
>
> (5) it is certain -- by all the accounts -- that there *were* MANY messages
> that were never even searched, much less disclosed, in responding to the
> Starr and congressional subpoenas ... simply because they weren't on the
> email storage system (called ARMS) where they were supposed to be.
>
> YAFU -- Yet Another ...
>
> Yup -- With computers, we can make *millions* of misteaks <sic> per second!
>
> --jim, Jim Warren; jwarren () well com
> Contributing Editor & technology public-policy columnist, MicroTimes Magazine
> Also GovAccess list-owner/editor; 345 Swett Rd, Woodside CA 94062
>   voice/650-851-7075; fax-for-the-quaint/650-851-2814
>
> [self-inflating puff: Hugh Hefner First-Amendment Award, Playboy Foundation;
> Electronic Frontier Foundation Pioneer Award (in its first year);
> James Madison Freedom-of-Information Award, Soc.of Prof.Journalists-Nor.Calif
> founded InfoWorld; the Computers, Freedom & Privacy Conferences; etc etc etc.]