(TNS) — The Pennsylvania State Police commissioner still can’t fully guarantee that data lost as a result of the Jan. 3 deletion of information on state government servers will not result in the withdrawal of charges in criminal cases for lack of evidence.
Col. Christopher Paris told the House Appropriations Committee on Monday that the 217 employees who work in the department’s crime labs have restored 87% of the data that the governor’s Office of Administration officials said was deleted due to human error.
“Of the remaining cases, we’re reconstructing from other sources and we’re about 75% of the reconstruction tasks completed,” Paris said. “We’re not in a position where we can fully assess the impact but our commitment is at this point, there was no breach, there was no … evidence lost or evidence mishandled.”
Neil Weaver, secretary of the Office of Administration that oversees information technology operations for the commonwealth, told senators at a hearing on the data deletion last month that a database administrator was performing routine server maintenance when the error occurred.
It affected thousands of records stored on 77 out of the commonwealth’s more than 6,300 servers. Administration staff was able to restore data to 76 of the servers over the course of four days. Then on Jan. 7, they discovered the data on the 77th server that affected state police as well as at least one other agency was not able to be recovered.
At that hearing, administration officials declined to discuss to many details around the incident saying that disclosure could compromise the commonwealth’s “cybersecurity posture and be exploited by bad actors to launch cyber attacks,” Weaver said.
An administration spokesman confirmed to PennLive one person was fired as a result of the incident but administration officials refused to tell senators that, saying it was a personnel matter. They also declined to say whether the database administrator was working remotely, saying instead that the employee’s location at the time had no impact on the incident.
Paris told lawmakers that it is his agency’s hope that testimony through its nationally and internationally accredited labs and nationally certified Bureau of Forensics in partnership with county district attorneys, the attorney general’s office and federal agencies, all criminal cases can carry forward.
House Republican Appropriations Committee Chairman Seth Grove of York County asked Paris whether the lost data could prevent any criminal cases from proceeding.
“I don’t want to 100% guarantee that will not be an effect but at this point, though, our belief is that there’s not one piece of evidence that we’re willing to overtly concede and say charges should be withdrawn,” Paris replied. “However, the ultimate impact remains to be determined in the future.”
“That’s my only fear,” Grove said. “You get a good data person in there to erase evidence and a crime is no longer there.”
An internal administration investigation is being conducted into the incident by the Office of Administration as well as a criminal investigation by the state police. Paris said both are still ongoing.
