It's been shown time and time again that e-mails are being used as evidence chains that can either make a case or destroy it. In the non-government world, I advise my customers that they should have a written policy about e-mail retention that's based upon any regulatory requirements that they may be subject to and strictly follow it. Why? mainly because of 1) EDiscovery and 2) Consistent policy enforcement to demonstrating that the policy was followed and 3) spurious litigation avoidance. Not having e-mails / documents when retention policy is mandated can make you guilty just as much as having them, worse yet documents that are aged beyond that retention policy demonstrate that your organization was lax in following its own procedures; all of which can twist the actual truth and give litigants bountiful access to your bank account or put you in jail.
In the case of governments or government organizations, these rules don't apply and let's not forget that in the US the federal government does have laws on the book that are there to protect that information. Whether or not Secretaries of State follow it is another matter.
In the UK the three month rule was horribly short-sighted then again, if you're trying to preserve meeting minutes or other documentation, that shouldn't be in your e-mail system anyway; it's just a sad artifact that everybody wants to dump their business and personal lives into e-mail, governments included. This episode should also show how fucking incompetent elected leaders are in general No, they're not smarter than you, they're not better leaders nor do they necessarily have vision beyond what you're own eyes can see. They just had enough support and momentum to get elected into office, therefore you should have done your research before voting for the twits in the first place. Once they're in office, good or bad you're usually fucked.
