David Gewirtz

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
David Gewirtz
OccupationJournalist, Computer Scientist, Author, U.S. Policy Advisor
NationalityAmerican
GenreTechnology, Competitiveness, Politics, National Security
Notable worksHow To Save Jobs, Where Have All The E-mails Gone?, The Flexible Enterprise
Notable awardsSigma Xi Research Award
SpouseDenise Amrich
Website
www.davidgewirtz.com

David Allen Gewirtz is a journalist, author, and U.S. policy advisor working in technology and national security policy. He currently serves as director of the U.S. Strategic Perspective Institute.[1]

Gewirtz is a CNN contributor, a

Bush White House e-mail controversy, and the author of the book Where Have All The E-mails Gone? How Something as Seemingly Benign as White House E-mail Can Have Freaky National Security Consequences which explores the controversy from a technical perspective and, according to The Intelligence Daily, is "the definitive account about the circumstances that led to the loss of administration emails."[3]

Gewirtz is the

U.S. Naval Institute.[6]

Gewirtz has been awarded the

Stanford.[9]

Biography

Gewirtz grew up in Fair Lawn, New Jersey.[10]

Early career

In 1982, Gewirtz moved to

blogging and RSS pioneer Dave Winer
.

When the company merged with

Santa Clara County, California
.

In 1993, Gewirtz moved to

Adobe Systems) for inclusion in Director.[14]

Technology editor

Gewirtz began his editorial career in 1979 as a contributing editor for

Ziff-Davis
, where, on and off over the next 20 years, Gewirtz worked as editor-in-chief for various Ziff publications.

In the early 1980s, he was a contributing editor and then software editor for S-100 Microsystems Magazine, and a technical reviewer for Osborne/McGraw-Hill. In the mid-1990s, he was editor of the CD-ROM publication The Notes Enthusiast, published by jointly by IBM and Ziff-Davis. In 1995, Gewirtz was hired as the editor-in-chief of Workspace for Lotus Notes, published by Ziff-Davis.[17] From 1996 to 1998, he was editor-in-chief of The Insider for Lotus cc:Mail, also published by Ziff-Davis, and in 1997, became the editor-in-chief of The Notes Report, originally published by IDG and then acquired by Ziff-Davis. In 2010, Gewirtz once again became involved with the Ziff-Davis brand, joining CBS Interactive as a contributing editor and ZDNet as the ZDNet Government blogger.

ZATZ Publishing

In 1998, Gewirtz founded ZATZ Publishing, which published PalmPower Magazine, produced under license from

Lotus and Microsoft e-mail and collaboration software, respectively.[18] In 1999, the New Jersey Technology Council presented Gewirtz an award for the ZATZ publishing strategy.[19]

In 2003, Gewirtz started the IBM

personal digital assistants
into a consumer technology magazine with a mobile focus, and began publishing Connected Photographer Magazine.

White House e-mail controversy

See also: Bush White House email controversy

As his main premise, Gewirtz claims that White House e-mail is broken and needs to be fixed. He identifies five areas of concern:

Inadequate archiving methodology

He first claims the White House's

.PST files.[20] Based on Payton's testimony and Microsoft's guidelines for Outlook files, Gewirtz claims these files are above their safe storage capacity.[21]

Email migration during time of war

His second claim is that the White House has given no technically sound reason for switching e-mail systems from

Lotus Notes to Microsoft Outlook. During Payton's testimony phase, Congressman Darrell Issa asked, "Lotus Notes no longer exists, right?" Payton replied, "It is no longer supported. Some groups may still use it, but it is no longer supported."[20][22]
Since Notes is still an actively supported, high-profile IBM product, Gewirtz asks why such a critical migration was done during a build-up to war.

Influence of the 1939 Hatch Act

Gewirtz also takes issue with the

Hatch Act of 1939 for two reasons. First, he claims that since the Hatch Act apparently bans White House staffers from using government e-mail resources for political communication, White House aides used political party e-mail resources instead, effectively bypassing the record-keeping requirements of the Presidential Records Act. He claims in the 2,072 days between September 11, 2001 and May 15, 2007, a minimum of 103.6 million messages were likely sent by White House staffers on Republican National Committee servers.[5]

He also claims that insecure messaging puts national security at risk. He claims that since the White House staffers must bypass government servers, their email is traveling across the Internet without necessary security. He cites numerous national security risk scenarios that could occur due to possible interception of White House email messages.

Poor management of portable technology

Finally, Gewirtz cites Congressional testimony by Susan Ralston, one-time aide to Karl Rove, who stated before Congress that Rove had lost his BlackBerry device on more than one occasion.[23] Gewirtz claims that because BlackBerry devices can store significant data, losing these devices poses another security risk.

This concern was proven true during the week of April 21, 2008 when Rafael Quintero Curiel, lead press advance man for the Mexican delegation, was caught stealing BlackBerry devices belonging to White House staffers who were attending meetings between

U.S. President George W. Bush, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and Mexican President Felipe Calderón, who were at the 2008 North American Leaders' Summit.[24]

In a subsequent article after the publication of the book, Gewirtz also cites additional Payton statements

flash drives
.

Recommendations

Gewirtz also makes a series of recommendations. He recommends the Hatch Act be modified to require White House workers to use secured government systems for all communication.[26] He recommends the establishment of a professional, administration-spanning "Electronic Communications Protection Detail" reporting to the United States Secret Service. Finally, he recommends the Electronic Communications Protection Detail manage all email, archiving, and messaging security for White House staff.[27]

Politics

Gewirtz claims to have voted for both Democrats and Republicans and acknowledges voting for Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Bill Clinton. According to Gewirtz, "At various times in my life, I've called myself a Republican and at other times, a Democrat. These days, both parties have sufficiently pissed me off that I'm pretty much an independent."[27]

Education

In the late 1970s, Gewirtz was a Radiological Defense Officer and attended the Defense Civil Preparedness Agency (DCPA) Staff College.

with distinction. He dropped out of the Ph.D. program at the University of California, Berkeley and was awarded a non-academic jure dignitatis Ph.D. by the University of Kent for accomplishments in his field.[18] He also holds a Master's degree in education, specializing in learning and technology, from Western Governors University.[30]

Works

References

  1. ^ "Our Leadership". U.S. Strategic Perspective Institute. Retrieved 2018-10-07.
  2. ZDNet
    .com    . Retrieved 2011-02-15.
  3. ^ a b "White House official tells judge searching for missing emails too much work". The Intelligence Daily. 2008-03-24. Retrieved 2008-04-15.
  4. ^ Gewirtz, David (2010-03-01). "State-Sponsored Counterterrorism" (PDF). The Journal of Counterterrorism and Homeland Security. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-04-26. Retrieved 2011-10-28.
  5. ^ a b c Gewirtz, David (2008-04-11). "Are political journalists falling prey to technological misdirection?". Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Retrieved 2008-04-14.
  6. ^ "Anderson Cooper 360: David Gewirtz". CNN. 2009-05-19. Retrieved 2009-05-19.
  7. Air America Radio.[dead link
    ]
  8. ^ "Nieman Watchdog > About Us > Contributor > David Gewirtz". niemanwatchdog.org. Retrieved 30 June 2021.
  9. ^ "Nieman Watchdog About Us". Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. 2008-04-11. Retrieved 2008-04-14.
  10. ^ Gewirtz, David (2008-09-10). "The Coming Cyberwar: A Matter of When, Not If". U.S. 1 Newspaper. Archived from the original on 2011-07-17. Retrieved 2011-02-07. A native of Fair Lawn, Gewirtz earned his bachelor's in computer science at Worcester Polytechnic in Massachusetts in 1982.
  11. ISSN 0745-0850
    .
  12. ISSN 0010-4566
    .
  13. ISSN 0892-8118
    .
  14. ^ a b Laurence, Rozier. "Rhythmeering: Multimedia Database Innovator". Rhythmeering.com. Archived from the original on 2008-04-15. Retrieved 2008-04-13.
  15. ^ Boyd, Scott T. (July 1994). "Newsbits". MacTech. 10 (7). Retrieved 2008-04-13.
  16. ISSN 0097-8140. {{cite journal}}: Missing or empty |title= (help
    )
  17. ^ "Bibliography Page". Gewirtz.com. Archived from the original on 2008-04-16. Retrieved 2008-04-13.
  18. ^ a b Fox, Barbara; Sherwood, Melinda (1999-06-30). "Rising Stars of the Internet". U.S. 1 Newspaper. Archived from the original on 2008-05-09. Retrieved 2008-04-14.
  19. ^ Siegel, Bari Faye (April 1999). "New Jersey Venture Fair". New Jersey TechNews. Archived from the original on 2015-09-22. Retrieved 2015-09-07.
  20. ^ a b "Hearing on Electronic Records Preservation at the White House" (PDF). Capitol Building, Washington, D.C.: United States House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. 2008-02-26. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2008-03-27. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  21. ^ "Both offline files and personal folders files stop accepting data in Outlook 2002". Capitol Building, Washington, D.C.: Microsoft Knowledge Base. 2007-01-24. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  22. ^ Baumann, Nick (2008-03-31). "Darrell Issa's Software Error". Mother Jones. Retrieved 2008-04-15.
  23. ^ "Interim Report: Investigation of Possible Presidential Records Act Violations, Susan Ralston's testimony" (PDF). Capitol Building, Washington, D.C.: United States House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. June 2007. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2008-05-29. Retrieved 2008-05-19.
  24. The Times-Picayune. Archived from the original
    on 2008-05-02.
  25. ^ "CREW and National Security Archive v. Executive Office of the President, et al" (PDF). Washington, D.C.: United States District Court for the District of Columbia. 2008-03-21. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)[permanent dead link]
  26. ^ Froomkin, Dan (2008-04-17). "Who's the Moral Relavist: White House E-mail Watch". The Washington Post.
  27. ^
    ISBN 978-0-945266-20-4. Archived from the original
    on 2008-05-13. Retrieved 2008-05-19.
  28. The Bergen Record
    . 1977-07-02.
  29. FEMA.gov. Archived from the original
    on 2008-05-09. Retrieved 2008-04-15.
  30. ^ Commencement (PDF). Western Governors University. August 15, 2015. p. 9. Retrieved 30 June 2021.

External links

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