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SPECIAL REPORT
The White House email controversy: can email messages just disappear?
By David Gewirtz
We're starting to get a more complete picture of what's happening with email in the White House. It's one of those very key issues that can seem mundane. I was at a dinner party recently where I discussed the topic. The people there were quite technically literate, one was an IBMer, and yet, as I began to spell out the scope of the issue, I could see eyes beginning to glaze over.
Email is annoying and its execution is often arcane and, frankly, boring.
But it's critically important as well. Email, in our 21st century world, is a glue that ties us together. More to the point, it's a glue that ties us together when we're doing work, and in the case of the White House, very important work. Email is a glue that allows us to communicate asynchronously with other people. In other words, I can write an email message at my convenience, say at 4am, and you can read it at your convenience, say at 1pm the next day.
"Let's find out whether Senator Leahy's got a clue about what can happen to email and whether Jon Stewart's rearranging White House statements just to get a laugh."
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As my business runs on email, so does much of the White House. The difference is, if we here at ZATZ make an error and a message doesn't go through, or a message gets lost, the damage is containable. In most cases, it's easily recoverable. Even in the worst case, in a bet-the-company case, only ZATZ would be affected. But if something goes wrong with email at the White House, the whole world could be affected.
Remember, email at the White House isn't just email, as we normally think of it. Email at the White House is communication at the highest levels of the Executive Branch, communication within the leadership of the most powerful nation in the world. A breakdown in communication can be a very baaaad thing when you're talking about people who could have their finger on The Button.
By digging into this issue, we've uncovered some troubling questions. We've found that millions of messages from White House personnel are likely traveling "in the open", without any security. We've found that archiving strategies for email in the Executive Office of the President are so bad as to be almost silly. We've seen claims of possible missing email messages, again in the millions, with no real explanation for where they went.
And we've seen obfuscation and confusion at all levels. In this article, we're going to look at how many messages may be missing and then deconstruct some of the damning statements made by the loyal opposition. Don't worry, though. While this week it'll look like we're mostly picking on the Democrats, fear not. Next week, we'll be asking tough questions of the White House about why they chose to migrate email systems in the middle of a build-up to war.
It's freaky stuff and you'll definitely want to read that article when it comes out. For now, though, let's find out whether Senator Leahy's got a clue about what can happen to email and whether Jon Stewart's rearranging White House statements just to get a laugh.
Yeah, you know what's coming.
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