Ryan lashes out at IRS commissioner: 'Nobody believes you'

It must be quite an experience for a self-styled all powerful bureaucrat to be accused of lying. And in such a public fashion.

These are people who are used to getting their own way, period. You think the electeds are bad? Think again. The people here consider the electeds to be like the Christmas help. The bureaucrats were there before the electeds came in and they will be there after the electeds leave.

As far as the "lost emails" are concerned, this is either a lie or the worst form or IT misconduct I have ever heard of (which should certainly result in the prompt dismissal of the IRS's CIO and senior staff).

An article published by Businessweek this past Wednesday explains why.

The IRS has Microsoft’s (MSFT) Outlook for its 90,000 workers and gives them 500 megabytes of space for mail, or about 6,000 per inbox, up from 150 MB before the summer of 2011. If you reach the limit, the system generates an alert that space needs to be freed up for continued e-mail use. Plenty of U.S. companies have a similar practice.

That certainly sounds familiar. Most offices function this way. If the user's mailfile becomes to big things can slow down, and a whole host of other reasons to keep the mailfile itself to a manageable size.

However... here comes the problem. Like most offices, they encourage employees to archive old emails to keep that mailfile manageable... HOWEVER:

The archive is maintained on the employee’s computer—not on a corporate server—and is not part of the daily systemwide mail backup

WHAT? The archived email is stored on the C Drive? On the local computer?

I have never heard of such a ridiculous concept in my life. Firstly, you are probably limiting your employees to the use of one PC, ever. One of the main purposes of a network is that you can access the shared drives from anywhere. Why the hell would an agency with 90,000(!!!) employees encourage file storage on a local drive?

What does that mean? Well the IRS issued a statement saying

“An electronic version of the archived e-mail would not be retained if an employee’s hard drive is recycled or if the hard drive crashes and cannot be recovered,”

Now... in my office, we're not rich by any means. When someone leaves and a new employee replaces them we simply use wipedrive enterprise, put a new image on, and give the same PC to the replacement. But it doesn't matter because whatever the former employee did has been backed up. Both on site (on the servers) and in an off-site data center.

This bureaucrat is meaning to sit there and tell us that these simple things are not done at a government agency of 90,000 people that REPORTS TO and is RESPONSIBLE TO the people of the USA?

As I said, either he is point blank lying or the entire upper echelon of the IRS has been involved in mismanagement of sensitive information and should be fired en masse.

Forget about my office for a moment... A friend of mine runs a bakery that specializes in high end cakes for all sorts of fancy occasions. Besides for the baking staff he has about 15 or so office staff. If a PC crashes he doesn't lose his orders. They're backed up in his LAN room and they're backed up with a service he pays for.

So a small business of ~20 follows IT best practices and the freaking IRS doesn't?

Stop it. No really... stop it.

a reply to: Metallicus

It was a beautiful thing to watch, a nice change from the love fest these hearings become.

originally posted by: Snarl
a reply to: Metallicus

Did you see the face of Koskinen during that video. Smug SOB lied and lied and lied ... because We The People can do nothing about it ... except resort to violence.

Yes, I was screaming at the TV.

originally posted by: kruphix



You are being played.

Ummm where have you been for the last year, living under your desk?

The NSA, the only part of the Government that actually listens to the
people. Hahah, so much so they even record all of it, in case someone
loses something they have back ups.

Why don't we just subpoena the emails from the NSA? I mean, I am sure they are somewhere in Utah in on an HDD of 'government officials to squeeze at a later date'.

This is sheer nonsense but it is relayed to the public as a witch hunt. It always is. Hillary and Benghazi...witch hunt...arms sales to Syrian rebels...witch hunt....IRS stalking conservative groups...witch hunt...Unemployment is over 10% and no jobs created...witch hunt...at which point the common plebe gets bored and moves on to why Justin Beiber got a DUI or watches the latest LOLZ video on You Tube while they shove common core down our throats to create an even more dumbed down generation to come.

This country is FARKED...from the politicians down to the spoonfed, supported and dependent EBT scam artists it is a big steaming pile of horse **&^ that is 10 feet to high to climb out of.

The Levin brothers are a perfect example of politics and why there should be term limits in the house and congress....

a reply to: Metallicus

Thanks for the Tube Metallicus F&S.

I heard later on in the thread the IRS are individually
using Office. I created a separate directory, \SAVERS--
and go back every week onto a DVD-RW. In fact, every
compressed archive you have from Office can get the
same treatment without angering the Washington
State gods of digital order. What a Country Crock...

Total redundancy, a third time local for half a buck.
And you're trying to tell me two years of emails are
missing from the hard drive? Good luck on that one.
Like I said before Lois-- start shopping for an eye shadow
that doesn't clash with orange. Your bosses are shredding
your pension right now... and I think they don't care.

originally posted by: ketsuko
a reply to: kruphix

I have evidence ... My hard drive crashed just a couple weeks ago. And when I plugged in the new hard drive, guess what was the only thing I didn't lose? My EMAILS! They aren't on my computer's hard drive. They're on a separate server, just like Lerner's would have been. And ever since the Eisenhower days, the government makes records of everything in triplicate including emails now.

My husband's company keeps all his emails backed up on separate servers even the ones he makes copies of to his hard drive for personal record keeping and documentation. Are you telling me that the government is a shoddier outfit than my husband's employer? He can tell you it's a lie because he deals with the government agencies on a daily basis.

Go read up on the topic some before you comment.

The IRS has said that they only allow limited storage for emails on the server, it comes out to about 2000 emails. After that the only option an employee has to save emails is to locally archive them. If you have a local archive on your hard drive and it crashes...guess what, you lost your emails.

Also, the IRS has stated that their backup policies overwrite the backups every 6 months to save storage space. Since these emails are from longer than 6 months ago and the hard drive has crashed...the emails are lost.

It's quite simple if you understand IT...and if you don't understand IT, then it is very easy for others to manipulate you and mislead you.

originally posted by: jrod
a reply to: kruphix

We are being played.

The circumstantial evidence is overwhelming, a rational person does not ignore this.

I believe the only way these emails will be made public is with the help of some independent hackers.

Really...what is the circumstantial evidence that is so overwhelming???

Hackers aren't going to help you...they can't hack what doesn't exist anymore.


And yes, you are being played...you have bought into a manufactured scandal that doesn't really exist.

originally posted by: burntheships

originally posted by: kruphix



You are being played.

Ummm where have you been for the last year, living under your desk?

The NSA, the only part of the Government that actually listens to the
people. Hahah, so much so they even record all of it, in case someone
loses something they have back ups.

They store meta data...not the actual data itself.

So they could possibly tell you who Lerner emailed and when, but not the contents of the email. That is if you are convinced that the NSA has that information.

originally posted by: slowisfast
a reply to: kruphix

Do you store all of your emails on the physical hard drive of your workstation?

Does anybody? Do you think that's how email works?

They aren't using gmail or yahoo mail...the are probably on a Microsoft Exchange Server. It has already been stated that IRS employees, like almost all companies, have limited storage space on their email server. Then to save emails you have to archive them...according to the IRS they have their employees archive onto their local hard drives. It's a poor practice, but that is their practice.

Then, if your hard drive crashes...you lose all your archived emails. You will still have what is stored on the server, but not the ones you archived.

It's clear that you actually don't know how email works...so please don't attempt to lecture me about it.

a reply to: kruphix

Have you not been reading this thread? Plenty of evidence right here in this thread of the foul play at the IRS.

We are being played. I was able to get my .02 out there on the first page so more can see it, what I write now is not as important as it will likely slide away.

This is a far cry from a manufactured scandal, had a company under IRS investigation pulled a similar stunt those emails would be promptly found and used as evidence.

Now the game that is being played is damage control...the cat is out of the bag. Only a fool or shill(IRS lawyers) would try to make excuses for the IRS at this point.

I know why they're trying to use this lame BS excuse:

That guy is so old, he doesn't even know how to turn on a computer. I bet he still uses an abacus for a calculator!

Therefore, he has no clue how email works.

"We'll just tell 'em that all six of your hard driver thingies broke so then they can't see how bad we've been!"

originally posted by: kruphix
The IRS has said that they only allow limited storage for emails on the server, it comes out to about 2000 emails. After that the only option an employee has to save emails is to locally archive them. If you have a local archive on your hard drive and it crashes...guess what, you lost your emails.

Also, the IRS has stated that their backup policies overwrite the backups every 6 months to save storage space. Since these emails are from longer than 6 months ago and the hard drive has crashed...the emails are lost.

It's quite simple if you understand IT...and if you don't understand IT, then it is very easy for others to manipulate you and mislead you.

I've been in the Army for going on 9 years. In my Microsoft Outlook inbox I have a scanned copy of my original contract that was emailed to me by my recruiter.

That email is also about 9 years old.

What makes you think that you're not the one being manipulated when it comes to their archival storage story? After all they've had plenty of time to concoct a believable-enough story to attempt to placate the committee.

Don't worry though, nothing will come back on your Teflon Messiah and a few of his lackeys that were orgasming in 2008 and 2012 will be sacrificed just like in every other scandal.

But I have the feeling that one day the wrong one will be thrown under the bus, then we'll really see the man behind the curtain.

a reply to: kruphix

And then it goes into storage. Additionally, they are required to print it into hard copy. This is the IRS, the same people who require us to keep all our tax records for 7 years. If they don't keep any better records of their own internal communications than that, I have no reason to keep my own internal records beyond two or three years, either. After all, they won't have a record of it. They have no space to store my digital tax records.

Hell, we've been filing online for more than 7 years, and in addition to the hard copy prints we keep on-hand, our digital company also keeps the records in digital format that we can look up anytime we want. Why do they bother to keep that archive if this is all the better the IRS stores its own internal records?

a reply to: jrod

Have you not been reading this thread? Plenty of evidence right here in this thread of the foul play at the IRS.

This is a common tactic when there really is no evidence. People will claim that there is evidence everywhere...but they won't actually give the evidence.

If it is so prevalent, then it should be easy to show me some of this hard evidence that makes this such an easy case.

a reply to: Lipton

I've been in the Army for going on 9 years. In my Microsoft Outlook inbox I have a scanned copy of my original contract that was emailed to me by my recruiter.

That email is also about 9 years old.

Ok...and what does that prove about the IRS email system and storage limits???

I don't understand why people don't get this...YOUR email and email systems at where YOU work say absolutely nothing about the IRS email system.

This is called anecdotal evidence...and all it does it give evidence about YOUR experience...but not about anyone elses.

originally posted by: kruphix
a reply to: jrod

Have you not been reading this thread? Plenty of evidence right here in this thread of the foul play at the IRS.

This is a common tactic when there really is no evidence. People will claim that there is evidence everywhere...but they won't actually give the evidence.

If it is so prevalent, then it should be easy to show me some of this hard evidence that makes this such an easy case.

She took the 5th.

Innocent Public Servants don't refuse to talk to Congress.

It's kind of hard to have proof when they destroyed the evidence.

originally posted by: ketsuko
a reply to: kruphix

And then it goes into storage. Additionally, they are required to print it into hard copy. This is the IRS, the same people who require us to keep all our tax records for 7 years. If they don't keep any better records of their own internal communications than that, I have no reason to keep my own internal records beyond two or three years, either. After all, they won't have a record of it. They have no space to store my digital tax records.

Hell, we've been filing online for more than 7 years, and in addition to the hard copy prints we keep on-hand, our digital company also keeps the records in digital format that we can look up anytime we want. Why do they bother to keep that archive if this is all the better the IRS stores its own internal records?

Sure, they are supposed to keep records...but it appears that they haven't.

I have no problem with people getting in trouble over that.

But it says absolutely nothing about the case.

a reply to: whyamIhere

Innocent Public Servants don't refuse to talk to Congress.

Innocent people don't destroy their hard drives either.

Only people with something to hide.