IRS Claims Two Years Of Emails Were Destroyed In A 'Computer Crash;' Congressman Asks The NSA To Supply 'Missing' Email Metadata

from the hilarious-except-for-the-tax-dollars-funding-the-debacle dept

The IRS is currently being investigated by Congress for some possibly politically-motivated "attention" it directed towards "Tea Party" and other conservative groups that operated as tax-exempt entities. Along the way, IRS official Lois Lerner, who was the first to publicly disclose the inappropriate targeting, was also one of the first government officials to plead the Fifth (twice) in government hearings.

The Congressional investigation demanded copies of Lois Lerner's emails from the IRS. Some were turned over to the House Ways and Means Committee, but not everything it sought. Now, the IRS is telling the committee that it's not going to get everything it asked for.

The IRS has told Congress that it lost more than two years’ worth of emails involving former IRS official Lois Lerner, due to a computer crash.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) on Friday said it was “unacceptable” that he was just learning of this problem now, after a lengthy investigation into Lerner’s involvement in the IRS targeting scandal.

Camp points out that the IRS withheld these emails for over a year before suddenly "discovering" they were unavailable. The IRS says it can find everything Lerner sent to and received from other IRS employees but nothing containing correspondence with those outside the agency.

Obviously, this convenient "computer crash" has generated a lot of skepticism. For one thing, a "computer crash" doesn't really have the power to destroy electronic communications. Email is always almost stored somewhere else other than the local user's computer. And even if the IRS meant a "server crash" instead of a "computer crash," any decent server system contains multiple levels of redundancy.

The Blaze sought input from Norman Cillo, a former Microsoft project manager, who presented six reasons why he believes the IRS is lying about its inability to recover these emails. Number one on the list seems to be the most applicable.

I believe the government uses Microsoft Exchange for their email servers. They have built-in exchange mail database redundancy. So, unless they did not follow Microsoft's recommendations they are telling a falsehood.

The IRS's own policies on email state that its employees use both Microsoft Outlook and Exchange, which means it should have some form of backup available.

Secure Messaging enrollment is an automated process for all LAN accounts with an Exchange mailbox in IRS. You can find the instructions for configuring the Outlook client to use the certificates at the Secure Enterprise Messaging Systems (SEMS) web site: http://documentation.sems.enterprise.irs.gov/.

According to Cillo, the only other explanation for the IRS's inability to recover these emails is that the agency is "totally mismanaged and has the worst IT department ever." Unfortunately, the government seems to have a lot of mismanaged and terrible IT departments, so this may be closer to the truth than anyone would really like to admit. Perhaps the general ineptitude of large government agencies is behind the Treasury Department's policy that all email sent to or from IRS employees be "archived" via hard copy printouts.

If you create or receive email messages during the course of your daily work, you are responsible for ensuring that you manage them properly. The Treasury Department’s current email policy requires emails and attachments that meet the definition of a federal record be added to the organization’s files by printing them (including the essential transmission data) and filing them with related paper records. If transmission and receipt data are not printed by the email system, annotate the paper copy.

There's more information here, citing the IRS's own internal guidelines on tape backups, etc., that suggest further levels of redundancy, as well as the commissioner of the IRS testifying that the agency stores its emails on servers.

Critics believe the IRS has simply "vanished" the crucial emails in order to cut Lerner adrift and make it appear she acted alone. Any evidence that would tie outside government agencies (including the administration itself) into this situation has been deemed unrecoverable. Supposedly, there should be paper copies of the missing emails, but no one in Congress has requested these and the IRS certainly isn't offering to look.

But one Congressman thinks he has a solution to the missing email dilemma. Steve Stockman (last seen here threatening to bring a defamation lawsuit against someone who uttered true facts about his criminal past) knows some people who have a whole lot of email data just laying around.

“I have asked NSA Director Rogers to send me all metadata his agency has collected on Lois Lerner’s email accounts for the period which the House sought records,” said Stockman. “The metadata will establish who Lerner contacted and when, which helps investigators determine the extent of illegal activity by the IRS.”

Yeah, let me know how that works out for you, Steve. The NSA can't even confirm or deny its monthly water usage at its Utah data site, much less that it has metadata pertaining to Americans' communications.

[Sidebar: I do really love the fact that this sort of thing is becoming increasingly common -- the use of the NSA as the backup-of-last-resort for phone/email/internet communications data. If anyone claims it can't find email X or phone record Y, someone's going to say, "Hey, I'll bet the NSA has a copy!" Hilarious. The NSA will never again be allowed to pretend it doesn't harvest data on American citizens.]

The whole letter, which begins with some light ass-kissing of new NSA director Michael Rogers ("thank you for your 33 years of, and continued service to, our country...") and closes with a bit of grandstanding, surreally asking "the Agency" to send all relevant metadata on the missing Lerner emails to "Donny@mail.house.gov." All in all, probably one of the most incongruous demands the NSA has ever received, a letter which conjures up the image of a late-night meeting in an underground parking garage, with sunglassed NSA liaisons handing over a briefcase full of metadata to a 19-year-old intern dressed in his dad's suit.

It's pretty hard to shake the impression that this is a coverup. As always, the specter of pure ineptitude lurks in the background, as it often does when large bureaucracies tangle with technology. But until the IRS presents further evidence detailing how exactly these emails went missing, it's safe to assume there's been an active effort made to cover up government impropriety.

Filed Under: backups, computer crash, congress, dave camp, irs, lois lerner, metadata, nsa, servers, steve stockman, surveillance

Federal Election Commission Says Political Action Committees Can Accept Payment Via Bitcoins

from the converted-into-dollars dept

After some amount of hand-wringing, the Federal Election Commission has said that political action committees (PACs) may accept bitcoin donations, though they can't then buy goods and services with those bitcoins. Furthermore, it has to convert the bitcoins to dollars before depositing them into its campaign accounts. In other words, its effectively allowing the use of bitcoin as a payment system, rather than as a currency. However, at the same time, it will allow campaigns to buy bitcoins as an investment vehicle.

There's also some confusion over what this all means. Rather than issuing a full ruling, the FEC released an "advisory opinion" based on a specific request from the Make Your Laws PAC, which specifically asked for the ability to accept bitcoin donations up to $100. What's not clear is if the FEC is just agreeing to that level of donations or if it's okaying larger donations as well. In fact, it appears that the FEC commissioners don't even agree with each other as to whether there's a limit on donation sizes:

That low sum assuaged the concerns of several commissioners about the risks of the virtual currency, said Commissioner Ellen Weintraub, a Democratic appointee.

"The $100 limit was really important to us," she said. "We have to balance a desire to accommodate innovation, which is a good thing, with a concern that we continue to protect transparency in the system and ensure that foreign money doesn't seep in."

[....] But FEC Chairman Lee Goodman, a Republican appointee to the panel, disagreed. He said that the advisory opinion treats bitcoin donations as in-kind contributions -- not official currency -- meaning that the only limits that apply are the federal caps on all forms of accepted donations. Those limit individuals to giving $2,600 to a candidate per election and $5,000 to a political action committee. Individuals and corporations can give unlimited sums to super PACs.

"To me, the opinion that the commission approved today supports the right of bitcoin users to contribute as they would all other kind things of value," he said, such as silver dollars and works of art.

So that's likely to create some sort of mess somewhere down the road.

In the meantime, it's notable that well-known techie -- and one of the small group of clued-in Congressional Representatives -- Jared Polis also just happened to announce today that you can donate to his campaign via bitcoin. Looking at that page, I note that the highest amount allowed is... $100. It would appear he's taking no chances with the disagreement over amounts allowed by the FEC. Polis claims to be the first Congressional rep to accept bitcoin, though others have pointed out that Rep. Steve Stockman has been accepting bitcoin for his Senate campaign for a few months now.

Either way, it's yet another step forward in making bitcoin somewhat more mainstream.

Filed Under: bitcoin, campaign funding, donations, federal election commission, jared polis, pacs, steve stockman

Litigious Congressman Trying To Bury History Of His Arrest Through Lawsuits And Bogus Legal Threats

from the let's-see-how-that-works dept

If you're in Congress, you're supposed to understand the law, right? Representative Steve Stockman from Texas has big ambitions: specifically, he's seeking the nomination in Texas (against incumbent John Cornyn) for the US Senate. Last week, Ken from Popehat did a great job detailing the bizarre and ridiculous defamation lawsuit that Stockman had filed against Texans for a Conservative Majority, a PAC that was supporting Cornyn, claiming that it was defamation for them to claim that he had been "charged with a felony" and had been in jail. As Popehat points out, there's a big problem with the lawsuit, in that not only are those tidbits factual information, Stockman himself has confirmed them:

First problem: as a public figure, Stockman will have to prove that the defendants made false statements against him with actual malice — meaning knowing that they were false or with reckless disregard to their truth or falsity. But as the Dallas Morning News reports, Stockman previously admitted to newspapers that he had been jailed several times and charged with a felony:

Tonight, Rep. Steve Stockman accused a group that supports Sen. John Cornyn of lying about him, by asserting that he had been “jailed more than once” and was “charged with a felony.”

That is strange, because Stockman has admitted to these facts, several times.

“I may have been in jail a couple of times, two or three times,” he told this newspaper.

As for the felony charge, that stemmed from the time his girlfriend hid three Valium tablets in his underpants when he was reporting for a weekend in jail. “When they found that they charged me with a felony,” he told the Houston Chronicle.

I suppose it's possible that Stockman actually means to complain about some other unspecified statements defendants made that don't match things he's already admitted are true. However, as a general rule, if a defamation plaintiff doesn't list a false statement in their complaint, you can predict that either (1) the statement they are complaining about is a non-actionable statement of opinion and they are trying to hide that fact, or (2) it doesn't exist. Remember what we say around these here parts: vagueness in a legal threat is the hallmark of meritless thuggery.

Oh, and it gets worse. The filing itself literally says:

"Even if true... truth is not a defense to this statement.

Except, as pretty much anyone with even a smattering of legal knowledge knows, of course truth is a defense to defamation. Popehat goes even further:

That's pure bullshit, and the attorney who asserted it is either dishonest or an idiot. "Whether the plaintiff is a public figure or not, falsity is always an element of the cause of action, and truth is an absolute defense to defamation. See Garrison v. Louisiana, 379 U.S. 64, 74, 85 S.Ct. 209, 215, 13 L.Ed.2d 125 (1964) (public figure); Philadelphia Newspapers, Inc. v. Hepps, 475 U.S. 767, 768–69, 106 S.Ct. 1558, 1559, 89 L.Ed.2d 783 (1986) (private figure); Bentley v. Bunton, 94 S.W.3d 561, 580 (Tex.2002) (public figure); Turner v. KTRK Television, Inc., 38 S.W.3d 103, 116 (Tex.2000) (public figure); McIlvain v. Jacobs, 794 S.W.2d 14, 15–16 (Tex.1990) (private figure)." Pardo v. Simons, 148 S.W.3d 181, 186 (Tex. App. 2004). The Supreme Court recently reaffirmed this.

Oh, but Stockman apparently isn't done digging. All of the above was from last week. This week, he's decided that anyone who publishes his mugshot from that arrest way back when is somehow criminally liable and may face jailtime.

"A Michigan official has removed documents from a state website that erroneously claimed U.S. Congressman Steve Stockman had been convicted of a crime in the 1970s," Stockman spokesperson Donny Ferguson wrote on the campaign's website. "Michigan's 43rd Judicial District Clerk stated Stockman was never convicted of any charge and the documents were supposed to have been destroyed in 1978. Another Michigan official has advised Stockman he has grounds to file criminal complaints against any person or media organization that published the documents."

Got that last part? That appears to be Stockman's spokesperson threatening any "person or media organization" that publishes the criminal complaint against Stockman or his mugshot. Of course, those are both newsworthy items. Plenty of publications have published the mugshot: And a few, like the Texas Tribune, have published the complaint -- which again Stockman has admitted to in earlier interviews, even if he's claiming it's "criminal" to mention it now. You would think that for an elected official -- and one who claims to be very "conservative" -- he'd understand concepts like freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Oh well. Below you can find both his lawsuit... and his arrest report. Not only is it perfectly reasonable to publish these documents, but Stockman's own actions, making the arrest report even more newsworthy, highlights why any credible news organization covering the story almost has to publish the documents to provide the necessary background for Stockman's own lawsuit and questionable claims.

Filed Under: congress, defamation, steve stockman, texas