I work for county govenment. And we have something similar. It came about because someone asked for all the email exchanges between two employees for something like the last 10 years.
This is back when we used tape backups. I don’t manage our backups, and wasn’t involved in trying to process the request but do know it took a ridiculous amount of time.
I’m going to stick my neck out and argue that these are still recoverable text messages, but we are just in the game of where to find them.
The committee issued a subpoena to the Secret Service, who said that they provided official communications, and said that they don’t use cell phones to communicate, but that’s an official government position. Meaning, technically perhaps, it is true that these are not secret service records that can be turned over.
But the individual agents, in their capacity as private citizens, may have nonetheless used their own cell phones to send and receive texts. And while these individual agents may have indeed deleted these messages from their devices, that still puts us back to the fact that the phone company probably has the communication records.
If that’s accurate, then the committee could still subpoena phone records, but they just won’t be coming from the secret service.
Who has the authority to disband the Secret Service? Or, remove their function as Presidential Guards?
It’s obvious there are lots of lying sacks of shit in the current organization. It is also obvious that at least some laws have been broken.
Let’s not forget the fates of Indira Gandhi, Laurent Kabila, or Castillo Armas–all killed by their guards. And the Praetorian Guards of Rome who dispatched 13 Emperors. Not that that would ever happen in Amerika–until it does.
I was thinking the other day that we should start calling them Praetorians, with a decidedly disdainful tone to it. I wonder how many of them would get the reference?
Breakthrough - one text message. 
Records, yes. Content of texts, no. As @phs3 pointed out earlier, cell providers don’t store text message contents for very long.
As of 2010, Verizon Wireless saved text message content for three to five days while Virgin Mobile retained text message content for ninety days but stated that it would only disclose that content if law enforcement had a search warrant containing a “text of text” request. As recently as November 25, 2015, T-Mobile’s privacy policy indicated that it retained “calls and text messages you send and receive (but we do not retain the content of those calls or messages after delivery).” Nathan Freitas, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University explained that the carrier may have “details of whom [was]texted and when” but “the actual text is what is really hard to get, if not impossible” from the carrier. The Boston Globe reported that carriers, including the four biggest in the country ‑ AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint ‑ have publicly confirmed that they delete their copies of messages after delivering them.
As also mentioned in that source, lawmakers have been reluctant to force a change to that behavior.
Legislators have resisted attempts to force retention of content. Indeed, various law enforcement groups, including the Major Cities Chiefs Police Association, the National District Attorneys Association, the National Sheriffs’ Association, and the Association of State Criminal Investigative Agencies, asked the U.S. Senate to force cellular service providers to retain the substance of text messages for at least two years. The proponents sought an amendment to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 to require service providers to retain the substance of text messages.
No such bill was passed and presently there is no law explicitly requiring cellular providers to store the substance of their customers’ text messages.
It’s possible that the texts might actually still be on the devices themselves, even after being deleted, if you use proper forensic software to retrieve them. But it’s unlikely you will get texts from over a year ago from a cell phone provider. And since there has been a “device replacement program”, those devices may no longer be in possession of the government (and could have even been destroyed, the agency I work for has old devices shredded, in a huge device like a woodchipper). If they did use personal devices as you suggested, maybe those are still accessible, though.
The Secret Service did say no agents sent any relevant texts. I’m reasonably sure they aren’t lying about that. Of course it was phrased in a misleading way to suggest no substantive texts exist at all, but that doesn’t appear to be fooling anybody. The Agents themselves would be professional enough to follow communications procedure on their side.
That leaves the question of what texts they received and subsequently deleted. Even if it’s a record of who sent Secret Service agents texts on those days, that can be substantive, especially if it turns out to be one or more senior Administration officials.
Well that escalated quickly
This is the bit I heard this morning:
I have to figure that will free up literally two … maybe three minimum-wage, part-time, seasonal, contract workers at the Secret Service.
One might note that both the director of the Secret Service and the Inspector General of DHS were both appointed by Trump. While I’m inclined to think that the SS is hiding something and that Trump was probably more choosey when it came to the guy managing all the people hanging around in listening distance 24/7 than when he was hiring Congress’s spy on the DHS (whatever a dee-aych-ess is), I still feel like it’s prudent to consider the possibility that the inspector general might just be an idiot who is drumming up the topic, to get his name in the news. We don’t really know who these people are, at the moment, beyond that they’re Trump picks, both of whom Biden chose to keep on.
Be hopeful… But verify.
(That said, Murray - the head of the Secret Service - announced that he was going to leave for better pastures a few weeks ago. That decision for Murray to leave - be it by Murray or by Biden - could well be related to this.)
The Inspectors General are not Congressional positions. They are created by statute, but the positions are part of the executive branch, to monitor the operations in their particular part of the executive.
DHS is Department of Homeland Security. The Secret Service was transferred there from Treasury, after DHS was created post 9/11.
I didn’t intend what I wrote as a whoosh but, I guess, consider yourself whooshed.
The OIG often act to ensure that the executive branch abides by the reporting requirements of Congress. Given that Trump doesn’t like oversight, by Congress or otherwise, he would view the OIG as a Congressional spy.
And I was implying that Trump, back when he was appointing people, was liable to not know what the DHS is.
I think I need a nap. I’m starting to read it as divine replacement.
About time too. I’ve had it with sleepy Yahweh.