4 ms·

How is this not immediately obstruction of justice? The article makes it seem like they know who actually wiped it, so just ask them who ordered it and follow t

How is this not immediately obstruction of justice? The article makes it seem like they know who actually wiped it, so just ask them who ordered it and follow the trail, no? It can't even be an accident since not one but two backups were also wiped.

amigoingtodie 9y ago
Because you have to pay to even read the state laws of Georgia, so nobody knows the law?
- edoceo 9y ago
  Wut?
  - alsetmusic 9y ago
    They were referencing this: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/public-records-activist-violated-copyright-by-publishing-georgia-legal-code-online/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/public-records-a...
  - lovich 9y ago
    The text of Georgias law is publicly available, but there is a version with annotations from legal precendents that is considered necessary to understand the law as it is currently interpreted. LexisNexis collates those annotations for the state of Georgia and maintains a copyright on the annotations, you cannot access them without paying. The government in Georgia feel this is perfectly acceptable as you can tehcnically access the law even though, in practice, you have no idea
    - rayiner 9y ago
      The annotated version is freely available: http://www.lexisnexis.com/hottopics/gacode/default.asp http://www.lexisnexis.com/hottopics/gacode/default.asp. What the kerfuffle is about is that the State of Georgia has (1) Georgia law is highly unusual in giving the annotations authoritative force; (2) the State of Georgia has asserted copyright over the annotated version.
      - lovich 9y ago
        ah my mistake
      - jonathanwallace 9y ago
        It depends upon what you mean by "free." There are limitations on what you may do with the "freely" available version.
  - amigoingtodie 9y ago
    https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/public-records-activist-violated-copyright-by-publishing-georgia-legal-code-online/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/public-records-a...
- AnimalMuppet 9y ago
  True. But how is that relevant? Nobody can read the law (the annotated copy), so nobody knows that wiping the servers is destroying evidence, and therefore illegal? I doubt that that's how this went down...
- googlryas 9y ago
  False. You don't need to pay to read the laws, but you do need to pay if you want to read a private groups annotations to the laws, which include things like judicial rulings. The annotations are a value add and not required to understand or practice law in GA. You can also access the judicial rulings and all other sources which the annotations are derived from for free, but you would need to put the work in yourself to compile that data.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - Retric 9y ago
    It's not quite that clear cut. Georgia places unusual weight to these specific annotations so simply having access to the rulings will not result in the same exact output.
    - rayiner 9y ago
      Yes it’s very unusual. The official version is the annotated one, and the annotations have legal force.
  - sliverstorm 9y ago
    Supposedly the annotated version is actually the official Georgia code.
  - lobster_johnson 9y ago
    Georgia is somewhat unique in that the annotations actually are part of the codified law. You absolutely do need the annotations to practice, because they are authoritative. So not "false" after all.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
alexeldeib 9y ago
Later in the article, they mention that wiping the server was in response to a security vulnerability leaving 6.7 million sensitive voter records vulnerable. The governor's office claims to not be aware, so it sounds like they're still following the trail, as you put it. Fortunately: > The FBI is known to have made an exact data image of the server in March when it investigated the security hole
- olegkikin 9y ago
  They could've just unplugged the server from the internet if it's vulnerable.
  - paulddraper 9y ago
    Electronic access, phyiscal access...it sounds more like it was a "routine" disposal of sensitive information 10 months after the election. United States national ballot records must be kept for 22 months, and then they are likewise disposed. Florida kept (keeps?) its ballots especially long after the 2000 recount.
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      > Electronic access, phyiscal access...it sounds more like it was a "routine" disposal of sensitive information 10 months after the election. When a lawsuit is filed (or even when you reasonably know lawsuit will be filed), you can not legally destroy evidence related to it, even in the course of otherwise routine document destruction. In state agencies and other large orgs, it's common to receive mass email orders from legal to preserve all documents and communications related to matter under dispute, regardless of normal retention policies, with reminders of severe legal consequences to the org and dire personal consequences if the directive is not complied with.
      - paulddraper 9y ago
        Of course. And that's exactly why Florida kept around its 2000 ballots especially long. My claim is that this sort of action in itself is not bizzare. That it was done with a pending lawsuit is bizzare. Whether it was due to malice or incompetance remains to be seen.
lsh123 9y ago
Because this is a new norm: https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2016/01/20/irs-wipes-another-hard-drive-defying-court-order-but-you-must-keep-tax-records/#18ed62395b26 https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2016/01/20/irs-wipes...
- JoBrad 9y ago
  Unless you’re aware of a lot more incidents in the past few years, I don’t think twice in 2 years makes for a new norm. The IRS found a backup of that hard drive, according to this article. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/feb/3/irs-promises-stop-erasing-hard-drives/ http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/feb/3/irs-promises-... In any case these events are making news because they are not normal.
  - alsetmusic 9y ago
    > In any case these events are making news because they are not normal. What’s troubling is that we don’t have a good way to know how often this behavior actually occurs. Would the IRS have found the missing data if there hadn’t been press about it? I suppose that depends on your outlook and level of skepticism. Or, put another way, I once asked my father if the state of political corruption in the news had always been as dour as what we see today. He said that this was the worst during his lifetime. I then asked if he thought that the state of world affairs was actually worse, or if technology had simply made it more well known. He was silent for a long time before he answered. He said that he hadn’t considered that. Finally, when I was a teen I was frustrated when I was lectured after I got caught sneaking out in the night. My mother, with a healthy degree of smug satisfaction, told me that she was always one step ahead of me. I couldn’t throw it in her face that I got away with it on a regular basis, of course. You must assume that when you catch someone behaving badly once then there may be other incidents that you didn’t recognize. The worst aspect of corruption is not the time that we found out about it. It’s the question of how much we’ve missed.
NelsonMinar 9y ago
It is obstruction of justice.
a3n 9y ago
It would seem a simple matter to charge each individual from the lowest levels with a straightforward crime, and flip them as they ladder up toward the people who gave the order/suggestion/plausibly-deniable-wish. Simple, that is, if the prosecutor wanted to prosecute. We are all mere resources.
rabboRubble 9y ago
Or it could be a part of a well-scheduled maintenance schedule that was agreed by IT and the system owners. I used to have a system like that under my purview, a voice recording system. Unless we were under court order or internal compliance instruction, all back up tapes were to be erased after 1 month of the conversation being recorded. This was a daily job for the VR system admins -- pull tapes from 1 month prior, erase, and recycle back into the recording system to be used again. No special instruction needed to do a BAU task. If a court order was received a tape was pulled out of the general pool, and sent off to compliance for safeguarding. So if we received a court order, that order would go to CEO / COO, to head of legal &/or compliance, who would then instruct head of IT, who would instruct the VR system admin to pull a tape. If somebody dropped the ball in that chain on day 29 and the order didn't reach the VR system guy, the tape was erased the next day. The importance of this monthly VR tape deletion process was important enough to have some extremely senior compliance person flying out to assure themselves it was actually happening, and happening according to this procedure. Why 30 days only you ask? Because we were only obligated under law to maintain 30 days worth of recordings. Anything longer than that became a regulatory risk to us. Under my VR system erasure policy, the guy in question who wiped the election system might not have anybody to point to as ordering him/her to wipe.
- SAI_Peregrinus 9y ago
  In which case he'd have the existing policy to point to as why the wipe was performed when it was, and the legal department to point to for not informing him of the lawsuit and to not delete those tapes. The organization is still liable, it merely shifts which individual within that organization is at fault.

amigoingtodie 9y ago

Because you have to pay to even read the state laws of Georgia, so nobody knows the law?

edoceo 9y ago
Wut?
- alsetmusic 9y ago
  They were referencing this: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/public-records-activist-violated-copyright-by-publishing-georgia-legal-code-online/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/public-records-a...
- lovich 9y ago
  The text of Georgias law is publicly available, but there is a version with annotations from legal precendents that is considered necessary to understand the law as it is currently interpreted. LexisNexis collates those annotations for the state of Georgia and maintains a copyright on the annotations, you cannot access them without paying. The government in Georgia feel this is perfectly acceptable as you can tehcnically access the law even though, in practice, you have no idea
  - rayiner 9y ago
    The annotated version is freely available: http://www.lexisnexis.com/hottopics/gacode/default.asp http://www.lexisnexis.com/hottopics/gacode/default.asp. What the kerfuffle is about is that the State of Georgia has (1) Georgia law is highly unusual in giving the annotations authoritative force; (2) the State of Georgia has asserted copyright over the annotated version.
    - lovich 9y ago
      ah my mistake
    - jonathanwallace 9y ago
      It depends upon what you mean by "free." There are limitations on what you may do with the "freely" available version.
- amigoingtodie 9y ago
  https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/public-records-activist-violated-copyright-by-publishing-georgia-legal-code-online/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/public-records-a...
AnimalMuppet 9y ago
True. But how is that relevant? Nobody can read the law (the annotated copy), so nobody knows that wiping the servers is destroying evidence, and therefore illegal? I doubt that that's how this went down...
googlryas 9y ago
False. You don't need to pay to read the laws, but you do need to pay if you want to read a private groups annotations to the laws, which include things like judicial rulings. The annotations are a value add and not required to understand or practice law in GA. You can also access the judicial rulings and all other sources which the annotations are derived from for free, but you would need to put the work in yourself to compile that data.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- Retric 9y ago
  It's not quite that clear cut. Georgia places unusual weight to these specific annotations so simply having access to the rulings will not result in the same exact output.
  - rayiner 9y ago
    Yes it’s very unusual. The official version is the annotated one, and the annotations have legal force.
- sliverstorm 9y ago
  Supposedly the annotated version is actually the official Georgia code.
- lobster_johnson 9y ago
  Georgia is somewhat unique in that the annotations actually are part of the codified law. You absolutely do need the annotations to practice, because they are authoritative. So not "false" after all.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

alexeldeib 9y ago

Later in the article, they mention that wiping the server was in response to a security vulnerability leaving 6.7 million sensitive voter records vulnerable. The governor's office claims to not be aware, so it sounds like they're still following the trail, as you put it. Fortunately: > The FBI is known to have made an exact data image of the server in March when it investigated the security hole

olegkikin 9y ago
They could've just unplugged the server from the internet if it's vulnerable.
- paulddraper 9y ago
  Electronic access, phyiscal access...it sounds more like it was a "routine" disposal of sensitive information 10 months after the election. United States national ballot records must be kept for 22 months, and then they are likewise disposed. Florida kept (keeps?) its ballots especially long after the 2000 recount.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > Electronic access, phyiscal access...it sounds more like it was a "routine" disposal of sensitive information 10 months after the election. When a lawsuit is filed (or even when you reasonably know lawsuit will be filed), you can not legally destroy evidence related to it, even in the course of otherwise routine document destruction. In state agencies and other large orgs, it's common to receive mass email orders from legal to preserve all documents and communications related to matter under dispute, regardless of normal retention policies, with reminders of severe legal consequences to the org and dire personal consequences if the directive is not complied with.
    - paulddraper 9y ago
      Of course. And that's exactly why Florida kept around its 2000 ballots especially long. My claim is that this sort of action in itself is not bizzare. That it was done with a pending lawsuit is bizzare. Whether it was due to malice or incompetance remains to be seen.

lsh123 9y ago

Because this is a new norm: https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2016/01/20/irs-wipes-another-hard-drive-defying-court-order-but-you-must-keep-tax-records/#18ed62395b26 https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2016/01/20/irs-wipes...

JoBrad 9y ago
Unless you’re aware of a lot more incidents in the past few years, I don’t think twice in 2 years makes for a new norm. The IRS found a backup of that hard drive, according to this article. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/feb/3/irs-promises-stop-erasing-hard-drives/ http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/feb/3/irs-promises-... In any case these events are making news because they are not normal.
- alsetmusic 9y ago
  > In any case these events are making news because they are not normal. What’s troubling is that we don’t have a good way to know how often this behavior actually occurs. Would the IRS have found the missing data if there hadn’t been press about it? I suppose that depends on your outlook and level of skepticism. Or, put another way, I once asked my father if the state of political corruption in the news had always been as dour as what we see today. He said that this was the worst during his lifetime. I then asked if he thought that the state of world affairs was actually worse, or if technology had simply made it more well known. He was silent for a long time before he answered. He said that he hadn’t considered that. Finally, when I was a teen I was frustrated when I was lectured after I got caught sneaking out in the night. My mother, with a healthy degree of smug satisfaction, told me that she was always one step ahead of me. I couldn’t throw it in her face that I got away with it on a regular basis, of course. You must assume that when you catch someone behaving badly once then there may be other incidents that you didn’t recognize. The worst aspect of corruption is not the time that we found out about it. It’s the question of how much we’ve missed.

NelsonMinar 9y ago

It is obstruction of justice.

a3n 9y ago

It would seem a simple matter to charge each individual from the lowest levels with a straightforward crime, and flip them as they ladder up toward the people who gave the order/suggestion/plausibly-deniable-wish. Simple, that is, if the prosecutor wanted to prosecute. We are all mere resources.

rabboRubble 9y ago

Or it could be a part of a well-scheduled maintenance schedule that was agreed by IT and the system owners. I used to have a system like that under my purview, a voice recording system. Unless we were under court order or internal compliance instruction, all back up tapes were to be erased after 1 month of the conversation being recorded. This was a daily job for the VR system admins -- pull tapes from 1 month prior, erase, and recycle back into the recording system to be used again. No special instruction needed to do a BAU task. If a court order was received a tape was pulled out of the general pool, and sent off to compliance for safeguarding. So if we received a court order, that order would go to CEO / COO, to head of legal &/or compliance, who would then instruct head of IT, who would instruct the VR system admin to pull a tape. If somebody dropped the ball in that chain on day 29 and the order didn't reach the VR system guy, the tape was erased the next day. The importance of this monthly VR tape deletion process was important enough to have some extremely senior compliance person flying out to assure themselves it was actually happening, and happening according to this procedure. Why 30 days only you ask? Because we were only obligated under law to maintain 30 days worth of recordings. Anything longer than that became a regulatory risk to us. Under my VR system erasure policy, the guy in question who wiped the election system might not have anybody to point to as ordering him/her to wipe.

SAI_Peregrinus 9y ago
In which case he'd have the existing policy to point to as why the wipe was performed when it was, and the legal department to point to for not informing him of the lawsuit and to not delete those tapes. The organization is still liable, it merely shifts which individual within that organization is at fault.