With recent news of missing FBI texts between Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, it is time to call on congress to enforce the National Institute of Standards and Technology's SP 800-304 Contingency Planning Guide for Federal Information Systems as a means to recover lost or intentionally deleted data by the FBI. These missing text messages could potentially shed light on collusion efforts between FBI officials during the United States presidential election of 2016. As government officials, and public servants to the American people, it is the responsibility of congress to demand that these missing texts are recovered and reproduced for the sake of the American people.

What Is SP 800-34?

"Information system contingency planning refers to a coordinated strategy involving plans, procedures, and technical measures that enable the recovery of information systems, operations, and data after a disruption. Contingency planning generally includes one or more of the following approaches to

restore disrupted services:

Restoring information systems using alternate equipment;

Performing some or all of the affected business processes using alternate processing (manual) means (typically acceptable for only short-term disruptions);

Recovering information systems operations at an alternate location (typically acceptable for only long–term disruptions or those physically impacting the facility); and

Implementing of appropriate contingency planning controls based on the information system’s security impact level."

Why Is This Important?

According to NIST's SP 800-34 Contingency Planning Guide for Federal Information Systems, there are a number of methods used by federal agencies to backup sensitive data including tape backup, optical backup, WAN/VLAN replication, mirrored systems and disc replication. If none of the methods listed above are able to effectively recover the missing texts between Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, this would suggest that the FBI intentionally destroyed evidence that would have ultimately tarnished the agency's already lackluster reputation.



By signing this petition you, too, can call on congress to act responsibly and ethically by demanding that NIST standards are upheld for the FBI, as they would be upheld for any other federal agency.