Council questions data backup

RIVERSIDE ? The Riverside City Council held a marathon session of nearly four hours Monday night. The council spent over half an hour talking about one agenda item in particular, and that was the security of the city?s records.

The incident that generated so much discussion occurred Friday, June 29. Mayor Bill Poch said Monday that he and the council had learned one day prior that both City Clerk Missy Carter and Deputy City Clerk Teresa Sladek would resign. Poch, councilor Ralph Schnoebelen and an employee of the computer networking firm ?Iowa Solutions? entered city hall after hours June 29 and made a copy of the hard drive of the city?s computer. They took the backup to Poch?s residence, where it remained until the following Tuesday when Poch put it in a lockbox at a local bank.

After much debate among the councilors and members of the audience, the council passed a motion 5-0 to ask Iowa Solutions to investigate whether the backup copy was accessed during the time it was at Poch?s residence. Councilor Kevin Kiene made the motion after resident Jeff Showalter suggested it.

Poch said Monday that he made a copy of the hard drive to prevent the employees from erasing information. He said he invited Schnoebelen to come along because he wanted a witness. He said that he regrets not taking the backup immediately to the bank but insisted that the data on the backup was always secure.

?What multiple companies do is they walk the employees out the door right away,? Poch said. ?When they say ?I?m leaving,? they don?t get a chance to stay for another week ? they?re gone right now. I wanted to preserve all the data up to that point.?

Poch said he tried to contact all the council Thursday night to find out what the city should do about the clerks? resignations. After failing to get a response, he said he took it upon himself to get the information.

Councilor Christine Kirkwood said she objected to Poch and Schnoebelen?s act because they did it after hours and they did not inform the council that they were going to do it. Kirkwood said they did not inform Carter that they had done it, either, and that Carter found out the next day after noticing that someone had been in her office.

Resident James Poeschel said he didn?t understand why Poch and Schnoebelen believed it was an emergency to back up the hard drive and why they couldn?t have waited until city hall opened the following Monday. He said he wasn?t aware of anyone in Riverside who had a problem with Carter. Poch said he didn?t want to have to walk Carter and Sladek out of the office but he did want to preserve the information on the computer as soon as possible. He said he didn?t want to back up the hard drive during business hours because it would have created too much drama.

Kirkwood read a letter from Joan Bex in which Bex asked if the backup was removed legally.

Bex wrote, ?Those of us who were affected do not know where that download was and who had access to it between 7 p.m. Thursday and when it was put in the city?s lockbox Tuesday. That is five days that those records could have been downloaded again.?

Kirkwood asked City Attorney Les Lamping if Poch and Schnoebelen did anything illegal. Lamping said he was not aware of any written procedure about how to secure the backup.

?I?m being asked about criminal matters,? he said. ?I do not have the authority to bring criminal charges against anyone.?

Lamping encouraged the council to create a policy about how to handle confidential records.

Poeschel approached the podium and read a letter from Todd Yahnke, a former councilor, about the hard drive. Yahnke asked what authority Poch and Schnoebelen had to make a copy of the city?s hard drive. He wrote that if they wanted a copy of the clerks? e-mails, the two could have come in during normal business hours. Yahnke wrote that the computer contained Social Security numbers of former mayors and councilors, as well as the banking information of residents who pay city bills through electronic funds transfer. Yahnke wrote there was no reason for Poch and Schnoebelen to have access to such information.

?The only reason I can see for the individuals to take this information would be to gain access illegally to information they could not otherwise obtain,? he wrote.

Yahnke wrote that the city of Riverside or the individuals who took the information should provide fraud insurance for a minimum of five years.

Resident Kevin Mills said he saw nothing wrong in what Poch and Schnoebelen did. Linmarie Eden said she talked to Poch after he took the backup home and it was clear to her that Poch would not have known how to access the hard drive.