Arkansas Governor Huckabee had hard drives from his office destroyed?

[Catherine Vincent]

Complaint filed over destruction of Huckabee hard drives
Wednesday, Jan 31, 2007

By John Lyon
Arkansas News Bureau

LITTLE ROCK - Political gadfly Jim Parson's filed a complaint Tuesday with the Pulaski County prosecutor's office over former Gov. Mike Huckabee's order to crush computer hard drives in his office before stepping down as governor.

The 73-year-old Parsons of Bella Vista, the self-proclaimed "inspector general of Arkansas,' said he filed a similar complaint Monday with the state Ethics Commission. He said the destruction of the hard drives deprived citizens of the right to request what should be public information under the Freedom of Information Act.

Huckabee depleted the governor's emergency fund before he left office, the state Bureau of Legislative Research reported, including spending $13,000 to have computer hard drives in his office crushed. "It's almost like, you know, you're mad, you're term-limited, and you go out the door and you throw a brick through the plate window as you go out," Parsons said Tuesday.

Huckabee, who was in Iowa as part of the 2008 presidential bid he announced Sunday, dismissed Parson's complaints. "This is not about destruction of state property. This is about honoring our obligations to protect the privacy of the thousands of people who had personal data on those hard drives. We carried out recommendations from the Department of Information Systems to destroy those hard drives," the former governor said through a spokeswoman, Alice Stewart.

more....
http://www.arkansasnews.com/archive/2007/01/31/News/340335.html

[emulatorloo]

1. hasn't he heard of a low-level format? Dunno surely they could super-secret

erase the drives and pass them on

[Catherine Vincent]

4. Peculiar story.

Now he wants to be president? What a last name like that, he won't make it anyways.

[IntravenousDemilo]

9. Huckabee... Huckabee...

Yep, sounds like the guy who runs the general store -- Old Man Huckabee...

[Catherine Vincent]

11. And replace the H with an F.

Reporters will make the mistake easily. :)

[SharonAnn]

5. GHWB administration did that before clinton took over. Seems to be

standard practice when Republicans get outplaced by Democrats.

[Hangingon]

13. The removal of those GHWB hard drives was done under court order

National Security Archives was not satisfied that printout of records defined as "official files" in the White House records manual was sufficient and they wanted to preserve megadata.

[salin]

2. odd story

[kenny blankenship]

3. In the spirit of full transparency, accountability and good government

[The Backlash Cometh]

6. So I've been told, there are experts in the field that can still

reconstruct what was on these harddrives.

[jsamuel]

7. yeah, the best way to destroy them is to first "zero" them, but I doubt they did that

[The Backlash Cometh]

10. Well, check Jeb Bush's cyber unit in Florida. I'm sure you'll find someone

who will be happy to comply. But first, don't tell him who the computer belongs to. I'm sure Jeb's first wave of employees aren't exactly independent from the hive.

[karlrschneider]

15. Actually that might not be the case if the discs themselves aren't destroyed.

There are machines that can read 2 or 3 'layers' beneath the top one. I -think- it involves super small heads that can find tiny 'unerased' magnetic domains at the very edges of discrete byte locations...
edit for typo

[IntravenousDemilo]

8. I bet Chloe could if she weren't so busy at CTU saving America from nuke-wielding terrorists. n/m

[holboz]

12. I love that he used our state's emergency funds to do this

Let's hope we don't suffer any tornadoes this spring because Huckabee thought crushing his hard drives was far more important.

I live in Arkansas and Huckabee has driven me crazy, particularly the past few years. Did you hear about the fact that friends of his wife set up a "wedding registry" for them at Dillards department store so people could purchase items to go into their brand new house in North Little Rock after his term for governor was up?

There's no way he's going to be a serious contender for the GOP nomination.

[porphyrian]

14. He's hiding evidence of porn. - n/t

[Catherine Vincent]

16. ahhh. That must be it.

He needed visual to lose all that weight!