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The Military Databases Government United States

Air Force Has Lost 100,000 Inspector General Records (thehill.com) 116

Posted by EditorDavid from the Backups?-What-backups? dept.
schwit1 shares an article from The Hill: The Air Force announced on Friday that it has lost thousands of records belonging to the service's inspector general due to a database crash. "We estimate we've lost information for 100,000 cases dating back to 2004," Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek told The Hill in an email. "The database crashed and there is no data..." The database, called the Automated Case Tracking System (ACTS), holds all records related to IG complaints, investigations, appeals and Freedom of Information Act requests.... "We also use ACTS to track congressional/constituent inquiries."
The Air Force said they were "aggressively" trying to recover the data, adding that they had no evidence of malicious intent.
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Air Force Has Lost 100,000 Inspector General Records More

Air Force Has Lost 100,000 Inspector General Records

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  • Simple: Restore from your backup (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gavron ( 1300111 ) on Saturday June 11, 2016 @04:30PM (#52296283)

    You... do... have a backup, ... right?

    E

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      "Real men don't do backups - but they often cry."

    • Re:Simple: Restore from your backup (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 11, 2016 @04:44PM (#52296337)

      Ask Israel or PRC or Russia, they probably have a copy.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Ask Israel or PRC or Russia, they probably have a copy.

        Why so complicated man ? Just ask the NSA, I'm sure they'd be happy to oblige.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by khasim ( 1285 )

      That's my problem with this story.

      It's 2016. We know how to make backups. And databases compress nicely so the backup won't take anywhere near as much space as the original.

      We'll see ... but I'm willing to bet that there won't be ANY higher officers fired for this. Even though it means that some IG investigations/reports are now lost. Unless that is a feature that they wanted.

      • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        You did read (the very short ) article right?

        "The Air Force said it was notified on June 6 by a contractor that administers the database of records that the data within was "corrupted," according to a statement."

        Since the military thinks all their data and networks are safe in the hands of contractors, they'll probably just fire one contractor, put the blame all on them and hire another contractor.

        I really don't understand all the military confidence in contractors. IMO they use contractors far too often. T

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by cusco ( 717999 )

          Wonder how much of the lost data pertained to investigations of the DB contractor . . .

        • Contractors are used because they often fall outside regulations. Requirements are stipulated as part of their contract which is physical and the size of a phone book. This is also how the executive branch of government currently gets around laws. And intentionally lose information. And lie.

          A contractor can be fired. He can then go bankrupt and or reform under a new business name and then be rehired. We don't currently hold the government responsible for the actions of it's contractors. There is no buck sto

      • It is the job of the Inspector General to ensure that proper procedures and best practices are followed. I would say it was ironic that the IG office itself is the one with no backups, but then someone would say "That's not what 'ironic' means".

        • There's more than five types of irony. The irony is most don't understand even the most commonly used type.

      • Re: Simple: Restore from your backup (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        The DoD has a severe problem of not recognizing and retaining real talent. In the last forced riff, they randomly deleted jobs. In fact, most of their knowledge level of leadership in IT is extremely low). It surprises me not one bit that they don't have backups, they probably fired a key person that maintained them, replaced by someone who does three jobs and not well, and never realized the difference.

      • We'll see ... but I'm willing to bet that there won't be ANY higher officers fired for this. Even though it means that some IG investigations/reports are now lost. Unless that is a feature that they wanted.

        Money quote. Corruption is the feature, oversight/inspections are the bugs. Now you're thinking like upper brass and/or contractors.

      • Re: Simple: Restore from your backup (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        The linked article does not state there are no backups. It does not provide data to assume that this is anything more than a temporary access issue which is being investigated. Keep in mind that this is the military. Investigative reports are a matter of course for all deviating events affecting efficiency (whether catastrophic or circumstantial) in order to prevent or mitigate occurrences which could adversely affect combat effectiveness. (IE, Incident reports are SOP, as opposed to the civilian world wher

    • Re:Simple: Restore from your backup (Score:5, Informative)

      by macs4all ( 973270 ) on Saturday June 11, 2016 @04:58PM (#52296425)

      You... do... have a backup, ... right?

      E

      Exactly what I came here to say.

      At this point, people employed by a Government Agency claiming "Lost Data" that cannot be restored from a Backup should be CRIMINALLY culpable for Obstruction of Justice and Breach of the Public Trust. Period.

      It's 2016, FFS, there is ABSOLUTELY no excuse for not having Backups. Especially not with the Goddamn AIR FORCE'S Budget!!!

      • Hey, Mr. General in charge of ACTS; no backup, no job, no pension ...

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          "I'm sorry, sir, we have no record of you earning a pension. I'm afraid those records were lost and there were no backups. If only someone had done a better job..."

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AK Marc ( 707885 )
        They had enough budget to buy planes, but were likely not allowed to buy a backup, they were required to use a Congressman's son's IT services company to do it, which is why it didn't happen. They don't have the power to be competent. The government has outlawed government competency. But that's what you get when one of the major parties campaigns on a "hate the government" platform.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by cusco ( 717999 )

          The best way to prove to your constituents that government doesn't work is to break it yourself.

          • Why would you have to? It's plenty broken, mostly by the do gooders trying to make it do stupid things.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Naa, that would be professional and efficient use of taxpayer money. The military is not in the habit of doing that.

    • Well the SAN vendor sells you on the superior redundancy of the SAN. It's so superior that there are no need for backups. Plus with disks as big as they are now, you can create databases so big that even incremental backups are taking more than 24 hours. What the SAN vendor won't tell you is that a SAN is a single point of failure in the system. When it decides to corrupt the data, there goes your data.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Gr8Apes ( 679165 )
        Once again, if you can't detach and take that "backup" with you (even if you need a forklift and an 18 wheeler or three) and plug it into a different system and view the data, it's not a backup.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      You... do... have a backup, ... right?

      E

      Sadly, I can attest to this being frighteningly common. I work in the data storage industry (on the software side) and some of our customers don't have proper backups. I don't want to think of all the times we've had a customer escalation that was almost exactly like this. The customers frequently expected our support staff to be able to wave a magic wand and get their data back. It's really impressive how incompetent some system and storage administrators can be. And incidentally, only one of the ones I re

    • Bet they are in the same situation as I am. I have a back up. The backup restores correctly, all the data is there. Except the application can't connect to the db because it is trying to login with a hard coded password. And the database is on mssql 7. The company that made the software has long been dead. We still use the application, but trying to upgrade it to sql 20xx has been a challenge.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by ExXter ( 1361251 )
      If not then you know thatit was deleted (crashed*) in the first place. Something was in there that should not be touched/uncovered and or made public. But lets stay with the truth. America is fast with features but not safety. The word backup is not from America its something that is despised. Sorry being nonconstructive.

    • We're throwing them into a fire as fast as we can in our attempt to recover the data.

    • Failure to keep backups of official government records should be considered negligence. Proper SOP should be a monthly full backup with daily incrementals..
  • As a matter of marginal relevance, is the the US Air Force, the (British) Royal Air Force, or some other bunch of random clowns with an aeroplane somewhere?

  • I wonder where they'll store the request?

  • Obama's Razor (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rick Zeman ( 15628 ) on Saturday June 11, 2016 @04:45PM (#52296345)

    Never attribute to happenstance which can be attributed to a cover up.

    • I don't know about that; Obama has been pretty open about wiping his ass with the Constitution.

      Contrast Hilary Clinton, who has been involved in government since 1977 and her primary responsibility for 38 years has been cover ups and white-washing.

      Trump is another who is pretty open about doing and saying things that people don't like.

      • I think it's the exact opposite. If the Republican House, (which is overtly a part of the Republican Party, as opposed to a part of the US government) is freaking out over Hillary Clinton's emails, why aren't they raising hell over this? It wouldn't have anything to do what a partisan witch hunt [cnn.com], would it?

        Maj. Bradley Podliska, an intelligence officer in the Air Force Reserve who describes himself as a conservative Republican, told CNN that the committee trained its sights almost exclusively on Clinton afte

        • I remember when I said stuff like that. You're pissed that parties are partisan. So cute. At this stage, you're still rooting for the team you picked, thinking that they aren't just as corrupt, playing you like a piano. Clinton has your name on a list of people like you. At this stage, you don't quite know the politicians' names (Chaney and Regan lol), but you're sure that the politicians on the other team are evil, while the politicians on the team you chose are good. You don't know the names of the Co

  • Yes Minister said it best (Score:5, Funny)

    by whoever57 ( 658626 ) on Saturday June 11, 2016 @04:49PM (#52296371) Journal
    James Hacker: Was 1967 a particularly bad winter? [imdb.com]
    Sir Humphrey Appleby: No, a marvellous winter. We lost no end of embarrassing files.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      or this from the same show:

      Bernard: “I’ll just say, ‘The Minister has asked me to thank you for your letter’ and something like ‘The matter is under consideration’, or even ‘under active consideration’.”

      Hacker: “What’s the difference?”

      Bernard: “Well, ‘under consideration’ means we’ve lost the file, ‘under active consideration’ means we’re trying to find it.”

  • Newspeak (Score:3)

    by qbast ( 1265706 ) on Saturday June 11, 2016 @04:55PM (#52296403)
    What is aggresive recovery? Waterboarding the hard disks or straight to rubber hoses?
  • Let's mention the first 3 laws of computing:
    1 - Backup
    2 - BACKUP
    3 - See Rules 1 & 2

    On top of that, when I was in the USAF working in the missile shop, we had FIVE copies of all the records, and they were stored in different places. Losing the records to a missile would mean your ASS! More than one would crucify the entire shop!
    And now someone is trying to complain that the Inspector General has lost a huge amount of records because of a single database crash?
    Is someone incompet

    • Re:They have to be in violation of something (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Rick Zeman ( 15628 ) on Saturday June 11, 2016 @05:13PM (#52296493)

      Let's mention the first 3 laws of computing:

        1 - Backup

        2 - BACKUP

        3 - See Rules 1 & 2
      ]

      1 - Backup
      2 - BACKUP
      3 - Test restoration of backup

      There, fixed it for you.

      • THIS. Most untested backups don't work (Score:4, Insightful)

        by raymorris ( 2726007 ) on Saturday June 11, 2016 @05:28PM (#52296571) Journal

        You hit the nail on the head. I've probably encountered more broken backups than ones that work. Web hosting providers frequently provide backups that stopped working 10 months ago, but nobody noticed. If you haven't recently tested restoring your backups, you probably have no backups.

        I like to use remote backups that I can restore from conveniently, so that I restore a file from time to time just because I messed up a couple paragraphs of text or something. These real-life, low-impact restores serve to verify backup and restore is working properly.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cusco ( 717999 )

      Is someone incompetent running the Inspector Generals Office?

      They contract out the IT work, so yeah.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Bobby Tables (Score:5, Funny)

    by Macdude ( 23507 ) on Saturday June 11, 2016 @06:00PM (#52296711)

    Sound like the Air Force may have added Booby Tables to the Inspector Generals Records.

    https://xkcd.com/327/ [xkcd.com]

  • Fire contractor, announce name (Score:5, Insightful)

    by myid ( 3783581 ) on Saturday June 11, 2016 @06:44PM (#52296893)

    From the article:

    The Air Force said it was notified on June 6 by a contractor that administers the database of records that the data within was "corrupted," according to a statement.

    How many contractors administered the database? I wonder if that was part of the problem: "Oh, I thought you guys were going to back up the database ... No you were supposed to back it up."

    If just one contractor was clearly responsible for the backup, then I wish the government would:

    1) Fire the contractor, and never use them again.

    2) Publicly announce the name of the contractor, so that we know not to use them.

    (Of course a lot more needs to be done, such as making sure this doesn't happen again in any govt. dept.)

    • 2) Publicly announce the name of the contractor, so that we know not to use them.

      The contractor was Oracle... Be sure to NEVER use their products. Good luck.

  • Delete on purpose to hide IG findings or are Hillary's server guys moonlighting?

  • So you lost all your data and didn't have a backup? It's happened to all of us and somehow, life goes on.

    At least you didn't spend the past 10 years implementing, maintaining, and testing a foolproof backup system, because that sounds like a real drag.

  • Take a look at this: http://www.thenation.com/article/the-national-security-expose-so-secret-even-edward-snowden-didnt-know-about-it/ [thenation.com] where a former assistant Inspector General for the Pentagon claims whistleblowers were treated illegally. Neither the parent article nor that linked one inspire confidence in any DoD related Inspector General office.
  • figures

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