On Jun 27, 2007, at 12:00 AM, RECMGMT-L automatic digest system wrote:

> Date:    Tue, 26 Jun 2007 07:54:29 -0400
> From:    "Link, Gary M." <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Fragile or Intractable Revisited
>
> Some time ago I posted a message pointing out that electronic  
> records are easily lost over time due to media degradation,  
> software & hardware obsolescence, and physical storage  
> environmental problems. But at the same time they seem intractable  
> because, especially in litigation, very often electronic  
> information that people thought (or wished) was gone was found or  
> recovered by opposing counsel's computer forensic experts.
>
> Now in two recent RAIN postings we have two Ph. D's writing papers,  
> one saying that electronic records are causing us to lose our  
> ability to forget:
>
> http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/Research/wpaper.nsf/rwp/RWP07-022
>
> And one saying that electronic records are causing us to lose our  
> ability to remember:
>
> http://globalpolitician.com/articledes.asp?ID=3000&cid=1&sid=112
>
> Now I don't feel so bad about my confusion on this matter.

I think part of this comes from the fact that if you need a document  
and somehow it is lost, it is lost.  You are not willing to pay a  
forensic specialist $1,000 per hour to  come in and find it.  So it  
is lost for all practical purposes.

But if you are involved in a Mass tort or liability issue, then  
paying a specialist  $200,000 to sort through a companies hard drives  
and records and recreate the information is worth the expense.  They  
can go five layers deep to track the information.

For example, there were eight kids in my family, when we wanted to  
have money we would go up and down the alleys near our home and  
recover pop bottles, beer bottles and milk jugs and all had a refund  
rate. If desperate, we would go by the local alcoholic's house and he  
always had a case of empties on the porch and away we would go.  We  
could turn useless items into money.  But it took a lot of energy to  
turn those useless items into money. I suppose you could call us  
forensic bottle gathering specialists. :~)

So it is not that records can't be recovered, it is the cost and  
effort that are required that make it inefficient in many cases.

But in the long term the degradation of the media make all records  
impossible to recover.


Hugh Smith
FIRELOCK Fireproof Modular Vaults
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(610)  756-4440    Fax (610)  756-4134
WWW.FIRELOCK.COM



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