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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>If I mysteriously disappear or suffer a puzzling and tragic freak IRS audit, you know what happened to me.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>Spike quoted:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Georgia","serif";color:black;background:white'>“Lerner walked into her office one day and her computer screen was blue. Her hard drive had crashed.” Atty. Taylor<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>On Sun, Jun 29, 2014 at 10:36 AM, BillK <<a href="mailto:pharos@gmail.com" target="_blank">pharos@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>>…That is a lawyer talking. You need to ask the tech support guy what really happened… BillK<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:13.5pt;color:black;background:white'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:13.5pt;color:black;background:white'>Former Director Lerner’s attorney has now apparently contradicted himself with today’s statement, differing from the previous comment in a subtle but perhaps important way:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:13.5pt;color:black;background:white'>"She walked into the office one day and her screen went blue," said Taylor. "She asked for help in restoring it and the IT people came and attempted to restore it."<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:13.5pt;color:black;background:white'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:13.5pt;color:black'>There is a difference here: in one case she walked in and the screen was already blue, having crashed while she was out, and she presumed a hard disk failure took all the critical evidence on it. In the second comment, it sounds like she walked in and then the screen went blue, at which time she immediately called for help from the IT people. If I understand disk crashes, if the read head conks, a sector is destroyed but most of data is still there and is recoverable. Since the IRS is required by law to archive everything, then the IT people would be tasked with recovering all the data that is retrievable on the disk, which should be most of it.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:13.5pt;color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:13.5pt;color:black'>But something occurred to me. If the IRS director called the IT people, she obeyed the letter of the law. If the IT person immediately degaussed the disk then attempted to recover the entire erased disk, it isn’t entirely clear to me that the IT person has violated the letter of the law. It may not actually say it is illegal to destroy the information on the disk before attempting to recover it. The requirement against spoliation of evidence would not necessarily apply to the IT person. They would be required to recover all retrievable data, but I don’t know that the law would forbid that IT person from erasing everything, then attempting to recover the nothing that is on that disk. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:13.5pt;color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:13.5pt;color:black'>If Director Lerner gave spoken orders only with no trace of record to the IT person to make sure nothing is recoverable on that disk before attempting to recover the data, then the IT person followed the orders to attempt to recover the data. Same with the other six disks which crashed about that time.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:13.5pt;color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:13.5pt;color:black'>If arbitrary power exists in one bureaucracy, why not the others? Why shouldn’t the EPA, NSA or any other bureaucracy also get to have arbitrary unaccountable power? Where does the law say anywhere the other envious and power-hungry bureaucracies can’t come after anyone they want for any reason, without bothering to have congress pass laws or consult the constitution?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:13.5pt;color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:13.5pt;color:black'>Director Lerner cannot be called to testify: she is protected by the fifth amendment which allows a defendant to refuse to testify against herself. She has been held in contempt of congress but what difference at this point does that make? (Hint: none.) If all the evidence has been destroyed, even if intentionally in a most transparent manner, the IRS director walks, and it is an example of unaccountable and arbitrary power. This is the exact phenomenon that the US constitution was carefully designed to eliminate. The US constitution was functionally repealed on 3 February 1913, and we are living in a dictatorship, allowed to continue our free existence only at the regal whim of whoever runs the IRS.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:13.5pt;color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:13.5pt;color:black'>spike <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:13.5pt;color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:13.5pt;color:black'><br><br><br></span><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p></o:p></span></p><div><div style='border:none;border-top:solid #B5C4DF 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0in 0in 0in'><p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'>From:</span></b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'> extropy-chat-bounces@lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces@lists.extropy.org] <b>On Behalf Of </b>spike<br><b>Sent:</b> Sunday, June 29, 2014 12:13 PM<br><b>To:</b> 'ExI chat list'<br><b>Subject:</b> Re: [ExI] blue screen = hard disk crash?<o:p></o:p></span></p></div></div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'>From:</span></b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'> <a href="mailto:extropy-chat-bounces@lists.extropy.org">extropy-chat-bounces@lists.extropy.org</a> [<a href="mailto:extropy-chat-bounces@lists.extropy.org">mailto:extropy-chat-bounces@lists.extropy.org</a>] <b>On Behalf Of </b>Adrian Tymes<br><b>Sent:</b> Sunday, June 29, 2014 11:54 AM<br><b>To:</b> ExI chat list<br><b>Subject:</b> Re: [ExI] blue screen = hard disk crash?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><div><p class=MsoNormal>On Sun, Jun 29, 2014 at 10:36 AM, BillK <<a href="mailto:pharos@gmail.com" target="_blank">pharos@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<o:p></o:p></p><div><div><blockquote style='border:none;border-left:solid #CCCCCC 1.0pt;padding:0in 0in 0in 6.0pt;margin-left:4.8pt;margin-top:5.0pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:5.0pt'><p class=MsoNormal>That is a lawyer talking. You need to ask the tech support guy what<br>really happened.<o:p></o:p></p></blockquote><div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='color:#1F497D'>>…</span>And the tech support guy's probably been ordered to stay silent and go on vacation for a while, somewhere really hard to subpoena him<span style='color:#1F497D'>…</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>Ja. And if so, the IRS demonstrates once again that it is a naked singularity of political power. They have unlimited authority to prosecute Americans with no real accountability for that power. With the 16<sup>th</sup> amendment, the USA became a potential dictatorship. We had always imagined the dictator to ascend thru the office of the president, when all along it was the head of the IRS who had that power. It took nearly a century for the US to notice it was a dictatorship.<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>>…</span>But yes, the stated troubles are less than fully credible<span style='color:#1F497D'>…<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>Ja, but what difference does it make? (…he asked, borrowing a phrase from a leading US politician…)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>We have already caught IRS officials offering highly dubious excuses and pleading the fifth amendment, we have a sitting US president still calling the whole thing a phony scandal, we have a known-corrupt attorney general who is taking no interest in the case.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>If the IRS can commit blatant spoliation of evidence with no serious consequences, what difference, at this point, what difference does it make?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>spike<o:p></o:p></span></p></div></div></div></div></div></body></html>