I have been told that there exist some huge email repositories, where one
can obtain copies of emails that have previously flitted around the
Internet.

I need copies of email sent in connection with a transaction in or
about February of 1999, and other emails commenting on that
transaction and/or related matters.

The principals all say they no longer have the computers from which
the email was sent, and hence that the email is no longer available.

Is there some other way [e.g., the supposed email repositories] to
resurrect pertinent email?

If you can direct me to such repositories, etc., then you will earn
the price for this question.  If you actually come up with some of the
email, that would be even more valuable.

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Clarification of Question by query007-ga on 22 Feb 2004 12:59 PST

Just to ally the concerns of pinkfreud-ga:

I share your privacy concerns as a general proposition, and would not
be looking for this stuff at all except that, as it happens, it is
material to which I have a legal right [not just a desire to obtain,
sub-rosa, the "private" communications of others].

Actually, despite my present inconvenience, I am somewhat relieved to
find that this email repository stuff may just be an Internet-era
version of the urban myth.

I doubt that such a site exists. For the sake of individual privacy
rights, I certainly hope not. IMHO, no one other than the sender and
the intended recipient should be able to access emails. The passage of
time does not change that.

query007-ga:

E-mail sent that is transmitted over the Internet using the standard
Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) typically travels from the
outgoing e-mail server directly to the incoming mail server using the
most efficient data path. There are times when e-mail passes through
filtering services (anti-spam), or through a series of servers within
a server group, before reaching the destination mail server. Due to
the sheer volume (in size) of e-mail that is sent on a daily basis,
the only agencies capable of the level of investment required to even
attempt to intercept and store this amount of information would be the
larger intelligence agencies in the world, such as the FBI and CIA.
Even for them, the sheer volume means that if they store anything, it
would be only the e-mail from/to "persons of interest", or that
contain specific keywords of interest. In order for them to do this,
the intelligence agencies actually have to install filtering servers
at either the outgoing or incoming mail servers; any attempt to
intercept traffic "in the middle" is difficult or futile, as often
there are multiple routes that data can take from one point to another
in the Internet. It would be like standing in the middle of New York
City, and trying to see who is riding in every single taxi at a given
moment.

All of this is to say that, unless the operator of the incoming mail
server for the recipients happens to have kept old backup tapes from
1999 lying around (and typically, for economic reasons prior to the
passing of recent securities laws in the US, backup tapes were
recycled after a set period usually less than six months), you will
not be able to obtain copies of these discarded e-mails.

Sorry!

aht-ga
Google Answers Researcher