The Defense Department wiped the phones of top departing DOD and Army officials at the end of the Trump administration, deleting any texts from key witnesses to events surrounding the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, according to court filings.
[The officials include] former acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller, former chief of staff Kash Patel, and former Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy, among other prominent Pentagon officials.
The Pentagon's explanation is that this is routine: When anyone leaves DOD they turn in their phone and the phone is wiped. I must have at least a few readers who have worked for DOD and then left. Is this true? CNN quotes one person who's sketpical:
A former Defense Department official from a previous administration told CNN that it is ingrained into new hires during their onboarding that their work devices were subject to the Presidential Records Act and indicated their communications would be archived. The source said it was assumed when they turned in their devices at the end of their employment, any communication records would be archived.
This ought to be easy enough for an experienced Defense reporter to check out. The question, as with the Secret Service, is why this stuff isn't backed up or archived in some way. Is that routine procedure too?
The important point here, I think, is that every Republican thinks of himself as an infiltrator and behaves accordingly, 'Oh, I have these phones from people who were here that day, who knows what's on it, might look bad for Trump, I'll just wipe it. That is my job, isn't it? Can't blame me, I am innocent!'
Unfortunately for us, one of the leading reporters with Pentagon beat experience is Peter Alexander, known better as Ornato's Ball-gargler.
So, good chance getting the straight story from MSDSA.
Meanwhile, the mostly good Niccolle Wallace is banging Hillary Clinton sceptic Michael Schmidt...
Why, yes, since she's married to him, I expect she is.
Alan Greenspan & Andrea Mitchell won't live forever -- I hope -- so we need disgusting people who fuck around Washington to have a handy emetic.
"I must have at least a few readers who have worked for DOD and then left. Is this true?"
No, it is not.
The phone might get wiped and reset but the key here is that there are archiving systems in place so that the contents are archived continuously. Don't have firsthand knowledge as I've never been giving a phone, my VOIP number is sufficient for what I do.
Hahaha, my NARA training is due to this month, gotta take my annual training to prove I know the rules of the road.
But the Presidential Records Act carries no penalties. Perhaps it is time that it did. In fact, perhaps it is time Congress made abundantly clear that nothing should ever be deleted, everything should have a secure backup, and anyone who does otherwise goes to prison. Storage is cheap. There's no excuse.
What do you mean "But the Presidential Records Act carries no penalties"!
Coverup after coverup. Crime after crime. There is no bottom. If lots of people do not go to jail, the so-called "rule of law" here in the USA has become meaningless.
People need to get outraged. And the timing is good! Gasoline is down more than $1 a gallon. If we could just get the media to stop yammering about "inflation" (also coming down) and "recession" (not by any legitimate measures)...
But her e-mails!!!!
& the missing halfhour of footage from Epstein's cell (right when Hillary was bleeding the life from him).
"It's Okay If You Are A Republican."
Any chance we can repeal that iron law of government and journalism??
Maybe if the Five Personality FBI Special Agent loses the Georgia Senate General.
As is, his handful of illegitimate, unacknowledged children are seen as less baggage than either John Edwards's one child with Rielle the Hunter or Anthony Weiner's jackoff instruction with Sydney Leaathers.
My guess is that some people very high up in several places are implicated and if the messages are called into evidence then respectability and trust in the institutions crumbles. So, the top brass are protecting their institutions and pensions, thus leaving Biden no choice but to fire everybody.
Which he should now do, post-haste.
Can we extrapolate from this story that there are/were a substantial number of higher-ups in the U.S. government supportive of the attempted overthrow of that government, and the only reasons we don't know more is that 1.) the attempt was not successful and 2.) the evidence was destroyed?
I'd say at minimum there were high ups in DOD IT that allowed this to happen.
EVERY federal employee has to take records management training EVERY year and knows that a text sent on a government phone is a “record” that potentially must be preserved.
Contractors, too.
I think we need to start seeing names in news reports.
Like who manages the IT asset lifecycle at the DOD? I think the department head there has some questions to answer.
See, I do know a thing or two about IT asset management in a large org, that is part of my day job. I'm not going to go in to detail here, but suffice to say I can tell you when, where and by whom for individual parts in our machines were bought, installed, removed, wiped (if media) and disposed of.
And the DOD is famous for its paperwork. Named individuals did this, and there's paperwork.
I think the public deserves to start hearing those names.
Kash Patel's phone was wiped?
What an unfortunate state of affairs. But then, accidents happen, so what can you do?
He can Kash me outside. He's an absolute bugeyed bitch.
He creeps me out more than anybody in MAGA-land.
He prolly has intimate knowledge of actual Devin Nunes's actual cow.
Kinky Kash & the Sexy Steer.
Congress will have to beef up FRA to make it clear that all data through gov't devices shall be archived, period. Right now, it's somewhat discretionary (on relevance of data) and up to departments to establish their own protocols.
Also, we need more info on what messaging apps they used. Carrier RCS/SMS is not fully secured, allowing MITM access to all your traffic data (has anyone asked Russia for the lost messages?) Are they using Teams? Signal? What?
One note.
I don't know about the DoD , but it is not uncommon for devices used for corporate purposes to be 'wiped' after en employee leaves. In using my own device for work, I have been required to give permission for all corporate data to be wiped (remotely, by the company) when I leave.
But whether or not some individual device is wiped should have little or nothing to do with whether data is lost. When there are requirements for archiving, the data should be either stored by default on central servers or regularly and routinely backed up to them. Which means that 'wiping' the device does nothing to the relevant data - which is already archived centrally.
Unless the data retention practices are worthless, of course.
I am on the fence. I've been in IT for decades much of it in the DC area. Incompetency is definitely not out of the question for much of the data loss due to wipes. It was only in 2017 that texts were deemed as records requiring retention and agencies had until 2019 to comply. Who knows whether such policies were actually being used in 2021.
Also the wipes are not the problem. That is normal operating procedure. The problem is that the retention requirement says the data must be retained in an external system. It would be a pretty crappy system if losing the phone meant losing the records.
This is clear from https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-36/chapter-XII/subchapter-B/part-1236/subpart-B, "Agencies must incorporate controls into the electronic information system or integrate them into a recordkeeping system that is external to the information system itself (see § 1236.20 of this part)."
In other words the kerfuffle around wiping is a smokescreen.
It sounds like it's time for a RICO indictment of the entire former White House [except Cassidy, of course] and DOD "political" appointees of the last Administration.