i think it was the "Pioneer Bank" basement. maybe the dog ate the whole city of Chattanooga, and hopefully all of the Porkers' restaurant Coptix freaks. he is probably right now eating his way up the highway to Ohio to eat all of GovTechs servers! lets name the dog "Subpoena Spot"!

Or as it has been phrased in other contexts, "Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead." Coverups rely on actual physical people to carry them out. The harder the Instigator, who we will call "kr", works to keep his own fingerprints off the matter, the more others he has to involve to actually do the freakin' work.

They however have fingerprints too: WhoIs traces, corporate ownership documents, emails they have sent to people outside their little cabal--as in this little missive:

From: Jeffrey Cross [jeff's email, see note below]
To: [Correntian writer, email redacted]
Subject: Re: you came to corrente
Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2007 21:29:19 -0400

...Coptix, formerly Cross Computer Consulting, maintains a backup DNS server at Rackspace for Smartech (that's "SmarTech Corporation division of Airnet Group Inc").

Smartech is a primary Internet provider for the RNC, which is a well known fact. Therefore Coptix does in fact maintain (but not manage) backup DNS for who knows how many Republican domains.

I literally don't even know: we built them a DNS management system that pushes updates to the secondary without us seeing them. That's as far as the relationship goes, other than Coptix and RNC both being Smartech customers.

Please note the redactions: I do not post anybody's real name or email address on a blog. Jeffrey's address is easily found on Coptix.com's site, as is the company address if Sen. Leahy or Rep. Waxman need to know where to direct their couriers bearing subpoenas.

Further details on what we've turned up on this case can be found using the search term "gwb43.com". I apologize for all the fluff involving a certain fake picture we got briefly spoofed with, but that part provides a certain entertainment value, comedy relief if you will, as you dredge through the slime of the story they're working so hard to cover up.

Hey, it's cool, yours is a bit more informative. Just stop calling me Jake! :)

Anyway. Whaddaya say we call up Pat Leahy's office and demand that he subpoena the servers? And maybe send one of his own guys to pick it up?

But I still believe
And I will rise up with fists!!

Looking around at the MSM's sites for tommorrow, WAPO and USA Today both are carrying a story about the " dog ate the damn missing e-mails" line from the WH, amazing how long it has taken since the DOJ doc. dump for any of these folks to ACTUALLY start picking up on this stuff. i can see it now, a bunch of inside the beltway print reporters with a photographer hanging out down on Broad St. in Chattanooga hoping to ambush 'ol Averbeck, president of SmarTech, as he makes his way to Porkers for lunch with his freeper friends!

You know I love you all, but your lack of understanding of these issues is sending you off the deep end and making you look like tinfoil hat people.

Valid point: White House staffers used RNC comptuers and Internet servers to conduct political business. Whether or not this was an attempt to obey the Hatch Act or just typical skulduggery, there were times that they used this equipment and service to conduct federal business, like the US Attorney purge. This may violate the record-keeping act.

Valid point: The White House is required to keep copies of all E-mails, the RNC is not.

Invalid point: OHMIGOD THEY HIRED A COMPANY TO DO DNS! IT'S THE SMOKING GUN PROOF THEY'RE ALL IN IT TOGETHER I KNEW IT!!!!!1!!!ONE!!!1!

Geez. Sit down, take a deep breath, and listen.

1. ANYONE can run a mail server. Running Linux? You probably already have one. Running Mac OS X? Download qmail and install it and you're set. (There are probably more options for Windows, but I don't do Windows.) People connect to your mailserver and send it mail; other people connect and retrieve it. While you might prefer that a tech company do it for you, you really and truly honestly can do it yourself on your own tiny little machine. Having one is not proof of anything.
2. The analogy you want is to telephone calls and answering machines. When you make a phone call to a person, you look up the ID number of that person's telephony device in big book called the "telephone directory." You punch in the numbers, and their device rings. You talk to them, and then you're done. If they're not there, a recording device (analog or digital) may record a message from you. When they later listen to that message, they usually press a button to delete it because they're done with it.

   E-mail is the SAME DAMN THING except that the Internet people decided that the "phone book" was a really stupid idea. Why not use names instead and let the computers look up the ID numbers? So I don't have to type "69.16.233.15" into my Web browser, I type "www.correntewire.com" and the domain name service, or "DNS", translates that to an IP address so I can connect. Instead of area codes we have top-level domains, instead of extensions we have sub-domains, etc.

   When I want to send you, personally, E-mail, the chances are good that your computer isn't on or at the same IP address as yesterday or whatever, so you have an answering machine - an E-mail server. I send to my server, my server sends to your server, and you get your mail when you're ready from your server.

   DNS is the phone book. Every domain must have DNS or it doesn't work, but it has nothing to do with the content of the communications. Zero, zip, nada. Providing DNS for a domain has as much to do with keeping copies of E-mail as publishing the phone book has to do with making recordings of phone calls - nothing. EVERY domain must have DNS. Sometimes the hosting company provides it, sometimes you do it yourself, sometimes you hire a company that does nothing but DNS. EasyDNS in Canada is a perfect example of this.

   Companies with very large-scale needs, like Apple, use DNS and hosting from other companies like Akamai precisely because they provide world-wide data centers and redundant access. (When you visit "Apple's" Web site, you're really getting it from an Akamai data center geographically close to you for better performance.) Smaller-scale companies might use worldwide DNS for performance but have a single server somewhere because it can handle all the Web service they need. (I do it that way.)

   The *ONLY* thing DNS has to do with E-mail is letting you find the server by its address, like rnchq.org or correntewire.com. If Karl Rove had hired a DNS service personally, it wouldn't make a damn bit of difference. The DNS service doesn't have any of your content. Please stop calling back to all that, because the DNS thing and photo was never relevant to begin with.

3. You've uncovered that the mail servers for "rnchq.org" and others are hosted by smartechcorp.net, and that is relevant only to the extent that they would be the ones to have the data. If they're a respected data provider, they're backing things up regularly, and the backups may have the info that the investigators want.

   But don't look for conspiracy if E-mails are gone. So are yours, probably. It is perfectly normal for mail users and servers to delete messages after a while. Every E-mail client in the world has a setting to delete E-mail after it's read because if you don't, the server fills up and everything gets slow. If you regularly access the same E-mail account from different computers, you might want to leave E-mail on the server for a while so that all of your computers can read the messages. That's how IMAP works, and you can make POP3 work that way too, though it gets slow.

   But if you only use one computer to read one E-mail account, it is normal to have the mail deleted from the server as you read it - there's no "other" client that would get out of sync. It would be particularly typical if the RNC laptops functioned this way, since the RNC says that the entire purpose of the laptops was to read RNC E-mail so they wouldn't do so on White House computers in violation of the Hatch Act. It might not be the case, since they're also talking about Blackberry devices - if your blackberry and your laptop use the same E-mail account, you'd want to leave mail on the server at least long enough for both devices to read the message so you'd have it in both places. Otherwise you get out of sync.

   But again, it is normal for servers not to save every E-mail message forever. That's why the recordskeeping act specifically requires the government to do it - because it's not normal, it's not something you'd do by default. Please don't keep acting like people reading E-mail and then deleting it from non-governmental computers is some massively extraordinary event. It's not. Your own E-mail probably works the same way. You may have local copies of your E-mail from 2 years ago, but I doubt very seriously that your E-mail server does.

   And contrary to the addendum, it really is very easy to lose an E-mail. Person A sends the E-mail and doesn't have his (or her) E-mail client sent to keep copies of outgoing messages. Person B retrieves the E-mail with his client set to delete messages after they're read. Person B reads the message and then deletes it from his "in" box. It's gone. There may be forensic data recovery (just like you can recover many, but not all, deleted files), but otherwise the message is gone. E-mail was designed that way - keeping it all took way too much storage, and when this stuff was designed, a 40 MEGABYTE (not gigabyte) hard drive cost thousands of dollars. It's designed to be sent, read, and deleted.

Now, none of this is to excuse anything. If any government official conducted business via political computers, with or without the purpose of avoiding official recordkeeping, they may be criminally liable. Finding the RNC mail servers gives a better chance of a quick subpoena to preserve records and backups and find messages that an individual might have deleted from his personal laptop or Blackberry. The fact that the messages may be gone is exactly why the law makes the White House preserve everything.

But please, please get off of the "TEH COMPANY DIDNT KEEP TEH EMAILZ OMIGOD ITS PROOF!!!11!!!" thing. Most servers don't keep E-mails, everyone has DNS, this is how 99% of the world's E-mail works. And of course Unka Karl is gonna throw the internet business to connected GOP supporters; that's what they do in every area.

Keep looking into the business relationship, but unless and until you find evidence that the GOP told their mail provider not to keep copies of anything, you've got nothing different than if the server was run by Yahoo or Earthlink or Comcast. In fact, you've probably got less - those companies limit your E-mail usage to so many megabytes. By using their own provider, the RNC may have obtained much more storage than normal for its E-mails, backups, data recovery, and other services.

If people used these servers to avoid official recordkeeping, that's another story. But the mere *existence* of the servers does not prove anything, and you keep acting like it does. Please stop that. Find evidence that the GOP or the administration told them to make sure there were no copies and you have a huge burning hot smoking gun. Until then, you've found their phone number and their answering machine, and no conspiracy.

If you're convinced there's wrongdoing, you have to get this right. If you point to non-evidence and people debunk it, you're the site that cried "wolf," the moonbats wearing tinfoil hats, and you won't get any traction if you find the smoking gun. DNS == dead end. Existence of E-mail servers == dead end.

Contract to provide those services == very interesting. Get a copy of it.

--Matt

Let's see, who do we have on our list of "Nothing to see here/these are not the droids you're looking for/move along" advice-givers? Hmm: K. Rove. Jeffry Coptix. MattD....

Not a list I would care to be on, y'know? Bad company and all that. Dogs, fleas, etc.

I'm sure your technical points are wildly important and accurate. They are also entirely irrelevant, alas. What the hell do we need a "Contract to provide those services == very interesting. Get a copy of it." for? They've already admitted they provide these services, the letter is reprinted above fer chrissakes.

And as far as being derided as "the moonbats wearing tinfoil hats, and you won’t get any traction if you find the smoking gun"...been there, done that, got the fucking Tshirt and are find it very handy as a menstrual rag, thank you very much Mr. Coptix Photoshopper. If we worried about shit like being derided as moonbats we'd most likely be in another line of work, dontcha think?

We gather the information we can find and do our damndest to pull it together in one place. People--including subpoena-writing Congressional staffers--can make what use of it they like. We're working for them, not anybody else really. If what we find is useful to Sen. Lehey or Rep. Waxman, well, our work here is done. If not...? Can't see it's costing any skin off your nose Matt, so you should go soak your typing fingers in some vinegar (toughens up the skin they say, and relieves soreness) and let us worry about it.

Thanks again for your concern.

i thought you would! you make some damn fine points here, as we are fond of sayin in the south, Friend! my main interest is that the creeps have been handling all of their CIVIL SERVANT FEDERAL GOVERNMENT jobs like it was just another day working at the shop. just imagine what the Gingrich controlled Congress what have done to the Clinton Admin. if his chief political guru, J. Carvelle, had become his Deputy WH Chief of Staff and run his whole department and staff thru outside DNC communication channels to conduct all of their daily Government and political business. crap, we would have never heard the end of it every damn day, every damn where! i know the server stuff could be anywhere and the services provided by any company to the RNC that they want, but those subpoenas want to see the e-mails related to this matter and if those things are in some damn system in Chattanooga or whereever then they need to be obtained and delivered to the Committees. the WH said today, according to a latimes.com story up on their site right now, that they might bring in some forensic folks to try and help them retreive the missing e-mails. i wish they would get YOU to help them get the damn things! Thanks for helping to keep me focused, you guys ROCK!

OHMIGOD THEY HIRED A COMPANY TO DO DNS! IT’S THE SMOKING GUN PROOF THEY’RE ALL IN IT TOGETHER I KNEW IT!!!!!1!!!ONE!!!1!

Uh... yes. They "hired a company". That's what our complaint is. That's what this is all about. Company-hiring.

That, coupled with

The faked picture got you so exercised I was afraid you were really going to go off the rails, and the jury’s still out on that.

The photo didn’t pan out...

"Didn't pan out"? That would be more like if the folder was produced by an entirely unrelated Coptix and we seized upon it. A deliberate forgery is entirely fucking different. There is no need for you to keep rehashing this episode. I keep waiting for you to accuse us of "BDS" or "being stuck on stupid".

And the #1 reason why you are, intentionally or not, trolling... what the hell does anything you posted in this thread have to do with the fact that the GOP is blatantly destroying evidence? You've pointed out one dead end repeatedly. Thanks, I guess, but do you remember how this whole thing began? If Josh Marshall had been taking your advice he would have said "well, the Attorney General says they were fired for poor performance, and we have no solid evidence to prove otherwise, we'd better stop speculating before we lose all credibility!" Instead, he kept at it, and I suspect when this is all written he will be attributed a big role in bringing down this AG. Even if he's foily. You know why? Because he pushed the story while they tried to stall and cover up.

We are not Pat Leahy. We don't have any power and we don't know what's on the servers. All we know is that someone out there should. And yes, we're fully aware that there might not be any backups. We don't care. If there is evidence that the Hatch Act was violated, that's where it is, and if they get an extra week to scrub the systems in the interest of "executive privilege" or "national security" (or, better yet, have a 'burglar' steal them all right before they were to be handed over) then I suppose you will have done your job. We don't want that to happen.

But I still believe
And I will rise up with fists!!

Sure, there could be the entirely innocent explanation that the separate RNC servers using gwb43.com were set up by the White House to comply with the Hatch Act. The administration's respect for the rule of law is well known, and this would be just another example of that. Not.

But it would be interesting to know:

1. What the White House did before setting up gwb43.com? (Creation date: 16-jan-2004

2. The White House has now admitted that it did government business on gwb43.com. How pervasive was the practice? If so, was any business regarding national security (say, Iraq, Israel, North Korea, Homeland Security budgeting, all which which are highly charged domestic political topics as well) done on gwb43.com?

3. What are the contractual provisions between RNC and its vendors regarding backup and data handling generally? (Hattop mattd). Are any of the provisions unusual?

4. Did the RNC vendors for gwb43.com keep backups for their own purposes? Say, "protection." (Hattip Xan.)

5. Have any gwb43.com emails been Hoovered up by the NSA's massive (illegal, and unconstitutional) warrantless surveillance program?

Mattd: Both Xan and I are very well aware of how nameservers work. See gwb43.com for Dummies. As I point out there, if the model is that Rove privatized his email, then using private nameservers would necessarily be part of that. And the Republicans choose a company that's not politically wired? Pas si bete. If they fuck like rats, they're ratfuckers.

Oh, and a stylistic hint: If you don't want to be seen as trivializing and marginalizing an aversary, don't use ALLCAPS!!! in your comments. Eh? It detracts from the strength of your argument.

No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.

"Nothing to see here", mr. matt? You must be joking.

Official business was conducted and not archived. That is a violation of the Presidential Records Act. Willfullness is not an issue on that one - plausible deniability won't save them.

The PRA was broken to avoid evidence of not complying with the Hatch Act - without all the e-mails and their timestamps it is hard to *prove* Karl spends all his time on politics while getting a government salary (he pretty clearly does, since it is difficult to believe that all his machinations are done in his spare - i.e. not taxpayer funded - time, but he can probably dodge that bullet now).

They were caught between a rock and a hard place, and probably made the right choice from their point of view (in that the e-mails would probably be grounds for a lot more jail time than the PRA violations will), but a federal law was broken nonetheless. There is something to see here.

You can, but don't have to, use "private" nameservers for a private E-mail account. Depends on the meaning of "private," as in either "not run by the government" or "under your own personal control." Unless your domain ends in ".gov" or ".mil", it's technically a "private" nameserver providing the DNS service by the first definition.

But "turdblossom [at] gmail [dot] com" is a "private" E-mail account (and one I just made up, as far as I know) whose DNS is handled by Google's DNS and mail servers. While "private" in the first sense, it's not in the second sense - a Gmail user has no control over the gmail.com domain name or how it resolves. Don't limit "private" E-mail accounts to those on these co-located servers - we've already read that oen of the people neck-deep in this stuff used either those servers or her AOL account. That's a "private" E-mail account too, even if the RNC has no control over the servers.

And it should be subpoenaed if they suspect there's relevant information there. AOL would be in huge privacy trouble if they kept copies of your messages for most reasons, but you can be damn sure they keep backups for data integrity.

Oh, and per point 2 - if White House staffers deliberately used non-White House servers for matters of national security to avoid recordkeeping, they also avoided the normal security process, exposing national security information just as if they were speaking on unsecured telephone lines. Methinks that's got to be a felony candidate right there.

Point 4 - if they did, they'll need immunity to admit to it, since that would also be breaking several of those privacy laws (keeping undocumented copies of other people's E-mail when functioning as an ISP - that's why Apple couldn't sue some rumor sites for publishing its trade secrets, because it couldn't legally subpoena the messages in a civil action, and it would not be legal for the mail provider to turn them over). Criminal investigations are different than civil, but those shield laws would generally prevent the provider from keeping off-the-books copies of other people's messages, for reasons we'd generally approve.

Again, I'm not saying "don't look," but keep in mind that privacy laws against keeping personal copies of such things would make admitting to it a felony. They'll need immunity from prosecution to safely admit it - and do you think the current Justice Department would feel like granting it? (Congress can grant some immunity, but remember, the immunity Congress granted to John Poindexter and Oliver North is what got their felony convictions overturned.)

Lots to consider as we keep moving forward. (All caps was frustration, lambert, but now we're moving at a brisk pace! Onward and upward!)

--Matt

which is a felony. fitzgerald didn't get certain emails he requested way back before fitzmas. that's a crimey-crime-crime. and just one of many that this email scandal is going to produce.

i believe TPM has the details. lemme go look.

was looking around: talk left:

This is pretty darn shocking:

According to Mr. Kelner [RNC counsel] . . . as a result of unspecified legal inquiries [Fitz probably], a "hold" was placed on this e-mail destruction policy for the accounts of White House officials in August 2004. Mr. Kelner was uncertain whether the hold was consistently maintained from August 2004 to the present, but he asserted that for this period, the RNC does have alarge volume of White House e-mails. According to Mr. Kelner, the hold would not have prevented individual White House officials from deleting their e-mail from the RNC server after August 2004.
What kind of "hold" is that? I wonder if Fitz knew about this.

Mr. Kelner's briefing raised particular concems about Karl Rove, who according to press reports used his RNC account for 95% of his communications. According to Mr. Kelner, although the hold started in August 2004, the RNC does not have any e-mails prior to 2005 for Mr. Rove. Mr. Kelner did not give any explanation for the e-mails missing from Mr. Rove's account, but he did acknowledge that one possible explanation is that Mr. Rove personally deleted his e-mails from the RNC server.
Holy crap! Um, Fitz, you got any questions about this?

ooops.

That's insane.

Rove personally deleted his e-mails from the RNC server.

They gave Rove access to the server? WTF? Can that really be what they're saying?

Are there any other administrators on here who think that's insane?

What else did they give him? Shell access? Root privileges?

No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.

i've been sending you some stuff on this.

heh:

News that White House staffers, which includes Karl Rove and Scooter Libby, used RNC email accounts in order to avoid the scrutiny that normally comes with the White House email account raises an interesting question--Did Patrick Fitzgerald know this? It appears the answer is no.

If that is the case then we are looking at the potential for new obstruction of justice in the Valerie Plame case. Why? For starters there are the subpoenas the White House received in 2003. They were required to turn over all emails relating to the Valerie Plame case, not just White House emails. Just when you thought the Plame case was at a dead end it looks like the hubris of the Republicans have given it new life. Karl Rove may get frog marched yet.

UPDATE: Here's the link for what the Department of Justice told the White House to produce and preserve. The White House was told to preserve:

ALL DOCUMENTSFROM FEBRUARY 2002 TO JANUARY 23 2004 INCLUSIVE INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ALL ELECTRONIC RECORDS WRITTEN RECORDS TELEPHONE RECORDS OF ANY KIND INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY DOCUMENTS THAT MEMORIALIZE TELEPHONE CALLS HAVING BEEN MADE CORRESPONDENCE COMPUTER RECORDS EMAIL STORAGE DEVICES NOTES WHETHERHANDWRITTEN OR TYPED OR IN ANY OTHER FORMAT MEMORANDA AND DIARY AND CALENDAR ENTRIES IN THE Q119
POSSESSION OF THE OFFICE OF THE VICE PRESIDENT ITS STAFF AND EMPLOYEES CONCERNING ANY DISCUSSION OF THE FOLLOWING ...

I love the smell of perjury in the morning. Scooter may get some bunk mates.

i bet rove is the bottom and libby the soft top.

I can understand him being able to delete, but not delete from the server. The article at TPM also stated the RNC had a Records Retention Policy of 30 days! LOL. Leave it to the Republicans to name it that when it is really a Records Deletion Policy. God, I am so sick of these pathological liars.

At this point, the Dems need to stop talking to the White House, just seize the servers. We will find the emails for them. No problemo. The servers are scandal filled and will bring down Rove, Cheney, Bush, Gonzales, and the whole rotten lot. Time to stop asking and start seizing.

War is terrorism.

Your E-mail client is probably doing it for you right now and you don't even know it.

I presume most people use Outlook or similar, so take a look at this page. The final screen shot shows the checkbox in Outlook that you use to either leave messages on the server for a given number of days, or to delete them when they're read. If you're using POP3, you keep local copies of messages on your computer; if you're using IMAP, you may not.

(Those are protocols, analogous to HTTP or FTP, not program names. POP3, or "Post Office Protocol 3.0," is the original and still more widely used version that's designed around the concept of not keeping messages. IMAP is a newer one that keeps messages on the server so that you can read them all from multiple computers, and has been slower to catch on because it requires a really fast connection. It's a lot harder to search 10,000 messages on a remote server than it is to search local copies of them. Some E-mail clients don't even support IMAP.)

I can't tell you if Outlook's default is to delete messages after they're read, or after a certain number of days, or to leave them on the server. For decades, the default assumption was that you delete messages from the server as they're read. The more messages you leave on the server, the slower it gets to either receive messages (adding them onto the end of the mailbox) or to check mail (to find the spot in the middle of thousands of messages where the new messages start).

You don't need "server access" in the sense of physical proximity to the server, or a login account, to delete messages from the server. If you can check E-mail through an account, you can delete messages from that account on the server. I've seen other sites be astounded that Karl Rove might have "access" to the server to delete messages, but if you have an account, you can delete that account's messages.

(Like I said in another comment, my very robust, tested, experienced, and trustworthy E-mail server doesn't even have an option to prevent users from deleting their own messages. That's why the Presidential Records Act mandated that the White House act differently, because you have to work to keep copies of every single message. Very few servers do it. Forensic data recovery can help out a lot, but there is still no promise it can find everything.)

And yes, subpoena the servers immediately. The White House has said that communications of interest should have been on those servers; there's no reason not to look at them ASAP. Every new E-mail that arrives increases the chance that older, deleted E-mails get overwritten as disk space gets re-used. Secure them now.

--Matt

or other agencies that have kept track of emails, etc., for rovian and obviously political purposes?

there are commercial servers, and saving things, and then there there is the security industrial complex. what do you think the senate should do about the latter's stored files?

Email is hard to completely "delete." Again, matt, think systemically. When I was in the cube, suppose I deleted all my mail. My manager had 5 years of all the mail in the world on her laptop, and she would have her end of all my mail, just as the umpty million other people I corresponded with had copies.

(Even granting that nothing from the Outlook server itself is backed up onto physical media, another systematic possibility that you do not address. Screen shots from the user end prove nothing. It's what the servers are set up to do that matters, even in a world where the outrageous suckitude of Outlook has become the norm.)

Mattd: This topic deserves a post. Have at it.

No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.

I always used OutlookExpress from the time i switched from Mac to PC (yeah, it happens--was for work not by choice I assure you and not just because they never ported "Might & Magic" over to Mac.) It's built into IE which is what everybody uses because it's PC standard, and if it doesn't work very well at least there's a zillion and one places you can go to look for help when it fucks up. Or at least bitch about it and be commisserated with.

Then I somehow got the Office suite, I think with the last new machine a few years ago. It came with Full Strength Outlook and I had some getting used to to do with it. Can't remember what all the differences are but one of the things I know for sure is that it has vastly more bells & whistles than OEX.

And one of the features is a box that pops up every now and then depending on your usage rate, asking "Do You Want To Archive Your [x] Folder Now?" that x being Sent Mail as a general rule. You hit "Yes" because that guarantees the box will go away and not be a PitA for awhile.

Point is, after that you just don't think about it any more. And I have of necessity learned maybe a little more than the average twit about computers but have never gone through and searched out that Archive and deleted it, and am not sure I could find it if you gave me a map and a guide dog.

Being of pure heart and clean conscience I just never felt a great need to Delete Archive, and since it's a purely voluntary pain in the ass to figure out how, and there's always something better to do with one's time, I didn't.

One of a lesser grade of Buddha nature, i.e. RNC employees, maybe got good instructions on How and strong incentives on Why they should do this. Then again maybe they had better things to do too, and let it go past the point where legal orders are in place which will drop big Acme style weights on their little heads if it is too glaringly obvious that stuff has been deleted since those legal orders came down.

We won't know until we look, now will we? The one thing I'm fairly sure of is that if they did try any wiping it would be All or Nothing, meaning that any exculpatory evidence would be Gone With The Wind along with the incriminating shit. AT very least one should make a copy first and leave at one's lawyer's office or bank vault.

...we won't know until we look. I'm very much pro-looking. I'm just anti-assuming that we're going to find it. Expect the worst, hope for the best.

--Matt

Oh where did they go, oh where did they go? RNC says after 30 days, they're deleted! WH says, shit, not only are the RNC's friggen emails deleted, but hell, we deleted from the official WH GOVERNMENT system 5 million of the damn things in a couple of years time. and now my friend Mattd says the whole damn system of handling any emails from anybody anywhere ever in the friggen history of the world AIMS to delete the things! i say HIRE the whole damn silicon valley if you have to, probably wouldn't cost as much as 1 week of war in Iraq and FIND out if there are any friggen emails to be gotten and do it ASAP, Senator!

And that, by the way, is no criminal defense to "I was subject to the Presidential Records Act and I willfully violated it to avoid criminal charges." Even if they were truly ignorant of the law, it's no excuse.

--Matt

Look, Coptix didn't waste their time posting here and writing articles for the local paper for nothing!

Didn't you already hear from Jeffrey "I-have-nothing-to-do-with-this" Cross when he told us about email servers?? He even asked the guys at STC about email backup.. You know, watercooler stuff..

It amazes me how many people have commented about this topic, assuming that there is some way to get emails that were sent months ago. NO WAY! ... I casually asked one of the SmarTechs the other day if they stored any email, and he said “are you kidding? like we have the storage for that!” Which is what I figured.

See. Nothing there to look for. There are no droids in Chattavegas. He would never lie. NO WAY! Especially about being apolitical, right? (Dear Mr. Waxman, I would recommend issuing a subpoena to the guy who has admitted to having discussed Rove's email server and how to recover emails with an employee that had access to the same server which now has deleted emails)

Basically, when people first started telling us that we were being mentioned in posts about GWB, I was a little worried - just a little - being in any way connected to anything political, much less conservative Republican political.

Maybe you'll hear more about this non-partisan, middle of the road, would never be involved with dirty tricks Coptix.

So you're a little late to the party. But thanks so much for your help.

Peace out....

No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.

The post about "server delete" was just so crazy I couldn't help but respond immediately, and just as I was clicking "Post" it dawned on me that I hadn't actually read any further to see if anybody else had commented, as Matt did. Sorry. Feel free to kill it.

Matt's totally on top of it, other than not realizing there's nothing he can say that won't be written off, since I'm sure he too is a member of the VRWC...

In a shakespearian sense, not in and ANSWER/Code Pink kind of way.

Why are you so concerned about persuading us that emails can be easily deleted from servers if you have nothing (nothing!) to do with gwb43.com?

See here for a start. And plenty of other exchanges on the various gwb43.com threads.

Actually, I think mattd and I came down around the same place with a difference in emphasis: The mail could be in a lot of places, even if the Right-Click does what it is advertised to do.

Hey, seen our mutual friend Angela "Don't call me a concern troll" Motorman? Tell her to go fuck herself.

Peace out...

P.S. I love the faux bitterness and self-pity of "since I’m sure he too is a member of the VRWC".... From a self-confessed disinformation artist. I stand in awe. Really. Assuming you are the real Jeffrey, of course, and assuming that there is, in fact, a real Jeffrey behind the goatee.

No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.

Last comment on this thread previously is dated 4-13. Jeffrey gets all het up and in a lather to help us edumacate ourselves about the workings of servers...on, it sez here, 4-23?

Hmm. Couldn't have been "gwb43.com" he was searching or he would have found many...a great many in fact...posts of more recent vintage than this one. Whatever could it have been?

*gasp* I see intranets said

Submitted by intranets on Fri, 2007-04-13 10:32.
Look, Coptix didn’t waste their time posting here and writing articles for the local paper for nothing.

Methinks the magic word has been found. Ah yeah, gotta spend a Sunday night seeing how our latest "viral media campaign" is going on. Nice to see a dedicated workforce, earning their RNC money! Give Jeffrey a bonus, KR!

For we know, he's sending a signal to Jeff Gannon's bottom that the servers are wiped. Ya know?

No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.

that now that everybody and their dog knows about the SmarTech/GovTech/NewMedia/Coptix scam that Those People are unable to use their own email any more for fear of subpoenas, and are reduced to communicating with each other by leaving comments on lefty DFH blogs.

:)

Rove could be sending a signal to Jeff Gannon's server that the bottoms are wiped. Now, which would be better, I ask you?

No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.

So when I post telling everyone to shut down the Congressional investigations, cause Mr. Cross has already spoken as the foremost authority on the inner-workings of certain TN servers..

He replies again saying that clicking delete really deletes it forever. I assume he's a pretty bright guy, so we have two choices. He's willfully ignorant and a liar, or he's the worst damn webhosting guy around. (Someone should forwarded his statements to a certain list of clients)

Dear Coptix customers,
If you happen to delete your emails or webpage, there is nothing we can do to recover them. We do not keep any backups. When the mailserver queues your email we only keep one copy and if that server crashes, you have lost any un-delivered emails. Please check your mail early and often.

Maybe that is called the "Rove Special" email provider.

But it's so generous of you to keep coming here to keep tracking the progress of your disinformation campaign bring enlightenment to the beknighted....

So, if you outsourced the gwb43.com, where is the mail backed up? And is there a backup there? And did you keep any for yourself? I sure would, if I were dealing with snakes like the Bushies. Just to protect yourself, and your business, and your family, of course.

No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.

I wasn’t speaking of any particular servers in any particular state, just the setup of email hosting environments in general. Which have backups, yes, but archives, no - unless you work for the government or SEC-regulated industry.

I believe all the non-reptilian folks around here realize that WE are talking about an email server hosting RNC clients and private email for official WH folks. So... that majority of gwb43 clients are, in fact, gov't officials.

You're right, I'm too stupid to figure out this wild wild intertubes thingy. Maybe of some of your non-partisan customer would care to know about yer expertise in intertubes stuff, and background (there's that damn intratubes biting you in the ass again)

(Oh yeah.. Coptix Coptix Smartech Coptix)

is what you call it when you see how long you can have a nonsense conversation with a telemarketer to waste their time before they break their own rules and hang up on you. That's what we spend our time doing at Coptix when we run out of ideas for pictures to photoshop.

The nonsense part of this conversation is the fact that the Coptix name keeps coming up (and I just keep coming straight here - no need to help with the keywords, thanks!) with respect to gwb43.com email, even though all evidence presented here and everywhere is that we *actually* don't have anything to do with any GOP email.

I understand why this constant repetition of "Coptix" must be frustrating for you, Jeffrey, but--assuming, arguendo, that what you say is true--surely you can see that running a disinformation campaign was not, perhaps, the best way to demonstrate your total lack of involvement?

It's frustrating for me, too--assuming, arguendo, that you are in fact Jeffrey from Coptix--because although your comments are always interesting, and seem to be full of "evidence," I really must assume that your disinformation campaign is still in effect, just as a matter of self-protection, as I'm sure you'll be the first to understand. And I just don't have the time to evaluate your comments as thoroughly as I should.

On the other hand, surely the disinformation campaign was good for Coptix? What with the Op-Ed, the viral marketing and all. So, it's all worked out very well for you, especially looking forward to 2008.

Of course, the way forward is to subpoena all the servers, and all the business records. That would clear up the matter. Surely Coptix would welcome that. Eh?

NOTE Oh, the riff on PhotoShop is cute, and I always enjoy hipster irony, but the real work was done with the other two sites and the propagation of the fake in comments and mail. And the other Coptix domains... Run out ideas there? Or still hard at work? (It's also fun to see the classic authoritarian rhetorical ploy of substituting an anecdote for a systemic process. Well done!)

No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.

I thought it was clear that I was only joking about Commish Gordon's sleestax-bat-signal. Apparently it works! It's almost like I'm having a nonsense conversation with a PR-marketing firm to see how long I can drag out the conversation before they break their own rules of misinformation campaign. (I do this when I get bored from investigating SMARTech and Coptix)

BTW, tell Marcus Alexandrius to give Malkin and Griscom a kiss on the cheek for me.

Jeffrey, if you would be so kind as to humour me... what is up with Coptix abandoning the TX Rackspace server?? Why did you move your "secondary-nothing-to-do-with-RNC" DNS servers to 1&1??

I can't help but think of a flashlight and cockroach image in my mind...

so I'm certainly glad to oblige with some more.

Rackspace is a bit overkill for what we needed that server for since we moved email off of it. 1&1 is a lot cheaper.

Good catch - I was wondering how long it would be before you noticed!