By ZATZ Publishing
ZATZ Publishing today announced the publication of an Open Letter to President-elect Barack Obama on the White House email controversy: Please treat the White House computers like crime scene evidence.
Authored by David Gewirtz, ZATZ Editor-in-Chief and the author of Where Have All The Emails Gone?, this important Open Letter makes the case that when Mr. Obama and his team enter the White House on January 20, they will be walking into an active crime scene – and they need to treat it as such.
The crime is an admitted violation of the Presidential Records Act and the Federal Records Act by the Bush administration. Gewirtz contends there is forensic evidence that needs to be gathered before it’s lost in the flurry of incoming activity.
The 751-word Open Letter explores the following issues:
* How, in Congressional testimony, Mr. Bush’s CIO admitted that the Bush White House misplaced all email correspondence from the period of March 1 through May 23, 2003.
* How this statement indicates the White House has broken two key federal laws: the Presidential Records Act and the Federal Records Act.
* How the Bush White House may actually have “misplaced” as much as 225 days of email from 2003, according to an Office of Administration request for contractors’ proposals, which was dated June 20.
* How, when the Obama team enters the White House on January 20, the building is likely to be filled with the droppings and detritus of the previous administration, including old computers.
* How, whether those computers are on the desks the team is about to inhabit, in closets, stacked in some basement somewhere, or even out by the dumpsters, those computers are evidence in a federal crime.
* How, any of the computers – and this also includes computer parts, like hard drives, as well as various other media, like flash and thumb drives – any of those computers could contain traces of those missing messages.
According to Gewirtz, “Enthusiastic incoming officials may just want to get to work and those computers are likely to be treated like old office equipment. But what must happen is this: each computer the team finds in the White House and the EOB must be treated as evidence. Each machine must be cataloged and then removed for forensic examination.
Gewirtz continues, “Under no circumstances should anyone on the incoming team boot up any of those machines or use them.
“This is critically important and we’re going to have only one shot,” he continues. “If anyone on the incoming team uses those machines, they might overwrite deleted files that could otherwise be recovered. They could possibly cover the few remaining tracks that might be available, the few possible clues to a period of real upheaval in our history.”
This ongoing story has reinforced once again just how important David’s recommendations in Where Have All The Emails Gone? are. Those six steps may be the only path that will prevent the problems we seem to be constantly discovering from happening with future administrations.
About David Gewirtz
David Gewirtz is America’s leading Presidential scholar specializing in the area of White House email. He has written more than 700 articles about technology, competitiveness, and national security policy. He is a member of FBI InfraGard, the Cyberterrorism Advisor for the International Association for Counterterrorism & Security Professionals, a columnist for The Journal of Counterterrorism and Homeland Security, and has been a guest commentator for the Nieman Watchdog of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.
David is the Editor-in-Chief of the ZATZ magazines and is a member of the instructional faculty at the University of California, Berkeley extension. He is the recipient of the Sigma Xi Research Award in Engineering and was a candidate for the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in Letters.
About The Book
Where Have All The Emails Gone? is the most comprehensive analysis of White House email ever published, reads like a thriller, and ends with six very doable recommendations that can quickly and easily bring security and safety back to White House email.
The book’s Web site contains a complete resource center with original documentation, source material, and forensic artifacts used in the investigation.
About ZATZ Publishing
ZATZ Publishing is a leading publisher of special-interest online magazines and books for technical consumers and IT professionals. ZATZ publishes popular magazines, including OutlookPower Magazine, DominoPower Magazine, Computing Unplugged Magazine, Connected Photographer Magazine, and WebSpherePower Magazine. Together, these publications have nearly one million readers and are the leading monthly magazines in their markets.
Posted on January 7, 2009