On-Call-IT Assists In Government Data Destruction

covaro writes "Seems those on-site computer services may be helping to cover up government dirty deeds these days. The Wall Street Journal reports: 'Investigators learned that [Office of Special Counsel head Scott Bloch, who has been under investigation since 2005] erased all the files on his office personal computer late last year. They are now trying to determine whether the deletions were improper or part of a cover-up, lawyers close to the case said ... Bypassing his agency's computer technicians, Mr. Bloch phoned for Geeks on Call, the mobile PC-help service ... Bloch had his computer's hard disk completely cleansed using a "seven-level" wipe: a thorough scrubbing that conforms to Defense Department data-security standards. The process makes it nearly impossible for forensics experts to restore the data later.'"

Re:Why not just by a new hard disc

[pipatron]

And what to do with the old one? Throw away and let some scavenger hunter find the data? Wiping a drive like this sounds like the easiest way to get rid of it, compared to the alternatives.

Re:Sounds like

[rudeboy1]

Meh. I'm not terribly impressed. I'm guessing all the guy did was show up, ran a copy of DBan [sourceforge.net] charged him $300 (because it's a government job), then left. Not that he did anything wrong. At least he knew the difference between formatting a drive and securely wiping it.

business in destructable drives

[cinnamon colbert]

sounds like there is a business selling physically destructable drives - a drive witha an easy open case, and a method to physcially damage the platter

when i was a kid, an older geek guy told me, with admiration in his voice, about collins radio, and the manual that went with its equpiment for the military.
the 1st page of hte manual said something to the effect, if this equipment is about to be captured by the enemey, here is one thing you can do in 1 min to render the equiment unusable....

Policy

[unenviabletask]

Why is there no policy in the government that means his use of another company to remove data from his system was an automatic breach with serious consequences. I have implemented that policy in my company, namely don't install unapproved software or attempt to change any setting at all without IT approval.

Re:So who will stand up for his Rights?

[capnkr]

From OP: "Think about it, before reacting, for once."

From parent: "In Bush's America..."

So your kneejerk reaction is to criticize the current administration. While completely ignoring the fact that a Clinton Administration is completely capable of doing the exact same BS, for the exact same reasons. In fact, they have, and will - it is well known that the one thing you *don't* want to do is to cross The Hillary, not if you want to keep your sack intact. We saw what happens to folks back when Bill was Prez. Same shit, different Party.

Strawberry, neither of them gives a shit about you and your concerns, not really. They just want you to keep falling for the same bi-partisan media mania bullshit, so that they can both keep getting elected. They love their power at your expense, and if you perpetuate the two party system (by voting for candidates from either party, or by propagating either partys political message of scorn for the other side, like you did in the above post), it will never get any better for you as an individual Citizen. Your Rights, your Powers as a Citizen of the USA, your spending power over the money *you* make will all be in continual decline as long as you are willing to accept the false message of dichotomy that continually comes down from the halls of power, via the channels of information pressed on you by the mass-media kingmakers.

My hopes for my fellow Americans in general: Rid yourself of affiliation with Democrats and Republicans, in thought, word, and deed. Become independent and thoughtful. Don't automatically accept propaganda and political prejudice as Truth. See things for what they are. Demand change, and be willing to work for it. Call to account those folks who are in power up there in DC, and make them do what they say, or kick them out.

They are not there to play politics for their party, they are our elected employees, and should be working for *us*.

Stepping up to the plate and becoming The Boss (as we should) won't be easy, and demands that we open our eyes to the reality of the situation we are in right now.

I broke the cardinal rule...

[stormguard2099]

and actually RTFA. The article's focus is not on how they are paying too much to get rid of their tracks like half of the comments are about. the real issue is that a higher-up called a private business to handle it for him instead of using his own IT department. Yes, they ran a 7-level wipe on it but he claims he wasn't trying to remove data. His reason for the call was a virus, or so he claims. Suspicious? Sure, it's possible that something like that is required by regulations for his department but I would think there would be something against people using private IT businesses for company machinery, especially considering the hefty pricetag (charged as a business expense no less)

He also directed Geeks on Call to erase laptop computers that had been used by his two top political deputies, who had recently left the agency.

Jeff Phelps, who runs Washington's Geeks on Call franchise, declined to talk about specific clients, but said calls placed directly by government officials are unusual. He also said erasing a drive is an unusual virus treatment. "We don't do a seven-level wipe for a virus," he said.

Those just puts the icing on the cake as far as suspicious activities in my book.

Re:So who will stand up for his Rights?

[capnkr]

From parent: "I take your point, but I simply don't believe that previous administrations were "just as bad". They weren't; the trend has been downward for a while."

Not so, for what it's worth, despite (or more probably, *because of*) what you might see/hear "reported".

I know some insiders, including a good friend in the Secret Service, and I've heard the stories first-hand. Much of the truth about politicians in general, and in this case, the Clintons in particular, *never* gets close to being reported truthfully. The ties between politicians and media, the "favors" swapped back and forth, keep the Truth about the downright nastiness of those folks out of the public eye.

From historical readings, I think it has always been this way, sadly.

I find it interesting that you have such strong political viewpoints about American candidates, being at the remove that you are. I don't have the time in my life to study objectively the political affairs of another nation and its politicians in order to form strong opinions about it/them, and I damned sure don't believe what I read about them in the press, because it is just too obvious that these media companies have an agenda for my thoughts...

Re:business in destructable drives

[Anonymous Coward]

all of my equipment was marked with a little red X. they expect you to put a pistol to the x and fire thus damaging the same components on every system thereby renduring systems useless even to cannibalism.

COVERUP - My Rejected Submission

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

A U.S. official overseeing a probe of former Bush aide Karl Rove yesterday refused to give federal investigators copies of "personal files" he deleted from his office computer [theregister.co.uk], after it was discovered he hired a private computer-help company to erase all the hard drives belonging to him and two deputies. Special Counsel Scott J. Bloch [osc.gov] hired a firm to perform a DoD-wipe, guaranteeing the files could never be restored. Bloch said he suspected his computer was infected by a virus - an unorthodox remedy. The receipt for the work performed makes no mention of a virus. Bloch refuses to turn over [washingtonpost.com] other files saved online and claims no documents relevant to any investigation have been purged. "We don't do a seven-level wipe for a virus," said a manager of Geeks on Call [rawstory.com] - the firm that was hired.

Re:Exactly as I suspected

[a_nonamiss]

Really, a single wipe with random data would *almost* do it. It would render the system unrecoverable, but my guess as to why the DOD requires 3 wipes is that if you're talking about nuclear launch codes, you'd only need to recover a few bytes of information to get very, very valuable data. If you knew exactly where to look, and knew exactly what you were looking for, it's conceivable that you could re-create the missing data based on residual magnetic signatures and complex mathematical analysis of the exact levels of magnetic field for each bit. There are many values between "on" and "off". It wouldn't be easy, but the KGB had a lot of resources dedicated to such follies.

I couldn't imagine even a determined individual could recover anything from a drive that's been wiped twice, but the DOD always tends to overdo everything, so thrice is the magic number. Anything more is just wearing out your magnetic media.

Re:Exactly as I suspected

[myxiplx]

I actually read something about being able to detect many additional magnetic fields on a drive if you really need to recover data. The trick is to dismantle it instead of using it's own read/write head. I think it was using a scanning electron microscope.

The gist of the article was that when data's stored for a long time, it has a detectable effect on the surrounding areas. So, no matter how many times you overwrite the data, the signature of the original is still detectable if you have sufficient resources to throw at it.

Was a fascinating read, but it was a long time ago when I read that, and I'm too lazy to google a link for you I'm afraid :-)