NATIONAL SECURITY. Not even a peep from the newspapers. All this information coming out at once is a smokescreen. It won't work. The public will be outraged when they find out ... like when they found out there were no WMD, there wasn't even any significant quantities of uranium and Bin Ladin was never found. Now< prominent lawmakers, from both sides of the aisle, are saying that we lost the Iraq War.

The question of national security is the obvious knee jerk response to Rovegate. National security always has gotten a headline before.

Congress should *immediately* demand the White House back up all logs from internal proxy servers, and continually back up those servers. As Gilatrout points out above, anyone who has accessed an outside e-mail account using the White House's internet connection will have left a footprint in the proxy server logs.

The White House may even (probably) have other layers of security servers that log this sort of data. Congress should demand that logs from any and all internet proxy and/or security systems within the White House be retained. Due to encryption, these logs may not contain unencrypted e-mails, but the logs should certainly identify each time an internal staffer accessed outside e-mail, identify the staffer, and give the external email account log-in.

Next, congress should request the appropriate national security agency perform a (quick) emergency security audit of all outside electronic communication methods used by White House staffers with security clearances. This should identify all the private cellular accounts and e-mail systems being used by White House staffers. Some staffers may "forget" about certain e-mail accounts or private cellular devices, but those can be found as well.

Years ago, a friend told me that the secret service monitored electronic communications near the White House. While I can guarantee the Secret Service would be loathe to give this information to Congress, I have a suspicion that the SS may require every White House staffer to register their personal cellular devices with them if they plan to use them within the White House. If the registering of devices isn't a requirement, then the SS still will still have a log of every device used within the White House. This would be done so the SS could tell friendly devices from unfriendly ones.

Congress has already sent do not destroy letters to each of the e-mail hosts revealed in the DOJ document dumps. (GWB43.com and the like). But with each staffer seemingly forging their own method of electronic communication, there are likely to be as yet unknown private e-mail servers and privately owned communication devices being used to transmit White House business.

When the security audit has determined which e-mail and cellular e-mail accounts are being used by staffers, those e-mail hosts and cellular providers should also be sent do not destroy letters. This will all need to be done rather quickly, most proxy server logs are automatically over-written in short order, and cellular companies only hold e-mail for limited periods of time.
Posted by: Michael Stevens
Date: March 28, 2007 02:00 PM

  ¶ 12:39 AM