Archive for October 19th, 2017

On the importance of having a good backup strategy.

Thursday, October 19th, 2017

I’m shocked that Borepatch and ASM826 aren’t on this like flies on a severed cow’s head at a Damien Hirst exhibition. But apparently it falls to me, as the ex-backup guy.

A non-profit organization in NYC called Bronx Defenders wants to study the NYPD’s asset forfeiture records. They filed a request for this information (under New York’s Freedom of Information law) in 2014, and litigation is ongoing.

The latest revelation? Not only is the NYPD saying they don’t have the technical capability to pull the data Bronx Defenders wants…

New York City is one power surge away from losing all of the data police have on millions of dollars in unclaimed forfeitures, a city attorney admitted to a flabbergasted judge on Tuesday.

More from Ars Technica:

…an attorney for the city told a Manhattan judge on October 17 that part of the reason the NYPD can’t comply with such requests is that the department’s evidence database has no backup. If the database servers that power NYPD’s Property and Evidence Tracking System (PETS)—designed and installed by Capgemini under a $25.5 million contract between 2009 and 2012—were to fail, all data on stored evidence would simply cease to exist.

…

When it was activated in 2012, Capgemini vaunted PETS—which was built using SAP’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) software platform as well as IBM DB2 databases—as a flagship public sector project. The company went as far as submitting PETS as a nominee for the 2012 Computerworld Honors awards. But the system was apparently designed without any scheme for backing up the database or any sort of data warehouse to perform analytics on the data.

Adding to this, the NYPD now actually disputes that the PETS database runs on DB2:

Neil tells me our whole argument is that the NYPD’s database is not an IBM database so he definitely didn’t say that NYPD personnel said “the database is in IBM.” He says he was referring the Petitioner’s expert, not any NYPD personnel. The “He” would be Robert Pesner, the Petitioner’s expert, not NYPD personnel.

Okay. So it doesn’t run on DB2. What the frack does it run on, and why are there still no backups?

(It looks to me like both Backup Exec and Commvault have DB2 agents. But I’ve been out of the business for a while, and can’t tell if those have been deprecated.)

Edited to add: Now the NYPD is saying that PETS is backed up:

Contrary to some published reports suggesting that NYPD does not electronically back up the data in its Property and Evidence Tracking System (PETS), all such data is backed up continuously in multiple data centers.

Which, I guess, is good for the NYPD. But as Ars points out, it isn’t consistent with the statement in court that there are no backups of the forfeiture database, unless that database isn’t stored in PETS after all. That seems like the more likely explanation, but it raises the questions: where is it stored, why isn’t it backed up, and why is the NYPD so secretive about those first two questions?

Posted in Backups, Cops, Law, NYPD | Comments Closed

Promoted.

Thursday, October 19th, 2017

By way of great and good friend of the blog Joe D, in the comments: a record store owner in Michigan decided to pull a prank on his customers and make them think he only had one album in stock.

And what album was that?

You’ll have to click through to find out, though I will give a hint: it was one that is thematically appropriate for this blog.

One of the most interesting aspects of the display is that Taylor went out of his way to make sure customers understood that the copies are not for sale. Taylor says that he has about 75 copies of the album, and sheepishly admitted that he is “stockpiling the Herb.”

Posted in Admin, Music | 1 Comment »

Firings watch.

Thursday, October 19th, 2017

Tom Jurich, athletic director at Louisville, was officially fired yesterday.

He joins Rick Pitino, who was officially fired “for cause” on Monday.

Mr. Pitino, of course, denies that he knew anything about payments to athletes. Even better: he’s suing Adidas. The discovery process in that lawsuit should be interesting.

In other news, another APD officer has been fired. Interestingly, his firing was for “insubordination”: specifically, he didn’t show up for interviews with Internal Affairs.

And why was he being interviewed by IA? He’s been charged with making false statements about his wife and her eligibility to receive SSI. (Previouly.)

According to the Statesman, he and his lawyer said they wouldn’t do interviews with IA until the criminal case was resolved. The rules say: you can’t do that. You have to come in and answer IA questions, or you get canned. Whatever information IA gets can’t be used against you in a criminal case; it can only be used for internal discipline. (This is why officers are required to submit to IA questioning. This is also why some things, like officer-involved shootings, are investigated both by IA and the Special Investigations Unit: SIU handles any possible criminal aspect of the case, can seek charges if warranted, and the subject has the standard legal protections. IA investigates internally: the union contract says officers have to answer IA questions, but any information gathered can’t be used to build a criminal case.)

Anyway, IA said “this won’t be used in the criminal case”, the lawyer apparently said, “okay”, and they still didn’t show up. Twice. Which makes it “you’re fired, do not pass ‘Go’, do not collect $200” territory.

Posted in Austin, Cops, Firings, Law, Politics, Sports | 1 Comment »