[lug] off topic email question

[karl horlen]

I think this appropriate for the group, especially
those that are email admin gurus.

All the major news sites are reporting the executive
office's loss of email. estimates as high as 1000
days.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080227/ap_on_go_pr_wh/white_house_e_mail

Call me naive, but i imagine most every ISP i've ever
sent / received email from has a record of that email.
 I imagine every company i've ever worked for has
access to my historical email.

Yet, I know that if I delete a mail from my mail spool
on a unix system, it's as good as gone.  Which leads
me to believe that unless daily / weekly / monthly
backups  are made of mail servers and then archived,
it "might" be possible that there is no history of the
emails.  

That is unless you also backup the client MUA message
stores and or if users keep huge local inboxes.  

Before I criticize and label this as an obvious cover
up by the executive branch, is there even any ounce of
truth that there would be no foul play involved? 
Email admins chime in please.

If there wasn't any tampering and this actually "just"
happened, anybody that has faith in the administration
for the last 8 years has got be pretty disappointed
knowing that the party that's supposed to be tough on
torror is completely and utterly technologically inept
at even the most basic things as a nightly backup, no
less in the highest levels of national office.  It's a
serious joke.  

I can't help but think a group of 16 year old script
kiddies would make our nat'l specialists look foolish.
 Sad but true.

Outside of the commentary, i'm really interested in
the  answer to my email archiving / recovery
questions.  How do email admins approach this task in
the real world?  How far back do you save archives? 
Why - is it purely corp cya mentality, to help
employees that accidentally delete mails or both?


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