RSSIntel E-mails Lost Due to IT Manager Error, Lawyer States
By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published March 19, 2007, 11:53 AM
In a meeting of corporate attorneys at the Argyle Executive Forum in New York last Wednesday, Bloomberg News reported over the weekend, Intel's general counsel stated that e-mails for 151 employees who were to have been instructed to retain them as possible evidence in the AMD antitrust trial were lost by virtue of a single IT manager misreading a spreadsheet where the employees' names were first distributed.
Apparently the names were categorized across multiple tabs, if general counsel D. Bruce Sewell's remarks are accurate, and this single manager didn't click on the tab where the 151 were listed. As a result, they never received backup instructions.
An Intel spokesperson told BetaNews this morning the company has no official comment as of yet, which may mean the corporation is not yet ready to validate Sewell's account.
According to Bloomberg's account, which ran in last Saturday's San Jose Mercury News, Sewell's speech for a gathering of attorneys was by way of underscoring how meticulous their clients' businesses must be in maintaining their vital data, not just in case of disaster and loss but for legal purposes as well. He reportedly advised his audience to advise their clients never to develop a data backup policy that could fail on account of one person's error, saying, "We've got a $10 million discovery-management program, and yet that human interface can often be overlooked...Talk to your IT department."
Among those at Intel whose e-mails may have been lost were the company's senior executives, including CEO Paul Otellini, chairman Craig Barrett, and senior vice president Sean Maloney. If Sewell's account is correct, those names may have appeared on "Sheet2" somewhere, though evidently not because of any alphabetical order for the list as a whole, given a "B," an "M," and an "O."
As the Bloomberg report later states, Sewell's remarks went on to imply that it's useless to split hairs over the meaning of whether deleted data is truly irretrievable if it technically may still exist in some non-indexed form somewhere - that there is indeed some point where data can, for all intents and purposes, be declared "truly gone."
In a related story, Intel has decided to sell the Brooklyn Bridge.
I worked IT in the Server Group at Intel CO. The amount of backups that are done totally are astounding. For them to say that the emails weren't backed up or were deleted is the biggest load of crap I have heard yet. I still prefer Intel, but jeez... If they can't lie better than this...
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|Amen!
The irony? Its all well and good to toss your hands up to the government and go "oppps!"
But can you imagine where the head of that guy would be if he did that to a higher up inside Intel if they internally needed backups of something.
Assuming, of course, that its not up some orifice.
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|If you do not delete the emails, we will fire you and kill your whole family.
That's why he selectively deleted those emails.
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|Funny thing is.......what about backup tapes? Intel surely has backup tapes as all major corporations keep Month End Tapes! I do!
Of course, I would delete them too if one of my executive VP's or higher told me to.....I would get it in writing though!
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|"Funny thing is.......what about backup tapes? Intel surely has backup tapes as all major corporations keep Month End Tapes! I do!"
Old backup tapes are eventually destroyed, are they not? Intel can't just throw their old backup tapes in the garbage, they destroy them. These records are not kept forever...I doubt they have any backups from say, their 80486 days.
Their emails anyways, and I'm guessing that under their existing policies emails are not backed up as they are not "critical data". Perhaps I'm wrong, especially since I have not worked for a company nearly as large as Intel...
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|"Their emails anyways, and I'm guessing that under their existing policies emails are not backed up as they are not "critical data". Perhaps I'm wrong, especially since I have not worked for a company nearly as large as Intel..."
I don't know what policies Intel has to abide by...but SOX (and HIPAA I believe) require that you archive emails for at least 7 years. I'm sure there is some government body that Intel is regulated by, and I'm sure they have similar requirements.
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|You are definitely wrong on the email part. If you remember the case on Microsoft, DOJ dig out a lot of old emails. I thought MS has the brightest mind in the world? Why can't they thought of this trick when they were on trail?
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|He'll be sitting back with his payoff! You will most likely see him on WOW as one of the guys with all the power (since he has all the time).
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|For a 100k employee corporation, don't expect internal IT perfection. Microsoft knows very well about this, as does IBM. Do you know how many e-mails does a CEO from a fortune 500 get a day? The question is - was there any relevant info in those e-mails that AMD has an interest?
I'm not holding my breath for AMD or Intel, because this case is just a legal circus for law firms.
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|hahah
from all the email of the 20k people that work for intel
the ones that were needed got "lost"
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|Question: Shouldn't this IT manager be fined or at least investigated for this, or is it just Intel?
We had a debate a few weeks back regarding IT staff being responsible for security breaches, etc., would you guys also agree that he/she should be excempt from this kind of thing as well?
I'm not even saying this IT person should be FULLY responsible or something, but if this person truley screwed up alone, and it is determined that the other people involved did things correctly but just this one individual screwed up, I would think that person should be punished in some way other than just losing their job--agree or disagree?
Of course, Intel pays a big price for this REGARDLESS, because unfortunately it would have been their fault for entrusting this type of responsibility to one that would seem to be a careless, irresponsible IT person.
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|That conversation was in regards not to missing data, but instances where personal, private information was made public.
It doesn't really apply. This is just Intel trying to turn this trial into a joke.
I'm certain the manager will be fired. They had to scapegoat someone....
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|That has got to be one of the lamest excuses I've ever heard.
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|That's the "safest" bet when they don't have a clue as well. After all, one individual could not be forced to pay for the entire fine (if fined) but yet Intel has someone to blame other than themselves.
Too bad...
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|It should constitute default judgment against them.
Just as ignorance is no excuse, neither should this type of "My dog ate it" BS.
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|okay, But the ones that were lost were just the ones they needed to send those guys to the slammer right? OK Just checking...
Everything is normal...
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|sure. blame the IT guy.
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|yea right. I just love the fact how important information were lost when it's needed.
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