FOIA, torture, and records management

Judge Gives Government 10 Days to Avoid Contempt on CIA Tapes

But the judge, the Southern District of New York's Alvin Hellerstein, said at a hearing that he would give the government 10 days to produce a declaration to convince him why he should refrain from a contempt finding and from ordering production of a list of the tapes, information on witnesses and any documents or memoranda relevant to the Freedom of Information Act request of the American Civil Liberties Union.

So now the CIA must produce a list of evidence that it destroyed. How does an administrator produce such a list. Imagine the buck passing going on right now within the agency, for those who destroyed the evidence are keen to arrange that someone else be responsible for describing that which was destroyed, leaving that individual or individuals on the hook for any contempt citation.

All the worker bees within the agency and their contractors are going to play this by the book, let the big shots go to jail.

The coming boom market in crisis commiunications and litigation support

Exposing Bush's historic abuse of power

July 23, 2008 | WASHINGTON -- The last several years have brought a parade of dark revelations about the George W. Bush administration, from the manipulation of intelligence to torture to extrajudicial spying inside the United States. But there are growing indications that these known abuses of power may only be the tip of the iceberg. Now, in the twilight of the Bush presidency, a movement is stirring in Washington for a sweeping new inquiry into White House malfeasance that would be modeled after the famous Church Committee congressional investigation of the 1970s.

There is a specialty within crisis communications PR that trains clients for testifying before congress. Those people are going to be very rich.

We are going to spend the next twenty years examining the misconduct of the Bush administration. Look for major advances in content management, enterprise search, litigation support, e-discovery, and evidence recovery.

Destruction of evidence

Detainee-Trial Evidence Was Allegedly Destroyed

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico, June 8 -- The Pentagon urged interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to destroy handwritten notes in case they were called to testify about potentially harsh treatment of detainees, a military defense lawyer said Sunday.

Lt. Cmdr. William Kuebler, the attorney for Toronto-born Omar Khadr, said the instructions were included in a 2003 operations manual shown to him by prosecutors. He said they suggest that the United States deliberately thwarted evidence that could help terrorism suspects defend themselves at trial.

Are we do understand that not only was someone dumb enough to put destruction of evidence in writing, but that they included it in a manual?

We are going to spend decades investigating the misconduct of the present administration. Expect major advances in evidence recovery, e-discovery, litigation support, along with precdent setting rulings.

It is a great time to be in legal and criminal justice technology.

The coming boom market in crisis commiunications and corporate reputation repair

Ex-LPL adviser charged with fraud, theft

Financial services provider CIT is taking strong exception to a Moody’s downgrade that caused its share price to plunge more than 4%.

Struggling banks give FDIC ‘heartburn’

I also predict a seller's market in e-discovery and evidence recovery.

Business you should never bid on

FBI raids special counsel's office

Investigators say Bloch is suspected of hiring an outside company to scrub his computer amid a federal investigation of alleged misconduct in his office.

He hired an outside company because there isn't a civil servant in the entire federal government dumb enough to go to jail for Bloch. The private company which did this has a name, I have no doubt we will be learning its name in the near future.

This is a great time to be in e-discovery and records management, because the investigations into this maladministration will produce business for years to come.

It is also a good time to be a government IT reporter, because one else will have the unique combination of knowledge or politics, the civil service, and technology that will make it possible to tell these stories. Entire careers are going to be made out of this.

Edit -

The Legal Times and Project on Government Oversight comment.

Edit ii
FireDogLake: The Bloch Raid: A Mafia Turf War?

It's a great time to be in e-discovery

Durbin Calls for Inspector General Investigation of Torture Memos

But Durbin says the emphasis should be on those who authorized the activity. He explains: "Under U.S. law, command responsibility is a well-established theory of liability that covers those who authorize violations of law."

And accordingly, Durbin writes that he will ask the Justice Department’s Inspector General and the Office of Professional Responsibility "to investigate the conduct of Justice Department officials who advised the CIA that waterboarding is lawful."

Entire firms will be built on investigating the actions of the last eight years. We could be treated to the spectacle of government contractors investigating each other, or at least supplying the consulting and litigation support services to do so.

I look foward to new technologies in evidence recovery, search, and content management.

The next decade will be a great time for government IT reporters, as they will have the best insight and ability to explain all this to the general public.

Email retention in the era of accountability

E-mail Scandal Drives Storage Lesson Home

As the saga of whether the Bush administration properly saved or illegally deleted e-mail continues to unfold, experts are advising companies to review and confirm that corporate e-mail policies are not only in place but are meeting regulatory requirements.

"It's one thing to back up and archive e-mail, but it's a whole other thing to make sure it's there and you're able to retrieve it," said Matt Smith, president of LiveOffice, a provider of message managing and archiving services.

These investigations will continue and it is only a question of time before government contractors are drawn in.

Why records management, e-discovery, and evidence recovery have a great future

Government Executive

With the end of President Bush's two terms drawing near, the White House has until two months after the election to provide his records to the National Archives. By Feb. 1, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee wants an update on progress.

"Serious questions have been raised about whether the White House has sufficient systems to preserve presidential records and to prepare for the transition to the next president," said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., the committee's chairman, in letters to U.S. Archivist Allen Weinstein and Counsel to the President Fred Fielding on Dec. 20, 2007. "According to information received by the committee, the White House has failed to implement a robust system for archiving e-mails and other electronic records, despite several efforts to do so."

CREW

Bush Admin. admits to destroying e-mails from start of Iraq War, Leak of Valerie Wilson's name and DOJ investigation of leak

Entire companies will be built upon investigating the actions of the last eight years.

Analysis-powered e-discovery

KM World

MetaLincs has launched Version 4.0 of its Enterprise E-Discovery Suite. The company says the new offering is the first integrated application that delivers all the core e-discovery functions and processes needed to meet enterprise-class requirements associated with litigation and compliance-related investigations.

This is a great time to be in e-discovery.

e-discovery, evidence recovery, and content management lollapalooza

Interim Report on RNC Emails and the Presidential Records Act

There has been extensive destruction of the e-mails of White House officials by the RNC. Of the 88 White House officials who received RNC e-mail accounts, the RNC has preserved no e-mails for 51 officials. In a deposition, Susan Ralston, Mr. Rove’s former executive assistant, testified that many of the White House officials for whom the RNC has no e-mail records were regular users of their RNC e-mail accounts. Although the RNC has preserved no e-mail records for Ken Mehlman, the former Director of Political Affairs, Ms. Ralston testified that Mr. Mehlman used his account “frequently, daily.” In addition, there are major gaps in the e-mail records of the 37 White House officials for whom the RNC did preserve e-mails. The RNC has preserved only 130 e-mails sent to Mr. Rove during President Bush’s first term and no e-mails sent by Mr. Rove prior to November 2003. For many other White House officials, the RNC has no e-mails from before the fall of 2006.

Obviously there will be several investigations coming out of this. Those investigators will have to sift through mountains of evidence, employ advanced technology to recover other evidence, and generally search for needles concealed in fields of haystacks. Presto Vivace does not currently represent clients who officer that sort of service, but this is a great time to tell those stories.