Missing school sex abuse email could be found, Liberal MP Rob Lucas tells SA Parliament Premier Jay Weatherill. Picture: Kelly Barnes Source: The Australian FURTHER investigation of State Government email backup systems could reveal who received a lost email that alerted Premier Jay Weatherill's office to school sex abuse claims, a Liberal MP claims. Former Supreme Court judge Bruce Debelle this week released a highly-critical report into departmental and ministerial responses to allegations of sexual abuse of a public school student. It revealed hard drives of computers used by Mr Weatherill, then education minister, and his staff were wiped when a new minister was appointed. The Education Department uses a process commonly known as DBAN, which stands for Darik's Boot and Nuke, which overwrites every sector of hard drives so that data cannot be recovered. Mr Debelle found Mr Weatherill's chief of staff Simon Blewett had forwarded the email to a person but could not determine who it was sent to. Mr Blewett speculated in evidence to Mr Debelle that it may have been Mr Weatherill's media adviser, but could not clearly recall. Read the full report at the Education Department website. Opposition frontbencher Rob Lucas has told State Parliament he believes a further investigation, which examines electromagnetic tapes used as backup systems, as undertaken by the Cole Royal Commission, could reveal the recipient. "I refer to the record of the Cole Royal Commission ... that no matter what you think you might have done when you deleted an email or cleaned your hard drive, the work of the Australian Federal Police and other forensic investigators is such that they are able to retrieve emails that people believe they had deleted," Mr Lucas said. It is certainly my view that the searching of backup files and tapes within the department does not appear to have occurred. It certainly raises some questions, which are unanswered and need to be considered by way of further investigation and inquiry, including forensic investigation of backup systems a la the Cole Royal Commission. Mr Lucas quoted from evidence given by a Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade official to the Cole Royal Commission that information not stored on hard drives could be recovered from backup tapes. "Essentially, when a backup is made, the information that is on that email system at the time is copied to a tape and the tape is kept and stored until the next backup is made," the official was quoted saying. The backup systems are not designed to permit emails to be archived or retrieved. However, with sufficient time and resources, the backup systems can be used to reconstruct historical email files where those files have been captured on the backup tape. Mr Debelle reported that he enlisted Detective Senior Sergeant Barry Blundell, Officer-in-Charge of the Electronic Crime Section, to investigate the sex abuse email chain. "I also heard evidence ... it is the practice of the Department that, on a change of Minister, computers used by the Minister and the Minister's staff are returned to the Department where they are decommissioned and undergo a process called DBAN," Mr Debelle reported. The purpose of the DBAN process is to overwrite every sector in the hard drive on numerous occasions and thereby make it impossible to recover data from the computer. Mr Debelle found Mr Blundell took "all reasonable steps" to investigate who the email was sent to, including analysis of backup files made by Mr Blewett. Those backups made by Mr Blewett included data confirming the email had been forwarded to another person at 2.49pm on December 2, 2010, but not the recipient. Mr Weatherill said the Oppositon "don't like findings that have been made by Mr Debelle." "Mr Debelle said that he was entirely satisfied that I wasn't told," he said. They don't like those findings, so they are seeking to cast doubt on the findings of the Royal Commissioner, which I don't think is an appropriate thing to do.