Another amazing story of government efficiency...

Quote:The federal government has more than 400,000 pages of evidence against fugitive Miami doctor Armando Angulo, taking up some two terabytes of digital space. On the surface, it sounds like a pretty solid case. But at the urging of prosecutors, charges were dropped against the doctor because the evidence is simply taking up too much space on government servers.

"Continued storage of these materials is difficult and expensive," wrote Stephanie Rose, the U.S. attorney for northern Iowa, describing the ongoing evidence storage as "an economic and political hardship" for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

Quote:Part of that limited storage capacity stems from the fact that the DEA has not recently upgraded its storage capacity. An external hard drive with a terabyte of storage can be easily purchased online at outlets like Best Buy for around $100.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/fed...30159.html

So the DEA (with an annual budget of over $2.3 BILLION) can't fork out $200 bucks to invest in a couple of servers so they can convict this guy, but they can spend millions on raiding medical marijuana dispensaries and prosecuting perpetrators of small-time, victimless crimes.

Welcome to the world of logic as seen from the viewpoint of a federal bureaucrat.

Of course, if anyone at the DEA blew the whistle on enough waste, fraud, and abuse to pay for a couple of new servers, Obama would probably charge them under the Espionage Act (like he did with Thomas Drake of the NSA), so maybe it's better they keep their mouths shut.

Now we know if you overwhelm the DEA with evidence, they will drop your case for administration reasons. The manpower needed to go through all that info is what would be overwhelming.

They could probably reduce the amount of space they need by changing the format of the documents.

My guess is that it had nothing to do with space...and more to do with work. This case was just too much work for them. Busting cannabis dispensaries is much easier and profitable for the DEA.