System crash my ass most of these agencies have support deals with Cloud providers for their data-storage. What we really need here is evidence of which Cloud providers they are contracted with and sue them for the information.
this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2025
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don't need to sue. fire off a subpoena at the agency for a list of all cloud data supporters, and then fire off subpoenas at them.
Discovery is a bitch if you're trying to cover shit up, and yes, you can subpoena 3rd parties if they have data you need to prove your case. (For example, security recordings from neighboring properties that look in the direction of whoever you're really going after.)
Worst case, "too bad, the data is on the disc, here's a forensic service. You're the government, it's not financially onerous to order this".
Even then, 14 year old me still figured out how to recover my data from the disk after my "system crashed". Took a trip to the library to Google it and grab a list of CMD commands.
There's just no way that data is magically gone from cloud or system failure.
Sounds like a win by default for the plaintiffs, if I were the judge. Somehow, I doubt it will go that way or that easily, but in a sane or just world, any destruction of evidence, whether purposefully or by negligence (by not having the information backed up in duplicate), is a straight-up tacit admission of guilt.
Improper handling of pertinent evidence is what got Alec Baldwin a mistrial. It is seriously impactful.
Fruit of the poison tree. It becomes completely inadmissible, and rightfully so.
ICE is claiming the computer ate its records the day after it was sued for abuse.
404 Media reports that after ICE’s Bridgeview Detention Center outside Chicago was sued October 30 for allegedly abusing detainees, the agency said that two weeks of video footage that could have shown how immigration detainees are treated in the facility was lost in a “system crash” on October 31.
“The government has said that the data for that period was lost in a system crash apparently on the day after the lawsuit was filed,” one of the lawyers representing detainees, Alec Solotorovsky, said in a Thursday hearing about the footage, according to 404 Media. “That period we think is going to be critical … because that’s the period right before the lawsuit was filed.”
In a sane justice system, this would be treated with utmost contempt and all accusations against them that could have been proven by this would be considered to be factual unless ICE could disprove them. In our justice system, it will probably result in no penalties for anyone involved.
Juries are directly instructed that they can make that exact assumption. Destroying evidence means the jury will assume it was damaging. So to bother doing so, the actual evidence is almost surely worse than what they would assume.
4.19 LOST OR DESTROYED EVIDENCE
If you find that the government intentionally [destroyed][failed to preserve] [insert description of evidence] that the government knew or should have known would be evidence in this case, you may infer, but are not required to infer, that this evidence was unfavorable to the government.
Adverse inference is very much a thing.
When a system crashes it doesn't just start randomly deleting videos. HDD recovery should be possible, where are the backups?
100% BS.
"System crash" is used here in the general sense, not the specific behavior of a program closing or a device turning off. Could be that shit went so wild that the system became unusable. Or a power outage caused data corruption. Or a buffer overflow overwrote critical data. I could go on.
But I don't think any of this happened. I think they just deleted it. Maybe they'll magically find another copy in a few weeks.
Time to pull out that electron microscope and get some hard drive recovery
Sounds like a revolting "consciousness of guilt" and "obstruction of justice" smoothie to me.
government lawyers said that “we don’t have the resources” to keep preserving surveillance footage from the detention facility. In a seemingly flippant remark
Just how many billions of dollars would it take to back up your shit?
All the billions but it's still gonna have system issues if it's evidence against them
When you're dealing with round the clock FOIA and subpoena requests, because you have a whole department designed to violate people's rights, it really does add up
No. It doesn't. Backing up business documents is trivial. Every major company does it.
$201 Billion
"Tee-hee-hee...oops! Did I do that?"
:3
"I can explain, your honor... whoopsies! :3"
It's so crazy that all these government systems just happen to fail before someone is murdered or evidence is requested.
They really should hire a better IT team.
They really should hire a better IT team.
Orrrrrrrrrr, and hear me out......
Disolve ICE entirely!
ICE isn't the only one who seems to have IT problems when something is requested of them.
Here's how I see this.
"They did an illegal thing!"
"Well, they are required to videotape everything with body cameras. We'll just look at the video"
"We don't have the video"
"You didn't have the video last time either. Or the time before that."
"It was destroyed."
"Well, then you can't prove your case."
Wait... How does a "system crash" delete the past 2 weeks of surveillance video? That makes no fucking sense at all
Someone should pass a law demanding redundant backup systems for such things.
Look up FedRAMP.
Why the fuck is a government department storing their data in some dude's house?
they are legally obliged to have a backup strategy, no?