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

originally posted by: OpenMindedRealist
Kruphix, thanks for playing the role of the naive, contentious, painfully misinformed Obama supporter during this debate. Someone has to play devil's advocate in these threads or else things might get boring.

It would get boring. Just remember that the next time you're in a thread where everyone agrees with everyone else.

Try to avoid the name-calling though.

Truth be told, how do we even know the hard drives were destroyed, where is the proof of that?

They could be lying about all of it.

originally posted by: Stormdancer777
Truth be told, how do we even know the hard drives were destroyed, where is the proof of that?

They could be lying about all of it.

Storm even if they were crashed, or destroyed by some amazing feat of God they can be almost completely recovered with forensic techniques we have today. I have personally witnessed it back 15 years ago when I looked after 2000 plus servers of all kinds.

The company that the IRS contracts to do it's 3rd party back-ups of emails has redundant servers and hard drives. smh

If people actually believe their BS, then we are a lost nation.

Oh wow, look how easy it is to find the "lost" IRS emails...

In mid-April, Judicial Watch released a batch of IRS documents (produced earlier in this litigation) revealing that Lerner had communicated with the Department of Justice about whether it was possible to criminally prosecute certain tax-exempt entities.

Judicial Watch IRS Docs Archives

Now wasn't that hard? LMAO!

originally posted by: Lipton

originally posted by: kruphix

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.

No, it isn't anecdotal, it is an example of the way government agencies (in this case the entire Armed Forces and the DOD) work.

I and MILLIONS of other service members are capable of logging in to our email accounts anywhere in the world, on any computer. You mean to tell me that the same email service (Outlook) is somehow magically different for the IRS?

Sometimes I wish ATS had a block option, mainly because of blatantly ignorant posters that are more worried about their particular politician possibly getting # on, rather than about their fellow citizens.

But whatever guy, IDGAF. Keep saying things like 'anecdotal evidence', but you have yet to offer ANY legitimate counterargument to ANY scandal this administration has been involved in.

Don't go quitting your day job Jay Carney.

Yes, it is anecdotal evidence...do you know the definition of the term? It is the exact definition of anecdotal evidence.

You seem to have some anger issues, but don't take it out on me for you not understanding how email systems and backup systems work.

I don't have to offer any counterargument to fabricated scandals...it is on the GOP to offer any type of evidence which they haven't been able to despite thousands of documents they have gone through and hundreds of wasted hours in testimony.

Bottom line is that your personal experience means absolutely nothing when talking about the IRS's systems and policies.

a reply to: mclarenmp4

I'm not sure how I can lose credibility for relaying information that is being widely reported on. I'm not the one saying this is how the IRS systems work...the IRS is saying it and many people are reporting the exact same thing.

We don't live in a perfect world, things happen. I'm sure no one thought that Target would be able to get hacked and lose thousands of credit card numbers. I'm sure no one thought a low level contractor could get some much sensitive information out of the NSA (Snowden) or that a low ranking soldier could leak so much information (Manning).

Be honest with yourself, I'm sure your system isn't as secure and redundant as you think it is.

But you can be angry with me all you want...I didn't design the IRS system...just stating the facts as they are being laid out to everyone.

a reply to: neo96

So the 'official' story goes.

But people need to get real they collect, and STORE much more than that.

Prove it.

Sorry, I don't play the fantasy game...I just go off the known facts. Anything beyond that is illogical.

If emails are stored on the agents hard drive, and Lerner's hard drive crashed, guess who crashed it...

originally posted by: Djarums
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.

I'm only posting here so that I can refer to the link you posted when needed.

With that said..Wow, what a bunch of pure fabricated BS. Your link proves it, but seriously, anyone with an email address knows that they are not stored on personal hardrives. Why aren't more liberals standing up against this? Yeah yeah, I get that conservatives were the target, but as an independent, I know that this is total and complete corrupted bullcrap.

See, the reason why these issues will never be solved is because they always have a political leaning stamped on them. So in this case, all of the die-hard Obama supporters, you know, just ignore it. Why? Wake up already! It's time to knock it off, stop pandering to the "party" so we can stop this crap for real, please?

*double post*

What's good for the goose is good for the gander

Legal precedent to the unagreed to social contract has been set

originally posted by: kruphix
Yes, it is anecdotal evidence...do you know the definition of the term? It is the exact definition of anecdotal evidence.

Bottom line is that your personal experience means absolutely nothing when talking about the IRS's systems and policies.

I think it is you that the definition (among other things) is lost on...

ANECDOTAL
1a : of, relating to, or consisting of anecdotes
b : anecdotic 2
2: based on or consisting of reports or observations of usually unscientific observers
3: of, relating to, or being the depiction of a scene suggesting a story

I offered a first hand account of how a government email service works that I have used for nearly a decade. The fact that the account can be accessed anywhere, anytime, on nearly any computer means that (in the case of the DOD, the DA and every branch of service) the emails are stored somewhere else.

This is the case for millions of personnel, which would be the polar opposite of anecdotal.

You seem to have some anger issues

Only when dealing with painfully dense individuals.

...not understanding how email systems and backup systems work.

And apparently you missed the earlier post, but the IRS The IRS Had a Contract With an Email Backup Company since 2005. So apparently not only is Lois Lerner and party too worthless to operate a computer, but the IRS is also incapable of securing data, being forthcoming about the data loss that occurred months ago and on top of all of that that also means that Sonasoft was defrauding the government by failing to fulfill their contractual obligations by not backing up emails?

So please, inform me (in your own words) of the intricacies of email systems and backup systems, seeing as how you come off as a subject matter expert. Of course I'd be forever indebted to you if you could actually manage to do so in your own words, rather than a wikipedia regurgitation.

Honestly I'm beginning to think you're either trolling, or a shill.

But at a minimum you're a joke, as is the weak defense you pose for all parties involved.

So...there's been quite a bit of back and forth about "My email system does this...", "the IRS email system should do that", etc.

It's kind of pointless really. As others have stated, depending on how the system is configured, the data may very well be gone. It does sound suspicious, however, that there have been a number of hardware failures that have apparently made the data in question irretrievable.

I've designed and implemented 4 systems for (non-US) government departments as recently as two years ago. The largest was for an agency with 75,000 employees. All data is retained on the various tiers of disk storage for 1 year. Those datastores are replicated between 3 locations around the country, and once a year, each dataset is written off to tape in two locations and stored indefinitely.

The software interface for email backups allowed an administrator to search for any item (not just emails - calenders, meetings, notes, etc.) through a GUI and pretty much locate the data immediately. This could then be restored into a recovery area for browsing, etc. in a matter of minutes.

Data that had been archived off to tape is a different story. You would have to recover the data from the entire datastore (could be 100's of TBs) to some disk. This could take weeks. Once that's done, you then need to search through the data in the same way you would as described previously to recover what you wanted.

The whole system cost around $5m at the time - not taking into account network costs. Technically, it's a pretty easy problem to solve using a variety of technologies from a variety of vendors. Money-wise, it's not that big a spend for a large department. $5m is a drop in the ocean.

Does anyone know what the IRS is legally obliged to keep? For example, companies subject to Sarbanes-Oxley regulations need to be able to produce any email for a period of years for any employee. Vendors have developed systems that solve the problems of storing the data. It's most definitely technically possible to store email "indefinitely" - but was the IRS actually obliged to do so?

If the answer is "yes", then you would imagine their IT department has deployed such a system. If it wasn't done correctly, then heads should be rolling...
If someone has destroyed data, well then that's a whole other can of worms.

originally posted by: Destinyone
a reply to: Metallicus

Methinks you'll be selling a lot of that swampland...to Obama diehards.

This is making the rounds today...people are getting angry as hell...

Des

Imagine if the majority of the US population did this for next tax year.

Can you say neuter the IRS fast?

a reply to: Metallicus

What a joke. People still fall for this dog and pony show. Let me know when someone gets held accountable . This is nothing but pr to get his party sheeples excited and distracted.

Same type of harsh language was televised and used against congress and the ceo of the corporations that stole the tax payers money for their private bailout. What happened to them in the end. They laughed all the way to the bank. They create the laws and are above the laws. Nothing but language will come from this as proven by history.

Dont think for a second both party dont know what is going on.

Obama and the I.R.S. are some of the worst liars I've ever seen. The old adage 'practice makes perfect' doesn't hold in this administration. The lies are something like my five year old grand-daughter would concoct.

I thought reality . . . growing awareness . . . perhaps some feeble shreds of logic

had finally

thinned the ranks of the O-bots hereon. Evidently I was somewhat premature in such assumptions.

How anyone can defend this admin on this OP issue is mind boggling.

Yes, I know they are both--DEMS and GOP--in bed with their globalist pimps.

a reply to: Lipton

Once again, yes it is anecdotal evidence. I asked if you new the definition of the term and instead you gave me the definition of a single word. So let me help you out.

definitions.uslegal.com...

Anecdotal evidence refers to an informal account of evidence in the form of an anecdote. It is the opposite of scientific evidence. Anecdotal evidence consists of events that tend to support a conclusion of discrimination. It may include individual experiences or stories, and statements by employers showing bias.

This is exactly what you are stating. A personal experience that you want to use to support your own bias opinion. It is anecdotal evidence and offers no proof of anything.

Now if you worked in the IT department of the IRS during the time that Lois Lerner worked there, that would be direct evidence. But you are giving a perspective as an email user from a different entity and trying to say that it proves something about the IRS.

I offered a first hand account of how a government email service works that I have used for nearly a decade. The fact that the account can be accessed anywhere, anytime, on nearly any computer means that (in the case of the DOD, the DA and every branch of service) the emails are stored somewhere else.

Your lack of understanding how email works in this case is painfully ignorant. I will get to that in a second. However, again...this is anecdotal evidence. The DoD's email system proves nothing about the IRS email system. If you can't understand this simple fact, then I really am just talking to a brick wall. Do you think all government agencies use a central email system? That you could log into an IRS email server and access your own emails?

And apparently you missed the earlier post, but the IRS The IRS Had a Contract With an Email Backup Company since 2005. So apparently not only is Lois Lerner and party too worthless to operate a computer, but the IRS is also incapable of securing data, being forthcoming about the data loss that occurred months ago and on top of all of that that also means that Sonasoft was defrauding the government by failing to fulfill their contractual obligations by not backing up emails?

And again, you seem to have zero comprehension of what is going on. Yes, they have an email backup system in place. These emails weren't from months ago, they are from years ago. It has been widely reported that it is the policy of the backup company to overwrite the backups on a 6 month cycle. They do this to save storage space and with the thinking that if you want to restore your system, you aren't going to go back more than 6 months.

This is a DISASTER BACKUP SYSTEM...this isn't an archival system where it keeps everything you have ever had on your servers/hard drives. Plus, it is only backing up the email server...not Lerner's personal hard drive.

You don't seem like you have very advanced knowledge of IT systems, so I really don't expect you to understand this. And neither does the GOP, they are actually relying on your ignorance (and millions of others) in order to spread this manufactured scandal. They love ignorance...it makes it easy for them. And you have eaten it up...you can access your email...so EVERYONE should be just like you.

So please, inform me (in your own words) of the intricacies of email systems and backup systems, seeing as how you come off as a subject matter expert. Of course I'd be forever indebted to you if you could actually manage to do so in your own words, rather than a wikipedia regurgitation.

Sure, not a problem...I'll try to keep it simple for you.

The IRS uses Microsoft Outlook for their email system. They don't use Yahoo or gmail...they host their own email server and store the emails on their email server (think of a "server" as a central computer...and their are most likely multiple email servers...trying to keep it simple). Now, since we live in a finite world, these servers have finite storage capacity. In order to manage this, the IRS has a policy that each employee only has X amount of space for their email (This is a very common practice in the corporate world). From what I have read, this space amounts to about 2000 emails...that's not a lot for someone doing business...especially for someone in Lerner's position. Myself, I probably hit 2000 emails every single month.

Are you still with me?

Good. Since they only have limited space on the servers, once you are getting close to that storage limit they will most likely be getting an email from IT telling them to archive or delete some emails before they run out of space. What happens when you run out of space...people sending you emails have them bounced back to them. Of course, they might not get a notification that they are about to run out of space, I worked for a place (anecdotal evidence here) where if you hit your limit, you just stopped getting emails...most of the time a coworker would call you and say "Hey, your mailbox is full".

Haven't lost you yet...have I?

Ok, so now Mrs. Lerner's mailbox is full or close to full. She has two options, delete some emails or archive them. According to all reports, she decided to archive them...onto her local hard drive. Bad decision, she should have archived them on a network drive...but she didn't. So at anyone point, she probably has less than 2000 emails saved on the email servers and then a bunch more archived on her laptop. She doesn't really notice this, at one point when using her email a message probably popped up asking her if she wants to archive old messages, she probably just clicked "Yes"...and didn't notice anything. Because when she opens up Outlook...she still sees all those old messages right along side her new messages. Here is how Outlook works, you open it up...it loads everything you have in your archive files and it checks the email servers for messages...and it displays them all together. By looking, you would have no idea which are archived and which are from the server.

Any questions yet?

Awesome...let's move onto the backup system. From everything I have read, Sonasoft backs up their EMAIL SYSTEM. So that means they back up the email servers...not the archived files on people's local hard drives. So at any one point in time, for each individual, they are probably backing up their most recent 2000 emails. They do this routinely, from what I read it is done every day for the IRS. As you can imagine, that is a lot of space being taken up to do these backups. Every single day they take a snapshot of the email servers and store them...that is a lot of duplicated information and it takes up a ton of storage space. So they have a policy...they keep a backup for 6 months, then after that they use the space that backup was stored in to create the next new backup. They have this policy to because 1) they don't have infinite storage and 2) if you have a disaster and want to restore your email server, you probably aren't going to go back more than 6 months. Please note, this is not an email archival system that keeps a copy of an email in backup even if it is deleted off the server. It is a snapshot of the server at the time of the backup.

One last piece, hang in there...I'm out of space so I will continue in next post.

a reply to: Lipton

(Continued from previous post)

Now we come to Lerner's situation. The emails they are looking for are more than 6 months old...so you can pretty much bet they are not on the backup system. Like I said previously, the backup system will most likely have her most recent 2000 emails for the past 6 months. So you and others can probably stop the witch hunt on Sonasoft...they did their job exactly as written in their contract.

Here is where we come to Lerner's crashed hard drive. She archived her older emails onto her local hard drive. Like I said before, bad idea. She should have done this to a network drive which is probably backed up. Most companies I know of don't back up local hard drives of employees, it is usually encouraged to save all your work related documents onto a network drive. But from all reports, Lerner didn't save to a network drive...she saved to her hard drive....and it crashed. Not only did it crash, the IRS reports that they sent her crashed hard drive and others (sounds like a policy of theirs to me) to be recycled. If they still possessed the hard drive, it is likely someone could recover the archived emails...but it simply does not exist anymore.

So here is where we are at. Those emails are not in the backup system because they only take snapshots of the email server to restore the system exactly how it was to a certain point (most backup systems work like this...note again....this isn't an archival system) and they only keep 6 months of snapshots. Those emails were archived on Lerner's local hard drive, which crashed and was recycled...it is physically not in existence anymore.

So, there you go...hopefully you actually took the time to read it and educate yourself a little.


It is really bad IT policy, it is a really poor decision for Lerner to archive onto her local hard drive, and it is a poor decision for them to recycle crashed hard drives instead of keeping them just for cases like this. But all reports point to this is what has happened.

I don't care how your DoD email works, I don't care how someone else's government email works, it provides zero proof into how the IRS email system works. All we have to go on are all the reports coming out about the email system, and what I described above is how the reports are claiming it works. I don't make up facts to attempt to support my opinion, I don't use anecdotal evidence to claim that everyone's experience is the same as mine. I go off of what is currently available and known.

Here are some articles that talk about the IRS email system, you can go through them to confirm what I have just stated. But please, check your ignorance at the door and stop claiming that since your email works a certain way, then that must mean the IRS email system works in the exact same way.

www.businessweek.com...
www.washingtonpost.com...
www.foxnews.com...
www.usatoday.com...

originally posted by: kruphix
a reply to: neo96

So the 'official' story goes.

But people need to get real they collect, and STORE much more than that.

Prove it.

Sorry, I don't play the fantasy game...I just go off the known facts. Anything beyond that is illogical.

Never heard of that guy Snowden eh ?


He already proved it.

Otherwise the NSA has the worlds largest 'phone book'.

Yep someone is playing a fantasy game.

Not this person though.