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   From: lying-old-bag@hillaryclinton.com   
      
   The IRS has “no excuses” for the latest twist in the saga of its   
   missing emails, says an expert in electronic discovery.   
      
   “Whether it’s incompetence or deliberate obstruction, the IRS   
   has no excuses for having handled this so poorly,” said Bruce   
   Webster, partner at Provo, Utah-based IT consulting and expert   
   witness firm Ironwood Experts.   
      
   House investigators said Tuesday that a hard drive belonging to   
   Lois Lerner, the former agency official at the center of the   
   department’s targeting scandal, was just “scratched,” not   
   irreparably damaged. The IRS had described the hard drive’s data   
   as “unrecoverable.”   
      
   The hard drive, which was recycled, contained roughly two years   
   of missing emails seen as relevant to the investigation into the   
   scandal.   
      
   Data, however, can be easily retrieved from scratched drives,   
   according to Webster. “This happens all the time,” he told   
   FoxNews.com. “There are little storefront companies in just   
   about every major city that can do this and there are forensic   
   companies that can restore files and even do higher end recovery   
   of data.”   
      
   Webster explained that, even when a drive’s file directory is   
   damaged or destroyed, information still can be recovered from   
   the magnetic disk where data is stored, known as a drive platter.   
      
   Hard drives can become scratched when a read-write head that is   
   meant to operate just above the platter touches down on the   
   magnetic disk. Webster, who has served as a consulting and IT   
   expert in more than 80 civil lawsuits, told FoxNews.com that   
   this can be caused by a physical jolt, or, in some case, a   
   mechanical failure.   
      
   Last month the IRS explained that Lerner’s computer crashed in   
   mid-2011, with the data stored on the computer’s hard drive   
   deemed “unrecoverable.”   
      
   Officials sought to piece together as many of Lerner’s emails as   
   possible, which included searching for emails across the   
   organization where she appeared either as author or recipient.   
   As a result, the IRS was able to identify approximately 24,000   
   Lerner-related emails between January 1, 2009, and April 2011.   
      
   In a court filing on July 18, the agency again stated that the   
   data on the hard drive was unrecoverable.   
      
   “It is unbelievable that we cannot get a simple, straight answer   
   from the IRS about this hard drive,” said Ways and Means   
   Committee Chairman Dave Camp, in a statement released on   
   Tuesday.  “The Committee was told no data was recoverable and   
   the physical drive was recycled and potentially shredded.  To   
   now learn that the hard drive was only scratched, yet the IRS   
   refused to utilize outside experts to recover the data, raises   
   more questions about potential criminal wrongdoing at the IRS.”   
      
   The IRS has not yet responded to FoxNews.com’s request for   
   comment.   
      
   http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2014/07/23/irs-has-no-excuses-for-   
   latest-twist-in-email-saga-says-it-expert/?intcmp=obnetwork   
      
       
      
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