Tuesday, January 03, 2017

We're the Only One Irretrievable Enough

Baltimore officials said they cannot provide the emails of a top police commander who oversaw a controversial aerial surveillance program this year because his email account was not configured properly and the records were not retained as required by state law and city policy. [More]
I don't suppose we could .. you know ... ask the Russians?

5 comments:

Steve said...

Did former IRS employees go work there?

Archer said...

As an IT guy, I must ask: Who is responsible for configuring the e-mail account and retaining the records? (Realistically, it could be the officer himself or an IT administrator.) Why have they not been arrested and charged for failing to do so?

It's well past time that, "Sorry, the records were lost or not retained because I'm a technical idiot," becomes a tacit admission of violating the laws requiring that communications be retained.

Also, back-ups are not hard. There is no reasonable excuse for a government agency to not have them in place, with additional automated record-keeping on who accesses and manipulates them. Then, if something goes "missing" (which it can't because it's backed up), there's a record of who tried to remove it (and those records, themselves, should be backed up with the same access/manipulation reporting). Therefore, if the agency doesn't have back-ups, it should be assumed they are actively attempting to bypass record-keeping requirements.

Seriously, not that hard.

David Codrea said...

If I were to bet you that the only reason an investigation hasn't concluded the records were intntionally deleted to cover things up is systemic corruption, would you bet against me?

FedUp said...

I wouldn't bet against that, David.

"We have investigated ourselves and determined that we broke the law because we don't know how to obey it...you can't punish us for that..."

In the private world, if that's your excuse for violating serious orders from your employers, you get to enjoy a paid vacation via unemployment insurance. In the police world, you probably get a medal.

Archer said...

@David: Nope. For technical/access issues like this, the "investigation" takes about 30 seconds.

If their statement is, "The investigation is ongoing," then it's only a partial statement. The full version goes, "The investigation is ongoing until such time as the public has forgotten about it and we can conclude it quietly and internally so nobody gets fired and our a$$es are covered."

If I manipulated communications records, I'd be fired and/or prosecuted. No warnings, no questions asked. Why is it I expect the worst thing they potentially face is "additional training"?