IRS Scandal

[Rock Hard Ten]

Seldom visit this Forum…..came over today because the IRS missing emails has me sooooo urinated…..did not see a thread on the subject, so I started one….where does one start? Citizen or some of the other IT experts on here need to comment……

How can the media not finally get engaged in this one. The IRS is so sanctimonious. If you have ever undergone an audit (I have done so on the corporate and personal side), everything needs to be so pristine and they are so condescending……and for emails from as late as 3 years ago to not be available????

[Doc]

Seldom visit this Forum…..came over today because the IRS missing emails has me sooooo urinated…

Not to make fun of you but I suspect you have your auto-correct on (LOL). I'll assume that should be irritated.

I wish I could say I'm surprised but I'm not. I'm neither surprised that the administration would pull that crap nor that the media would accept it. To be honest its more disappointing that the media hasn't called them out. We know that politicians will lie, cheat, sell their votes (and souls), etc but usually you can find some portion of the media who will call them out however the vast majority of the media is simply giving this administration a free pass. They did it with Benghazi, fast and furious, with the IRS selection on who to audit, with voter intimidation and now they will do the same with this.

[Doc]

PS--you should visit more often. If you did maybe you could get stuff off your chest and you would not be so rock hard.

[bigsky]

So the "hard drive" issue is a myth. At the city of Bozeman all emails are captured and saved an archived centrally. That server is then backed up. A crashed hard drive on a desktop means nothing. The IRS, wanting to see that KInkos receipt from four years ago, has no excuse; it's criminal If they don't archive their emails in this manner, in anticipation of FOIA requests and subpoenas.

Essentially, they think we are all idiots whose only experience is with an old PC at home and thane their explanation works.

[Doc]

All I know is that if I e-mail somebody I get a copy and they get a copy. There is a copy in my "Sent" fine and a copy in their "Inbox". If I get an e-mail there is a copy in my inbox and a copy in their "sent" box. If my computer goes down I bet I could get my old e mail that were important by contacting those folks who I sent to and from, or I could also get them from my Iphone mail app which also down loads them all. Of course I don't work for the govt. where I'm required to have copies..... and of course I don't break the law.

[Doc]

Essentially, they think we are all idiots whose only experience is with an old PC at home and thane their explanation works.

No, they the think we are all "F-ing" idiots because we are. Or that there is a large enough segment of the population that doesn't give a rats ass because they will blindly follow what this joke of an administration does because this joke of an administration has repeatedly gotten away with lying to the citizens.

[ukblue]

Obamas followers have watched the movie. "Rules of Engagement" and have followed the admin in this movie. Also Nixon was impeached for a 17 minute conversation. How times have changed.

[CitizenBBN]

Seldom visit this Forum…..came over today because the IRS missing emails has me sooooo urinated…..did not see a thread on the subject, so I started one….where does one start? Citizen or some of the other IT experts on here need to comment……

How can the media not finally get engaged in this one. The IRS is so sanctimonious. If you have ever undergone an audit (I have done so on the corporate and personal side), everything needs to be so pristine and they are so condescending……and for emails from as late as 3 years ago to not be available????

I can assure you there is no way for them to have lost these emails unless they wanted to be lost. The IRS like every other major federal department has massive redundant operations and maintains backups. To lose a year's worth of emails and then claim it was because of the loss of a single hard drive on a desktop computer is hilarious. Even in a distributed system like exchange server the emails are kept on BOTH the desktop AND the servers. The only way to lose that many emails, more than 100 thousand iirc, is to destroy the desktop hard drive at the same time frame as all the server drives and all the backups.

No doubt their servers are on RAID, which means the loss of a single hard drive wouldn't lose any data, and the fact that they have the emails before this point means they are maintaining those emails on servers for years, which means no single failure would cost just her emails for a time period.

Further, as Doc mentioned, every email would have been stored not just on her computer and the servers but also on the servers and desktop computers of everyone with which every email corresponded. the IRS won't have just one email server, they'll have a server farm then all the desktops of all the people, which means any email of Lerner's would probably exist in at least 3 spots and likely more at any point in time.

As bigsky said this is the reason they give to people who think in terms of a single home computer. Drive crashed, data gone. Massive corporate and government networks don't work that way, it's absurd. They spend tens of millions a YEAR on systems designed specifically to NEVER lose data. A friend of mine works for the military and his entire job, the job of his entire department, is nothing but data backup. there are literally dozens of full time IRS IT people who do nothing but data backup and maintenance all day every day.

that's not even to go into the fact that they claim they sent the drive to be recovered and couldn't get the data, which if you are willing to spend the money (and they are) is also unlikely. When a drive fails it 99% of the time fails electronically, but the magnetic data on the discs is intact. swap out the electronics and you get your data back. Data recovery companies can rebuild a large amount of data off drives that have been lost at sea or shot with a gun. the only way to absolutely destroy all that data is to physically destroy the drive or run an erase program on it.

Further, the IRS broke the law by never reporting this supposed incident to the proper authorities that there had been a data loss. If the loss happened when they said, before this scandal broke, why wouldn't they report it as normal course of business?

It's an insult to our intelligence to suggest they are lost. somehow her drive crashed, then was "recycled" and all the emails lost during exactly the period in question despite massive redundancy and emails not being located on just one machine, no one was informed until years afterward in violation of federal regs and requiring lying to congress to conceal, but it was all perfectly normal?

I guarantee you that if her drive crashed they coudl have restored EVERY SINGLE EMAIL almost immediately on any replacement computer simply by setting up her account on that machine and letting it run.

I just did this btw on new (to us) laptops for me and my auction manager. We use exchange server, I set up the outlook accounts, it synced with the server and poof I get a full copy of all the emails, appointments, etc. that are on the account b/c of course they are on both our old laptops AND our server. How the hell do they think you can connect a phone to the same email that's on your desktop computer at work and when you delete a message on one it deletes it on the other?

If anything email data is the MOST backed up and protected data in any network system. It took me 2 days to move my development environment, I had my email duplicated and running on the new system in about 10 minutes and letting it run for half an hour. Hers would have taken a couple of hours at most.

It's a joke and for the first time I really believe we have a true Watergate conspiracy on our hands, simply b/c of the proactive steps it would take to really destroy all those emails. there must be something very very serious in them to have taken these steps.

[CitizenBBN]

Oh, one other note, it's possible there were NEVER any emails on her local drive. If they were using a Cytrix type system, which would be far more secure, all of her data should have been kept on secure servers, her hard drive crash would be all but meaningless data wise.

Yep, a complete joke. The fact that the media isn't losing it's mind over this is just another example of their complicity in what has become a reprehensible use of the government's power against political opponents.

[bigsky]

Yep, all of what citizen said. Now we find out they even had a backup company hired.

So at work we backup all the desktops to a raid ten Linux "toaster" and that is backed up to a removable we change up regularly.

Now I've given two scenarios, and Citizen a couple more, about WHY the "desktop crashed and we can't recover" is complete horse pucky.

[dan_bgblue]

They also had/have a contract with an outside company, Sonasoft, that backs up all the emails.

[dan_bgblue]

Sorry bigsky, I was typing too slowly while you were posting.

[CitizenBBN]

They also had/have a contract with an outside company, Sonasoft, that backs up all the emails.

That's very interesting b/c those people can be subpoenaed and Congress may be able to lean on them quite a bit harder.

Were i in that hearing I wouldn't have said "I don't believe you" to the new iRS director, I'd have said "I know that is a lie as does anyone with any IT knowledge and I will get to the bottom of this and when I do you will be the new fish on the cell block if you continue this subterfuge and hide the truth from the American People."

[jazyd]

Hell, I think it is great and so s hould everyone else. This year I had $1 millin in deductions for this years tax, but my hard drive got burned that I kept everything on, so now they can prove it. My word against theirs and they have set the precedence.

[TNCat]

I am a CPA. A new client of mine has an audit that will start in a few weeks. He has lost some paper records in a flood. Think the IRS will be forgiving? It will be lucky if I can convince my client to be civil.

The IRS is a surly lot these days. They are getting chewed on by all sides....not that I have any sympathy. If the press will do there job, there should be significant fallout from this, but they won't do it. I'm really not sure what it will take for the press to actually investigate and report the indiscretions of this administration.

[CitizenBBN]

I am a CPA. A new client of mine has an audit that will start in a few weeks. He has lost some paper records in a flood. Think the IRS will be forgiving? It will be lucky if I can convince my client to be civil.

You'd have trouble with me too. I bet they now get to hear this in every audit every day, and they absolutely deserve it.

Like "when they give back their salaries with penalties and interest for losing their records I'll pay my taxes, penalties and interest on my lost records."

If this were a Republican in office the media would be cancelling major sporting events to broadcast special investigations of this mess. I'm not sure it wouldn't have forced a resignation, but no doubt it would at the least lead to an Administration every bit as under siege as Nixon or Carter with the Iran situation.

[TNCat]

The problem is that the IRS can be very heavy handed with someone who does not have the resources or the amount in question is not enough to warrant spending significant $ to fight them. If you piss-off the field agent, then you are putting yourself in a bad position. I'm not saying you don't fight your case, but you have to be civil unless you are willing to litigate their findings.

You are right that the agents deserve it. In this case, even a tax court would side with the IRS so I guess I should let my client extract a pound of flesh because he is probably going to have to pay no matter the circumstances!

We need to step back and look at our tax code and simplify things....but that won't happen. Special interest and Social engineering influences are too deeply imbedded in the tax code for either party to seriously consider tax reform.

[KeithKSR]

I work for a relatively small Eastern Kentucky school district. If someone went into my classroom and removed my PC I would still have every file in my documents file as they are housed on a server that has a mirrored server backup in addition to nightly backups that are performed. Exchange, which is used by the Feds, doesn't reside on local HDs, but on servers. No way the emails just disappeared without human intervention. I've got emails that date back a decade or more on my personal and work email accounts.

[UKHistory]

No email is truly ever lost. Even with the worst equipment and worst service contracts, the IRS should be able to locate every single email. I have to call BS on that as well.

But I would want to talk with their CIO and what they do with all old emails of employees.

[CitizenBBN]

The problem is that the IRS can be very heavy handed with someone who does not have the resources or the amount in question is not enough to warrant spending significant $ to fight them. If you piss-off the field agent, then you are putting yourself in a bad position. I'm not saying you don't fight your case, but you have to be civil unless you are willing to litigate their findings.

You are right that the agents deserve it. In this case, even a tax court would side with the IRS so I guess I should let my client extract a pound of flesh because he is probably going to have to pay no matter the circumstances!

We need to step back and look at our tax code and simplify things....but that won't happen. Special interest and Social engineering influences are too deeply imbedded in the tax code for either party to seriously consider tax reform.

I agree with every word.

No doubt you don't want to tick them off, and not every person at the IRS is a jack booted thug, but boy as a collective entity it sure deserves it.

I agree about a billion percent on reform and the reason why it doesn't happen. The best thing that could happen is a national sales tax or vat and do away with income tax altogether.

[dan_bgblue]

The best thing that could happen is a national sales tax or vat and do away with income tax altogether.

Do that and there are an additional million or two citizens out of work over night

[TNCat]

Do that and there are an additional million or two citizens out of work over night

You are right. It would hurt my business but ultimately there are other things that we can do to make up for the loss in revenue. The bottom line is that it would be better for the country and for most citizens.

[suncat05]

That information/evidence is out there.........somewhere. If Congress continues to enquire then maybe it will somehow be recovered.
There really needs to be a special prosecutor assigned to this situation, and he/she needs to be completely independent of both sides and the situation. But we all know that will never happen under this current corrupt administration.
Also, is there a statute of limitations in this situation? And especially if it is determined that federal law has been violated?
At this point however, I have little faith in either side, insofar as anything fruitful coming from this inquiry aside from what we currently know.

[suncat05]

And God forbid that anyone either step forward with real information, or somebody in the IRS gets pinched for something unrelated, because then I firmly believe that dead bodies may start showing up in various places. JMHO.

[Doc]

You are right. It would hurt my business but ultimately there are other things that we can do to make up for the loss in revenue. The bottom line is that it would be better for the country and for most citizens.

Yep, adios to all those govt / IRS employees. Also hurts the CPA business but as you say they/you compensate. Good financial advice is good financial advice.