Bush White House Won't Have to Disclose Missing Emails

The Associated Press reports today that millions of "missing" emails from the Bush White House do not have to be made public. This situation is something we've been following for quite a long time here on the Proofpoint blog (see for example, "Email Archiving in the Zeitgeist", "White House Shows Why Tapes Backups are not an Archive").

The gist of the story is that a federal appeals court ruled today that millions of emails from the Bush White House (which the Bush White House had claimed were missing, and were subsequently ordered to be discovered, produced and retained) -- which are now presumably held by the White House Office of Administration -- do not have to be made public in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

The AP article does a good job of explaining the origins of this case, which it says stems from the fact that:

"During its first term, the Bush White House failed to install electronic record-keeping for e-mail when it switched to a new system, resulting in millions of messages that could not be found. The Bush White House discovered the problem in 2005 and rejected a proposed solution."

The article goes on to explain that:

"The Bush White House eventually said that it located 14 million e-mails that were misplaced and that the White House had restored hundreds of thousands of other e-mails from computer backup tapes. But two groups - Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and the National Security Archive - filed a lawsuit against the Executive Office of the President in February arguing that large amounts of e-mail may still be missing, and that the government must undertake an extensive recovery effort."

Read the whole article here: "White House wins court fight on e-mail disclosure"

This entire case serves as a timely reminder about the importance of email archiving in today's enterprise. Email is a rich source of information and is almost always subpoenaed in any legal action.

Companies need to be prepared for electronic discovery requests (i.e., requests to produce any and all emails related to a civil or criminal case) and be able to produce emails very rapidly in response to such requests. Having to restore email from backup tapes is exceedingly costly and time-consuming.

Failing to produce information quickly can result in a finding of spoliation. Spoliation is considered a criminal act, regardless of whether the records were destroyed intentionally or accidentally, and may result in fines or incarceration. But, more likely, it can also lead to a negative inference finding that can ultimately lead to a guilt verdict.

Of course, there are many other advantages offered by email archiving systems. You can learn more about the benefits of email archiving technology (and SaaS email archiving in particular) by attending our upcoming web seminar, "Avoid Archiving Nightmares" - register for it here.