FBI Said to Recover Personal E-Mails From Hillary Clinton Server
The FBI has recovered personal and work-related e-mails from the private computer server used by Hillary Clinton during her time as secretary of state, according to a person familiar with the investigation. ... A review by Clinton and her aides determined that about half of the 60,000 e-mails she exchanged during her four-year tenure as secretary of state were of a personal nature, the presidential candidate has said. ...
In 2013, the Clintons turned the private server over to a Colorado-based technology company to manage. The firm, Platte River Networks, installed the device in a New Jersey data center and managed and maintained it.
Andy Boian, a spokesman for the Platte River, said the FBI last month asked the company to hand over the server. Platte River asked the Clintons what it should do, and within 24 hours a representative for the Clintons told the company to provide the device to agents, Boian said.
There has been some question as to whether Clinton deleted her messages or took the more thorough and technical step of "wiping" the server. Boian said Tuesday that Platte River had "no knowledge of it being wiped."
Wow. What are the odds she just deleted the emails rather than doing a real wipe? It's obvious that she wanted personal total control over her emails -- that is the whole point of personal server -- and if she failed to get competent advice on how to actually wipe a machine, it demonstrates her own lack of competence in selecting people who are actual experts to help her do the things she wants. Doing a multi-pass overwrite with random data isn't exactly esoteric knowledge -- that's pretty basic stuff. There is of course the brute force method as well. Surely she remembers the Air Force personnel smashing computer equipment when they had to land in China after a midair collision. Or the destruction of The Guardian's Snowden hard drives.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Thursday September 24 2015, @12:33PM
Or maybe, she isn't hiding anything except the state secrets she deleted, and is just complying with the FBI's lawful request.
Do the relevant FBI agents have the security clearance to see what they suspect may be there?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by tibman on Thursday September 24 2015, @01:21PM
Why would an FBI agent need any security clearance to view a politician's private emails?
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 24 2015, @03:31PM
Because if it turns out that she did have classified material (which answering that yes-no question is the whole point of looking at the server) then you need someone with adequate security clearance so that way the FBI doesn't get in trouble for exposing the wrong person to classified material. Therefore, the investigation, especially with everyone watching it, is going to do everything by the book, which includes requiring clearance for people who may be exposed to classified material.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 24 2015, @06:00PM
Because of the right's constant, incessant claims that the deleted emails are all classified, which means only somebody with the proper security clearance has the authority to even look at the server, because you can't have somebody without a clearance seeing classified info. If there's even the slightest possibility of there being classified info on there (its possible, of course, no matter how unlikely), then only somebody with a clearance can look for it.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 24 2015, @01:27PM
Do the relevant FBI agents have the security clearance to see what they suspect may be there?
Considering they are the ones who conduct the background checks I would suspect they do. This is also a red herring. No need to worry about security clearances. She sure didnt did she?
Know what I see in this mess. Political elite doing what they do. The rules do not apply to them. If one of those FBI agents had done the same thing they would be at the very least having a very lengthy court hearing. They would probably face fines, job loss, and a permanent revocation of their security clearance. From her we hear 'oh didnt happen' to 'well maybe I did' to 'yeah I did' to 'no it is fine' to 'woopsy I wont do it again if I am president (pinky swear)'. Then you have a bunch of blowhards trying to make the biggest deal out of it in the world.
When the way is pretty clear what *should* happen is fines and revocation of said clearance and depending how bad it is some jail time (which a court could determine). What will happen is more 'promises' from our political elite 'to *do* *something*'. Nothing will happen except words.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Thursday September 24 2015, @02:37PM
Uhhhhhhhhh - you're kinda sorta on track - BUT - an individual FBI agent may very well NOT BE cleared to see the content that might be on Clinton's server. Many, maybe even most FBI agents are presumably cleared to those levels, but just being an agent doesn't mean you're cleared. Remember - all that kinda stuff is on a "need to know" basis, as well as being super top secret ultra sensitive. A guy can get in trouble, not for going over his clearance level, but just for snooping into something for which he doesn't have a "need to know".
Of course, all that is really irrelevant. The agents assigned to this particular task have the necessary clearance, as well as the need to know.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Thexalon on Thursday September 24 2015, @01:35PM
My general impression over this whole brouhaha:
1. Since the Clintons have indeed been targeted by a "vast right-wing conspiracy", it's quite possible that there really is nothing here to see. For example, after years of congressional hearings there's still absolutely no evidence that Hillary Clinton did anything to cause the deaths of an ambassador and 3 of his staff in Benghazi.
2. On the other hand, since the Clintons and Hillary in particular have been engaged in suspicious activity for a very long time to amass a giant pile of campaign cash, it's also quite possible that there absolutely is something here to see that while not necessarily illegal would be damaging to her candidacy for president. Think Mitt Romney's 47% video.
3. It doesn't matter all that much in terms of the election, because the Hillary supporters (currently about half of the Democratic primary electorate) will believe any excuses she makes, Hillary haters (about half of everybody, based on current unfavorability rating) will believe any accusations made against her, and the remainder are voting for somebody else for other reasons.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ikanreed on Thursday September 24 2015, @01:53PM
My own view is that she clearly did something against the spirit of transparency laws, but I've not heard anything even remotely approaching probable cause that justifies the level of scrutiny this issue is receiving.
So it can start with something clearly problematic, and then drift seamlessly into insane conspiracy mongering without much trouble, because American politics bites. The conspiracy mongering almost makes me want to forgive the violation of transparency rules.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Thursday September 24 2015, @02:12PM
I will say that one of Hillary Clinton's major flaws is that she acts like she has something to hide even when she would be much better off just coming clean. The problem, I think, is that as a trained lawyer she's taught to say anything except exactly what happened, and that makes her look more guilty than she probably actually is.
Bill has exactly the same problem: He could have ended his scandal by saying something along the lines of "It's no secret I have a love of the ladies, but Hillary is OK with it, and it has no effect on my ability to carry out the duties of my office. I am certainly not the first president like that - some of our most beloved, like John F Kennedy, did the same thing. I apologize to and will make compensation to anybody who I wronged while doing this." As Richard Nixon found out, attempting to cover up a crime usually is worse than simply admitting it.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 24 2015, @05:33PM
You would think that she would have learned from the fact that she was a good part of taking us from some minor real estate transaction in Arkansas all the way to Presidential impeachment hearings because of this behavior.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tathra on Thursday September 24 2015, @06:18PM
it doesn't matter how guilty she "looks", or how guilty you think she is, the 4th amendment explicitly does not allow fishing expeditions. without some kind of actual evidence granting probable cause, guilty or not they have no legal authority to go digging through her shit, nor anyone else's shit.
remember, "It is better for one hundred guilty men to go free than one innocent man to go to jail".
(Score: 4, Insightful) by frojack on Thursday September 24 2015, @07:42PM
Its not a fishing expedition when there were evident violations of Law.
Handling classified email on an unapproved system is a violation of law.
Other people received classified emails sent by her from her unapproved system. This is how this whole thing got started.
Therefore there was plenty of evidence to justify an investigation.
Its sad when you see people so blinded by their political beliefs that they will excuse any violation of law rather than believe their hero is a scofflaw.
If she was a republican you would be screaming for a special prosecutor.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by tathra on Thursday September 24 2015, @07:59PM
have there been such evident and provable violations of law? and if there have, rather than me simply not giving a shit about her or fox new's benghazi-esque witch hunt towards her, she's my hero and i'm ignoring all her supposedly blatant violations of law that i know nothing about because she's got a D by her name?
just wow. how about you try again without all the straw men and ad hominems, and provide some evidence instead of just assuming that anyone sticking up for the constitution and due process, especially when scumbags are involved, worships the ground that shady, corrupt bitch walks on?
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Thursday September 24 2015, @08:18PM
You keep repeating "legal legal legal" like the word of HRC is the end of the matter, but even if her actions were legal, they reek of the appearance of impropriety.
Tell me this -- why did she use a private email server? Even if it was legal (highly doubtful) but for the sake of argument -- what were her reasons for setting it up?
It's obvious of course -- when you control the data it makes a coverup so much easier and makes it so much easier for people to say "no evidence -- she's an angel."
(Score: 2) by tathra on Thursday September 24 2015, @08:28PM
so we should just throw out the legal system and constitution because it makes it easier to catch bad guys? disgusting authoritarians like you are a threat to my country.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Thursday September 24 2015, @08:30PM
What constitutional right of privacy does she have in someone else's documents? Seriously, explain how she has a right to privacy over her employer's documents.
Secondly, quit dodging the question: WHY did she set up a private server in the first place?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by tathra on Thursday September 24 2015, @08:36PM
you mean the ones she turned in when subpoenaed months ago?
red herring. "looking" guilty or "doing something you, personally, think is suspicious" does not make one guilty. see, we have this thing called the "justice system" and the "constitution" to make it harder for scumbags like you to kill or throw into a dark hole everyone you don't like on a whim.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Thursday September 24 2015, @09:27PM
Not a red herring. I worked for a state office in my past, and the appearance of impropriety was just as important as the real thing -- I would expect the Feds to also take some care toward the appearances.
Secondly, I don't want a president whose main argument about a really sketchy looking private server situation, is: "well, it wasn't _illegal_." That's just slimy. How about explaining why the server was done in the first place. My guess -- there is no way to believably explain it as anything but a coverup tool, so HRC doesn't and just makes slippery slimy statements that must be parsed under a microscope to separate their actual meaning from the impression they are intended to convey.
(Score: 3, Funny) by frojack on Thursday September 24 2015, @09:37PM
Yeah, call us names. That improves your argument.
Go educate yourself on this matter. This is a fully legal investigation into illegal acts by a sitting secretary of state.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Thursday September 24 2015, @09:32PM
so we should just throw out the legal system and constitution
When you are the secretary of state you sign on to all the rules of the state department, these rules go above and beyond the laws.
That includes the right of the department to go through her office papers.
State Dept already found secret emails on her server, and secret emails that she turned over.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/clinton-sent-classified-information-over-email-while-at-state-department-review-finds-1437779884 [wsj.com]
http://dailycaller.com/2015/08/31/report-state-department-finds-another-150-hillary-emails-containing-classified-info/ [dailycaller.com]
Take your blinders off. The investigation is fully legal and justified. She agreed to those terms when taking the job.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by tathra on Thursday September 24 2015, @11:29PM
finally, the citations i asked for. you know, you could've just provided that in the first place instead of throwing the worst insults i've ever heard in my life at me (hillary supporter? god, i'd rather take a nasty diarrhea shit, slit my throat and bleed all over that shit, and then eat all that bloody shit while my consciousness remains).
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Thursday September 24 2015, @08:12PM
The 4th Amendment is off topic. The emails are the property of her Employer and the ONLY reason her employer did not have complete control over those emails, was because she redirected official correspondence to her private server. The fact that she intentionally commingled her private email with official email is her problem, and an independent 3d party needs to make the call of what belongs to her employer and which does not. If anyone below the level of "Immune from all Laws" tried to intercept communications in this manner, the Feds would lock them up forever.
(Score: 2) by tathra on Thursday September 24 2015, @08:42PM
not at all. City of Ontario v. Quon [wikipedia.org] ruled that "the right to privacy (4th amendment rights) applies to electronic communications in a government workplace." SCOTUS ruled that being a government employee does not mean you lose your 4th amendment rights.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday September 24 2015, @09:04PM
It does matter how guilty she "looks" when she's trying to become president of the United States. I'm not focusing on her chances of being locked up, because I know that those are slim to none. The court of public opinion uses different rules than the court of law.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bradley13 on Thursday September 24 2015, @02:42PM
I don't understand how you don't understand this. As someone who used to hold a "top secret" clearance, I assure you that it is made abundantly clear: You are responsible for the security of any and all classified material that comes your way. Putting classified material anywhere that a person without clearances could see it? Criminal offense, go directly to jail.
Hillary's server was managed by an ordinary sys admin working for an ordinary company. Apparently, it was initially housed at her residence; later in an ordinary data center in New Jersey. As far as the information available indicates, this company, the employees and the data center are not certified to hold or manage classified materials. Essentially anyone working for the company could access her emails; certainly, anyone on the company network could intercept her emails on the wire, since she does not seem to have encrypted it.
tl;dr: Hillary knowingly put classified information where a huge number of uncleared people had access to it.
Anyone else would be in jail awaiting trail.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 5, Informative) by ikanreed on Thursday September 24 2015, @03:07PM
That's not entirely true. Any cabinet level person could easily have gotten away with this in virtually any administration.
Hell, someone a little lower covered up someone in the Bush administration maliciously released classified information in a way that definitely the security of a few operations, and they got their sentence commuted to community service.
Caveats about this post
1. I don't think the Bush administration doing something shitty justifies bad behavior now.
2. I don't think the letter of the law has been violated because things were retroactively classified prior to release(which: yes, is dumb, I agree)
3. I recognize that a commuted sentence reflects a degree of acceptance that inappropriate activity took place
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 24 2015, @04:35PM
I don't think the letter of the law has been violated because things were retroactively classified
...except that you already mentioned "transparency laws" aka FOIA.
The Freedom of Information Act of 1996 says that if you are a public servant and you have communications related to your job, those will be archived.
For C-level public servants, that covers everything you do until you no longer have that job.
To assure that electronic communications are archived, those must be made on the approved servers with a federal employee making backups.
When Sarah Palin was doing gov't business via a webmail account, that was a crime.
When Hillary did it on her private server, that was a crime as well.
Classification violations add another layer of criminal activity, but the law has already been broken.
.
As for classification, there's WAY too much stuff being classified.
To get a Top Secret classification should require the signature (no auto-pen or equivalent) of a 4-star general or the civilian equivalent.
Once a 4-star is spending all his time approving classifications, the lunch menu for the Tuesday meeting will not seem quite so important.
El Reg had some of my favorite headlines on this:
FBI may pillory Hillary with email spillery grillery [theregister.co.uk]
More email misery and pillory for Hillary as FBI starts quizzery [theregister.co.uk]
-- gewg_
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 24 2015, @05:27PM
> Classification violations add another layer of criminal activity, but the law has already been broken.
Well, except for that part about where the communications related to her job were archived. I am 100% certain we will find that at least some of the deleted messages were also related to her job, but I doubt it will turn out to be systemic. If it does turn out to be systemic, then you will be right on the money with the law having been broken.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Thursday September 24 2015, @06:06PM
The point of using the Government servers would be so that nothing would be missed. It is HRC's fault she commingled personal and business communications, and in such circumstances, an independent 3d party should be the one making the determination of what stays and what doesn't. The fact that she had gall to say "trust me and no you can't verify" is pretty amazing. An attitude as smug as that, shows she feels completely outside any regulation, even when the problem is one of her own making. That is a dangerous quality for president.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 24 2015, @10:21PM
> The point of using the Government servers would be so that nothing would be missed.
You seem to think that messages on government servers are not also deleted. You are in error.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Thursday September 24 2015, @11:27PM
You have to be kidding. I'm sure they get deleted in certain circumstances, but I seriously doubt the SOS has the authority to make that determination on her own with no oversight. If HRC is going to be so cavalier about information while just SOS, how bad do you think it will be if she is president?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2015, @12:03AM
Hey after we get Hilary, can we go after all those responsible in the Bush Administration [mediamatters.org] for doing the same thing and worse? In fact, can we file charges right now and run the trials back to back?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 24 2015, @03:30PM
I don't understand how you don't understand this. As someone who used to hold a "top secret" clearance, I assure you that it is made abundantly clear: You are responsible for the security of any and all classified material that comes your way.
Why did you put quotes around "top secret?" TS is a the real name.
> tl;dr: Hillary knowingly put classified information where a huge number of uncleared people had access to it.
Er, no. Everything that has been revealed so far is that nothing she sent or received was marked classified. Furthermore, the State Department is still arguing with the inspector general whether the emails in question should even be marked classified today. At a minimum this "knowingly" thing is unlikely and probably outright false.
Furthermore, even if she had transmitted classified material, using a private mail server is no worse than using a government administered mail server. No computer cleared for processing classified data can be connected to the internet. They would both be in equal violation.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday September 24 2015, @03:37PM
Not to answer your whole post, but many people use quotes to denote a title. It's less formal than underline or italics, but it does help quickly offset an officially description of something. A lack of quotes could be understood by a reader to be referring to the approximate idea of highly secret documents, without the specificity of the legal classification. That you could see the opposite intention just speaks to how fucked up our language is.
(Score: 3, Funny) by snick on Thursday September 24 2015, @03:48PM
Yes. It is absolutely "true" that many "people" "misuse" and "abuse" "quotation marks."
Literally.
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Thursday September 24 2015, @04:21PM
If I know that the brand new F99 fighter jet has a top speed of mach 99, that fact will be classified. When I write it down in a new document, that document does not yet have classified markings. The information is still classified, I damned well know it is, so putting my new document where uncleared people can read it is still criminal.
That's how it is with Hillary's emails. The things they are retroactively classifying are emails that contain classified information. It is almost certain that most of that information was classified before it was typed into an email. As such, putting those emails on an unsecured server was criminal, with or without official markings.
As another poster wrote: the 1% are not like us. They don't go to jail when they violate the law; instead, they get elected to office. That was as true of the Bush administration as it is of the Obama administration. That doesn't make it right, and that is likely part of the reason that such a large part of the US population regards the US government as an imminent threat [soylentnews.org].
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 24 2015, @04:59PM
> If I know that the brand new F99 fighter jet has a top speed of mach 99, that fact will be classified.
Eh, that's how it works when the source document is marked, that's all very straightforward. But that is not how it works when you are part of the process that creates the information in the first place.
Like I said, state still doesn't think the information is classified. That's strong evidence right there that it was not done knowingly. Your posting history suggests a very strong desire to assume the worst when it comes to clinton. That's fine. But don't go around calling your assumptions facts and use that falsehood to prove your other theories.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 24 2015, @05:29PM
You say "will be" classified, then you say it is classified. Those are two different things. If you know the speed to be classified, then if you write it down you had better mark the document appropriately. It isn't up to you to decide whether something should or will be classified. The only one who decides if something is classified is someone who has classification authority. Everyone else follows what is laid out in a classification document that spells out what is and isn't. If the speed is not classified and you write that into a document, then it is an unclassified document. That bit of info might get added to the classification later, but that doesn't mean you are in trouble because you wrote it down before it was classified. And it is also improper, if you think that info should be classified, to mark it as so if you don't have classification authority.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Thursday September 24 2015, @05:30PM
Probably to denote the questionable nature of some of those top secret documents. It's common knowledge that during the Bush administration they were classifying a ton of things that didn't need to be classified in order to prevent people from seeing them.
I haven't heard anything about that lately, so I'm not sure if it's been fixed or the press has finally given up on talking about it.
But yeah, a lot of those "top secret" documents aren't really, but in order to find out you have to have clearance and retaining clearance requires not getting caught leaking things like that to the press. And without clearance, you'd have to find a new job.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 24 2015, @04:38PM
Actually, divulging classified material carries possible administrative, civil, and criminal penalties. If found guilty, she could face a range of penalties. If you really had at one time held a "top secret" clearance you should have known this.
Actually, this is what is still under investigation. If substantial evidence is produced, then the DoJ may have the option of filing charges.
Alas, this is one of the few things you may have got right. It sucks that this country has reverted to a two-tier system of justice where the ordinary rules don't apply to the high and mighty.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday September 24 2015, @05:44PM
tl;dr: Hillary knowingly put classified information where a huge number of uncleared people had access to it.
[Citation Needed]
(Score: 0, Troll) by hemocyanin on Thursday September 24 2015, @06:09PM
Fuck you. Why don't you provide a citation that says over the course of four years as SOS, absolutely no classified material was communicated to HRC via email. The chance of that being true is nil.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 24 2015, @06:30PM
Don't have to because fortunately in the real world, Fox News innuendo, rumor, and hunches aren't held as indisputable facts. Kind of like how, looking at a situation as a whole, if I have a state government and a hospital showing me a certificate of birth and attesting to its authenticity, and I have Fox News telling me that it is probably a fake, I'm going to side with the former over the latter. Especially when it comes to the topic of Clinton in particular, I prefer to wait and see what really happened rather than go on what Fox News is telling me probably happened.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Thursday September 24 2015, @06:37PM
...classified material was communicated to HRC via email.
As someone "who used to hold a "top secret" clearance" did you send much classified information over unencrypted protocols like Email?
Didn't think so....
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Thursday September 24 2015, @08:03PM
I've never held any clearance of any kind.
(Score: 3, Informative) by tathra on Thursday September 24 2015, @07:06PM
its called "innocent until proven guilty" and "the fourth amendment of the United States of America". perhaps you've heard of them? they're key concepts upon which our country was built.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Thursday September 24 2015, @08:05PM
Government employees do not have a 4th amendment right to keep their work product secret from their employee. The 4th is a total non-sequitur. As for innocence, HRC intercepted official communications and redirected them to her private server -- if anyone else committed a MIM attack like this, the Feds would be dreaming up 100 years of indictable offenses.
(Score: 2) by tathra on Thursday September 24 2015, @08:23PM
that only applies to work-specific things, it does not allow them to rummage through all of her private communications. and the 4th absolutely does protect public employees from their employers' unreasonable searches:
Public Employee Privacy Rights: When Is An Employee’s Workplace His Castle? [kmtg.com]
oh, did she? citation needed please, as it was my understanding that she was using her private email, run on her private server as her work email, rather than redirecting them there. and if she was merely forwarding it from one address to another, forwarding email is not a MITM attack.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Thursday September 24 2015, @09:43PM
Communication to the SOS about SOS business, is communication with a government official and those communications must be archived. Everything work related sent to her private address was intercepted, and she then had a duty to maintain it, not destroy it.
There is no question she had official communications on her server. You admit that much right?
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2071 [cornell.edu]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tathra on Thursday September 24 2015, @11:55PM
and at the time, that was perfectly legal. what you're referring to is allegedly a violation of the Federal Records Act, i presume? it was amended in 2014 - after she left her office as SoS. wanting to punish her for laws that didn't exist at the time of the action but exist now is called "ex post facto", ex post facto laws are explicitly forbidden under Article 1, Section 9, Clause 3 of the US Constitution. i'm pretty sure the law was changed to disallow what she did because she did it, but she nor anybody else can be punished for something that wasn't illegal at the time they did it.
honestly i don't care enough about this whole kerfluffle to do all the proper research and keep up to date on all the facts and discoveries because i hate the bitch and learning anything about her isn't worth my time. i'll be extremely happy if all this shit keeps her out of the presidency, but only if no constitution-shredding or law-ignoring precedents are set in the process. the absolute, most important time to ensure that due process is upheld and that all standards and technicalities are adhered to is when it comes to slimy scumbags like her, or child-raping pedophiles, because you want to say "Sure, go ahead, ignore all the rules because they deserve it!", but if you do, guess what? next week they'll be using that same precedent that you begged them to set to come after your ass.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Friday September 25 2015, @06:40AM
That law I cited was one of the ones Ollie North got convicted on. Are you telling me that doesn't predate all this?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 24 2015, @08:21PM
As someone who also had a top secret clearance you clearly know nothing of the process of classification. It is the responsibility of the classification authority of the originating organization to correctly classify the information. If it is misclassified and you don't know it then it is not your problem. I suspect the emails were not correctly classified initially. It is not an easy job.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2015, @06:31AM
A key fact missing in much of this is that the gov't office server she was supposed to be using instead of the home server was NOT designed for classified info either. Putting/sending classified info to the wrong server is to the wrong server, period. The personal-vs-office server thing is mostly moot for the secrecy allegations. (There were separate procedures for classified messages.)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by EQ on Thursday September 24 2015, @03:34PM
It is a fact that Ms Clinton knowling put classified information on a non-governmental, non-secured, "unclassified" device (thumb drive) and computer (the server). Furthermore she transmitted classified data over unclassified channels without encrypting it. All of these things are federal offenses. See 18 U.S. Code § 793 - Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information, and 18 U.S. Code § 798 - Disclosure of classified information.
A snippet for you "Whoever, lawfully having possession of, access to, control over, or being entrusted with any document, ... which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully communicates, delivers, transmits or causes to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted or attempts to communicate, deliver, transmit or cause to be communicated, delivered or transmitted the same to any person not entitled to receive it, or willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it on demand to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it"
As I was briefed in my clearance "read in" to just the sort of classified (and likely compartmented) data she had (TS/SI, probably TK and NOFORN as well), they made it evident that intent is not necessary to violate the law - accidental disclosures are also violations of the law. And the NRO does not laugh off this stuff. Even taking a cell phone or thumb drive into some areas is a crime because it risks exposure and violates regulations.
So no this is not a political witch hunt. If anything she has been cut more slack than any of us regular working schmoes would be.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 24 2015, @03:48PM
> It is a fact that Ms Clinton knowling put classified information on a non-governmental, non-secured, "unclassified" device
Please provide an authoritative citation for that claim. Like a quote from the investigators.
I am confident that you can not provide such a quote because if they had said that, they would have said it as part of the process of filing charges against her for exactly the crimes you have described. Ergo, its bullshit spin you got from someone with an agenda.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Thursday September 24 2015, @04:33PM
Pretty obvious why you are an AC. Just wow.
This is simple to comprehend, you are willfully playing at ignorance. She was the Secretary of State. There are only two possibilities. She was either a mushroom (kept in the dark and fed shit) and thus never put in the loop for any classified material or she was a normal Sec of State and in the loop on every classified operation and intelligence briefing impacting her duties. Every private conversation she had with a head of State was protected and should have been discussed on the official protected servers. This BS Clintonian parsing 'it wasn't marked classified' and 'it wasn't classified at the time' is just that; BS. Much of the Information she deals with is classified at the time of creation, it remains classified if you merely mention that the information exists in an email, etc.
Every one of us with enough clue to be posting here knows all these things and more, some simply are so partisan they do not care. That would be you. Another thing we all know is that most places of employment, even those not processing official government secrets, have record retention rules. We know for a fact that almost everyone with an account here would be fired if we tried conducting our business related[1] affairs from a server in our basement unless we made careful provisions to have our employer have the copies required by policy and law, etc. But we wouldn't get to the point of being fired because the fact we didn't have an account on the company server would set off all sort of warnings and likely the company server wouldn't even permit internal mail to leave the internal system.
Meanwhile everybody in the US Gov with a need to communicate with the SecState or the minions she setup accounts for (Huma) had to know that clintonemail.com was not a government server. Obama knew. Every media hack who did an interview or got a leak from her knew. They didn't care, rules are for little people.
[1] Even those doing consulting, and thus allowed to have their own server, have probably set up servers implementing policies to retain and control access as part of their consulting business or have worked in cubeworld in the past, so they know how the corporate world works.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 24 2015, @04:37PM
> Pretty obvious why you are an AC. Just wow.
I'm AC because I don't need to give my arguments a bogus +2 upmod to make my point.
> This is simple to comprehend, you are willfully playing at ignorance.
Right back at you, except it took you a buttload of words to prove you've got nothing but circular logic, but this one is obviously bullshit that it doesn't even need comment:
> Every private conversation she had with a head of State was protected and should have been discussed on the official protected servers.
(Score: 2) by etherscythe on Thursday September 24 2015, @06:13PM
...or she didn't do any of the actual classified work on that email, and saved it for the government server. One might doubt she actually pulled that off properly (only takes one slip-up out of 60,000 emails to ruin it), but I can pretty much guarantee there are some things she does in her official capacity that are not classified.
Imagine doing her job. You have protected information, and public/private information that, from your perspective, only you need access to. I can see a temptation to re-draw the demarcation lines to suit your own workflow as to which server to use for what purpose. If all the sensitive conversations went through the protected government servers, there's not *technically* anything to be upset about - except the whole violation of the letter of law bit, of course. And interfering with the public record of her term in office, but much of that is already hopelessly muddled, across the board. Will we ever see the presidential records of GWB, even the stuff not top-secret? Doubt it. "executive privilege" will probably last even longer than the copyright on Mickey Mouse in this country.
Without seeing the specific details of what's in there, or hearing about it from the FBI, we'll never know for sure. Let's keep the rhetoric and mudslinging to a minimum in the meantime. Clinton gives us plenty of reasons to hate her without making up plausible fictions, and baseless accusations only further divorce We the People from the truths we need so badly to keep this democracy creaking forward.
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Thursday September 24 2015, @06:52PM
Then she is lying. She swears she had exactly one email account, the hdr22@clintonemail.com account, because she didn't want to carry two devices. Which is itself a lie unless you believe that not only GrannyC but everybody around her was so incompetent that none of them realized every smartphone can support multiple accounts.
Again we have the bottom line that pretty much every position involving executive responsibility (other than a totally private businessman in an unregulated industry) involves records retention standards higher than Hillary Clinton can be held to without prison being the only result. No corporate CEO could conduct all their business from some GMail account AND then just go through it and delete things at will it when the court order hits. Anyone not named Clinton couldn't even run a multibillion dollar charity like the Clinton Foundation on that sort of intentionally lax record keeping without being invited to inhabit a cell.
Should we be requiring every email be retained and all this other regulatory BS? Of course not, but who makes the rules? The ones we see very openly not obeying them.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 24 2015, @10:26PM
Ether was talking about classified email, that is something that is only behind an air-gap, no 'device' could be used for actual classified email. One the most annoying things about this is how all over the map you guys are. Its like you don't even know what you don't know.
(Score: 5, Informative) by linuxrocks123 on Thursday September 24 2015, @10:52PM
Just wow. You got to know SoylentNews is succeeding when the Slashdot wingnuts flock over!
Here's some actual information (from politifact):
Some of the emails released this month actually show Clinton’s team talking about how they can’t email each other classified information.
Senior adviser Alec Ross noted in a February 2010 email that he was keeping his comments "within the boundaries of unclassified email… regarding the country we discussed."
In another email that month, long-time Clinton adviser Huma Abedin wrote to Clinton about a call she was scheduled to have with a new Ecuadorian foreign minister, saying "Trying to get u call sheet, its (sic) classified."
Clinton must have encountered classified information as secretary of state on a daily basis, said Liza Goitein, co-director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty and National Security Program. The emails released so far don’t have labels marking them classified when sent, which supports Clinton’s argument.
"The fact that no emails on her personal server were marked as classified suggests that she generally was doing her classified business on the secure government servers dedicated to that purpose," she said.
This is exactly the type of stuff you would expect to see when people are respecting bureaucratic restrictions but still trying to do their jobs as best they can. If the Republicans sift through enough of this stuff, are they going to find someone who fucked up and sent half a sentence of "ZOMG CLASSIFIED INFORMATION WTFBBQ" over email? Yeah, probably ... I'm sure someone's made a mistake in the half-decade she was secretary of state. Will it be negligent enough to prosecute? Maybe. Probably not. Let's hope they don't go after someone anyway. The resulting message would be "Join the Civil Service and get sent to jail over a trivial innocent mistake because the other political party started a vendetta against your boss!". This would lead to most clueful people resolving never to work for the federal government ever. And that would be bad.
Oh, and, contrary to someone's assertions (maybe you but I can't find the comment now) in this thread, mishandling classified information isn't a strict liability crime, because there are still some sane people involved in running the government. For some actual information on the law in this area, see here: https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/secrecy/RS21900.pdf [fas.org]
Congressional Research Service is awesome.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Thursday September 24 2015, @04:39PM
If it wasn't intentional, it was grossly negligent. Face it, her choice to take total control of her server was either stupid and uninformed, or a cynical attempt to control information owned by her employer. Either thing -- being a moron or a criminal -- should be enough to preclude her from public office.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 24 2015, @04:49PM
Your jump from cynical to criminal is incorrect.
I'm down with condemning her for doing a variation of the same bullshit that all the administration before her have done. I've been bitching about this sort of shit since I read about how Regan was able to abscond from office with a ton of documents and 'file' them in his library never to be seen again. So I hope all this hype will result in more transparency requirements. But calling her a criminal for doing what she was legally allowed to do is not going to change anything for the better, its unprincipled.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Thursday September 24 2015, @05:16PM
This is a fucking lie and you know it. Other admins may have used email servers controlled by 3d parties (and yeah, I think they should be tarred and feathered for that). Clinton used an email server _she_ controlled on a private machine. If you can't tell the difference between those things, and how much more power and control having a private server affords, you don't belong on this site.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 24 2015, @05:21PM
(1) You have an obsessive focus on email, ignoring the full scope of the problem
(2) There is no difference between contracting out to a third party and hiring her own admin
If you think there is a difference explain how it would have made a difference in this case - her decision about what emails to turn over to state would have been the same either way.
(3) You've ignored the central point that this was not illegal.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Thursday September 24 2015, @05:53PM
You keep astroturfing "not illegal" -- that sure as hell hasn't been decided and HRC is not the one who gets to make that decision.
There is a huge difference between a 3d party controlling data and personal control over that data. Like how a person can't actually delete anything from Facebook -- the data just gets marked as "do not display" but is still available for the asking with a subpoena for example. Secondly, a 3d party is unlikely to have the same vested interest as a user and is less likely to help a user engage in a coverup.
The real question should be, why did HRC use a private server? The only rational answer is that she wanted total control over communication records and being a Federal employee, she did not have that right. Why would she want total control? The only rational answer to that is so she could hide stuff. Even if your bullshit "not illegal" claim was true, her reasons for having a private email server are incompatible with the principles of open governance -- not that we have such but you can't even give lip service to that concept by using a private email server.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 24 2015, @11:43PM
This is the correct answer. Hillary knew she was going to run again. She knew she had to run again. The Clinton Foundation was on shaky financial footing. Bill had fallen out with Ira Magaziner, who had always been his brain trust; Ira really cared about the Clinton HIV initiative, it was his baby. Bill was such a poor manager and mismanaged it so horribly, that Ira began the process of working to separate the HIV initiative from the Clinton Foundation.
The Clinton Global Initiative, the Clinton answer to the annual shindig in Davos, was having trouble getting corporations to shell out to attend; Obama was ascendant, the second coming of Jesus, and Bill Clinton was old news. The only people who still reliably answered the Clinton Foundation's constant appeals for cash (point of clarification: the Clinton Foundation is a non-profit, not a grant-making foundation like the Ford Foundation. Why? Because the Clintons were too fucking stupid to know the difference between a non-profit, a grant-seeking entity, and a foundation, a grant-giving entity and did not understand how the mis-branding would confuse the world) in $100 increments were about 20,000 Baby Boomer housewives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan that have the hots for Bill.
So, Hillary had to draw more donations to the Foundation, and a second run at the Presidency was the best, most sure-fire way to do that. She may or may not have peddled influence as Sect. of State--I don't have specific information on that. She is a lawyer with a long history of political adversaries trying to take her down via Whitewater, the Vince Foster suicide, etc., so she would probably have avoided directly breaking laws against bribery. But she would certainly have wanted the private email server in order to absolutely control the narrative of her time at State, and she would have appreciated as a lawyer that emails on her private server would have proven much more difficult for her enemies to access legally.
Hillary would also have wanted the private email server because she had lost a bruising primary campaign, where she had done everything right as an establishment candidate, to an upstart who had a really good digital team. It woke her up to the importance of technology. Also, she had watched what had happened to the Bush people over their email snafus and was pretty certain they'd come after her that way. As soon as she arrived at State, she began building, or trying to build, the kind of digital team and social media presence Obama had. It's very likely setting up the email server was part of that series of meetings.
In the end, she will likely face no charges, and she's got to feel fairly confident she won't. She has been to Davos, she has been invited to the Bilderberg gathering, she takes money hand-over-fist from Wall Street. She is one of the 1%. How could she fall? And the Clinton Foundation has already regained its financial footing thanks to her efforts, so by that measure it's already mission accomplished for the vicious, evil grifters from Little Rock. Of course she'll keep running for President, because why stop at several hundred million dollars in personal wealth when you grow that to more than a billion and also get your name written into the history books as the first woman president?
But the rest of us should be very sure that we must keep a snake like her out of the Oval Office. It's true that Wall Street, Big Oil, and the other Masters of the Universe call all the shots, but she can still make things suck harder for the human race out of sheer spite. And she's nothing but sheer spite.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 24 2015, @05:40PM
Yes, the Bush administration using RNC email servers means that it was controlled by a 3rd party? Seriously? And when the shit hit the fan and those RNC hard drives disappeared, that was an innocent 3rd party mistake and the Bush people had no influence or control over that action? You really think that is different?
Wow.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Thursday September 24 2015, @05:54PM
I thought GWB was a supershitty president. What you are saying is that HRC is just like him.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 24 2015, @06:21PM
I'm not addressing that issue. I'm only addressing your statement that Clinton setting up a private email server is somehow fundamentally different (and worse) than a 3rd party running one because she has full control over hers but not the 3rd party's.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Thursday September 24 2015, @08:07PM
How are you addressing that issue? There is a fundamental difference over having total control over one's data, and having the illusion of control but in fact having none.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 24 2015, @10:11PM
I'm saying Bush/Cheney/Rove/etc. had full control over the RNC server and data so there is no difference. That is my point. That is the point to which I am making; the point that was expressly and implicitly stated. When they wanted the data deleted, it was deleted (oh, sorry, "lost"). That is directly addressing the point.
In case you don't know what I'm talking about because hypocrisy has a very short memory, look here [wikipedia.org]. In comparison, this Clinton thing is a non-issue. Compare her emails in terms of number of accounts and number of emails to the RNC server (50+ accounts and 22 MILLION emails deleted).
And you are trying to argue the Clinton thing is not only different, but WORSE? " having the illusion of control but in fact having none."??? Wow. Just wow. Or are you just in the plug-the-ears-and "that never happened, it was all just lies from the Liberal media" stage?
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Thursday September 24 2015, @11:38PM
Your argument boils down to this:
A bunch of GOP assholes did it, thus it is the right and proper thing to do. That's a crap argument.
Secondly, even if the 3d party is totally friendly, that is not the same as having personal total control.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2015, @04:35AM
Yes, it is a crappy argument. That is why I never made that argument. Man, you are really really dense. Really dense. There is a reason you find that so many people seem to argue with you all the time, it is because you completely lack the ability to grasp the crux of an argument, even when it is painfully spelled out for you, and you go and run with something else. Let's rewind. You made the point that others have done it using third-party services, but this is MUCH different because she set it up and had full control. I argued that the "others" had complete control and it is no different. I even pointed you to a nice summary of the "others" and how they set up third-party server for 50+ people and deleted 20 million emails. Then I went to great lengths to point out that THIS WAS MY ONLY POINT I WAS MAKING, that your statement about them being much different and that Clinton's case was in fact worse, was a stupid and ridiculous thing to say. I mean, come on Dude, I went out of my way to explicitly point out three or four times that was all I was saying, and your rejoinder is my argument is summarized in the above quote?
To your remarkably on-topic second point, yes, indeed, they did have total control of the RNC server (I know, it is clear you didn't follow the helpful link I gave you, but here we are). However, if you want to try to make that lawyer-like weasel-out pedantic argument to try to score a "win", then I would point out that Clinton did not have full control of her server because she had someone set it up and run it for her, just like those other guys did. Clinton at least had the better system because she didn't have to share it with four score people, and she only lost 30k emails, which is only like 1/700th of the emails that those other guys "lost".
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Friday September 25 2015, @06:50AM
again, your point boils down to "but the GOP did it". Even if I was to take that at face value -- so what? It's slimy.
(Score: 1) by timbojones on Friday September 25 2015, @09:09AM
No, that was your point: that RNC did something similar but what Clinton did is way worse. He is denying the "what Clinton did is way worse" part.
You need to start putting things in more boxes than "us" and "them" and understand that this AC doesn't actually like HRC. When he says "You're wrong" you keep reading in this phantom extra "and HRC is right" that isn't actually there.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday September 24 2015, @08:56PM
My own view is that she clearly did something against the spirit of transparency laws,
I see what you did there, through a glass, darkly.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by TheGratefulNet on Thursday September 24 2015, @04:24PM
since the republicans are SO vehement about this, anything they want THAT BADLY is probably bad.
yes, you fuckwad republicans have done this to yourselves. the continual witch-hunts you created against anyone with a D next to their name is shameful and disgusting. your cred is shot to hell and anything you say is suspect.
so, even if hillary did bad shit with that email thingie, its impossible to know if there is real 'crime' here or not. the 'far right wing' has ruined their rep so badly that I just can't tell if its a real issue or witchhunt.
ie, boy called wolf so many times, I now ignore everything you say. maybe you should start "benghazy'ing" again, there is surely more mileage on that. how about obama being a seckret muslim and not a US citizen? I could list dozens of stupid issues that the 'right' has raised simply to throw dirt on the opposition.
if you guys want to be taken seriously, you have to change your entire world view; and that's not gonna happen.
this is what we have. both sides strongly distrust the other. no fair justice can happen in that kind of environment.
I'll say again, our system is at a stand-still and is now broken-by-design. the 2 party winner-take-all system is stupid, broken and we should be talking about a replacement system, not getting stuck in the he-said-she-said bullshit distraction tactic that is forced on us all.
so, is she guilty? who knows. the people yelling for her head are not exactly the trustable kind, themselves!
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 3, Interesting) by hemocyanin on Thursday September 24 2015, @04:49PM
I'm a liberal and from my POV, she IS a fucking Republican. A wallstreetcocksuckingneoconwarmonger. Her vote on Iraq _directly_ contributed to the loss of many thousands of lives and billions of dollars. Back when she was voting for the Iraq war, her ONLY beef with GWB was that he was cutting taxes at the same time which would endanger "national and homeland security" -- that's code for being an NSAcocksucker too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtK9AzcU42g [youtube.com]
Notes:
-- 6:30 HRC parrots the WMD arguments, blames the danger to Iraqis on Hussein, ignores harm to Americans, financial costs, and the fact that Iraq was not a threat to the US nor involved in 9/11.
-- 10:00 Audience member: not up to the US to disarm Hussein, up to the world community, Iraq has no connection to terrorism, not only are Iraqi people in danger, so are US people, and will harm the economy. It's reckless.
-- 11:14 HRC: The world community would not take on difficult problems without US forcing the issue. Goes on and on about Bosnia. Segues into how GWB tax cuts are a bad idea.
-- 13:29 Interesting note on the negative effect of the tax cuts: "Here at home, this administration is bankrupting our economy forcing us to make the worst kinds of false choices between national and homeland security, which they don't fund ..."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 24 2015, @05:02PM
> I'm a liberal and from my POV, she IS a fucking Republican.
Way to completely miss the OP's point. Its like you triggered on one word and went off on a completely unrelated rant because you are so angry about her that you couldn't stay focused.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Thursday September 24 2015, @05:21PM
No -- he was saying:
GOP mad about email thus there is no issue with the email.
That's not logical.
I was gleefully pointing out this email issue because anything that harms a wallstreetcocksuckingwarmongeringneocon like HRC, is good. I admit that. But that doesn't change the fact HRC probably broke the law but in true 1%er fashion, faces no consequences. Let there be consequences, if only losing the primary -- not much punishment really when considering all the blood and death on her hands.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 24 2015, @05:31PM
GOP mad about email thus there is no issue with the email.
That's not logical.
That's not what he said. He said I can't believe anything the GOP gets mad about any more because little boy who cried wolf. But none of what you actually wrote disputed that. It was all just you haranguing on a tangent which you've now extended into a 2nd post and will probably do again in reply to this post.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Thursday September 24 2015, @05:58PM
So, because the GOP is mad about the email server situation, in which she either intentionally or moronically tried to keep work data out of the hands of her Employer, I should just ignore it. Again, that isn't logical. Why don't you explain how it is logical. I imagine there are a lot of Republicans who are anti drunk driving. Should I be for drunk driving because of that fact?
A president should be trustworthy and intentional corruption or moronic decisions both undermine a person's trustworthiness.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 24 2015, @08:50PM
Or you could, you know, wait for the facts to come to light and judge the situation based on those instead of jumping at every shadow Faux News tells you to jump at.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Thursday September 24 2015, @11:45PM
You missed the part where I said I was a liberal I guess.
We know she kept a private server. I ask: Why? The only reason I can envision that would be worth the hassle of people finding out, would be that it is a coverup tool. Bullshit about two phones? Seriously, if she is being honest about that, it shows she's unfit to live in modern society, and certainly fails at surrounding herself with people who understand technology. If she can't comprehend and isn't smart enough to get people working for her who can, then she is too stupid to be president. I don't think that's the case -- I think she knew exactly why she wanted a private server. Either way, stupid or slimy, she's unfit for office.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by snick on Thursday September 24 2015, @01:02PM
So, if she had done a secure wipe, That would be seen as a smoking gun; making it clear that she was hiding something.
The fact that she did a simple delete on the other hand, is a smoking gun, and makes it clear that she is technically incompetent.
If you are determined to hate on her, I guess today, (being a day ending in "-day") will give you an excuse.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 24 2015, @01:40PM
She should have hired the IRS to manage her email server hard drives.
(Score: 2) by SubiculumHammer on Thursday September 24 2015, @02:09PM
Ah. I thought you were going to say that the simply deleted files are cover for the few securely deleted files...
(Score: 2) by snick on Thursday September 24 2015, @02:13PM
... the fact that the simply deleted files have completely overwritten all trace of the securely deleted files is clearly PROOF that she engaged in this practice.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Thursday September 24 2015, @03:21PM
I hate her for being a warmongering neocon wallstreet whore. Anything that damages her fills me with glee.
(Score: 2) by tathra on Thursday September 24 2015, @08:53PM
i feel the same way, but its not only meaningless and but far worse for us if constitution-shredding precedents are set in the process of smearing or destroying her. "its ok to ignore her rights, the constitution, and the law because she's evil"? thats the exact mindset every DEA and police officer have. how's that working out for us?
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Thursday September 24 2015, @09:36PM
HRC willingly turned over her server -- there's no violation here. Secondly, she never had a privacy interest in her employer's emails -- those aren't hers. If she asserts such a privacy interest because she has in effect stolen them from SOS office and squirreled them away, then she should come right out and make that assertion. However, there is not really an issue here because she voluntarily turned over the server.
Besides all that, HRC would be terrible for the Constitution -- just look at Libya and the way the Obama administration destroyed the War Powers Act. Hillary played her part in that. I can't recall if she was directly involved in the misdirection about the movie as cause for embassy attack -- but she was part of the admin that did (very cynical attempt at harnessing bigotry against muslims BTW). She was all on board for Iraq, voted for the NSA bullshit essentially, wall street shill. Seriously, if you care about the constitution, you'd do everything in your power to see her lose. But even then, she willingly turned over the server, so no issue.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by tathra on Thursday September 24 2015, @11:38PM
the ends do not justify the means. i care enough about the constitution that i'll do everything in my power to keep it from being further eroded and shredded, even if that means a few bad guys slip through the cracks due to technicalities. the constitution is meaningless if you think shredding it and throwing it away is a valid method of "protecting" it; i mean, sure, once everyone's constitutional rights are "temporarily" suspended they can't be undermined anymore, but at the same time you've ensured the rights have ceased to exist.
(Score: 2) by penguinoid on Thursday September 24 2015, @05:02PM
Or, Hillary did a secure wipe, and the NSA handed over their copy, but Hillary can't admit she intentionally violated the law and the NSA can't admit it was spying on her. So therefore, the files were "recovered from the server". Or from backup tapes, but that's boring.
RIP Slashdot. Killed by greedy bastards.
(Score: 5, Informative) by canopic jug on Thursday September 24 2015, @02:05PM
And just to make sure the Chinese, Russians and everyone else could read her mails at will, she hosted using M$ products.
But while this is being pursued against Clinton, there are also some people from the latest Bush administration that remain unprosecuted for a larger scale, more systematic destruction of official communications. Many in the latest Bush administration conducted official government business over private email accounts set up on a server through the Republican National Committee and subsequently destroyed these records.
Basically every administration since the government started using e-mail has been trying to find ways to destroy these electronic records. The Clinton administration, for example, wanted to print out the e-mails and destroy the electronic copies. It's just that subsequent administrations have gotten more cavalier in regards to the law and their responsibilities to the people that (nominally) elected them.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Thursday September 24 2015, @02:44PM
I hate Bush somewhat less than I hate the Clintons - but yes, you are right. Burn 'em all, let God sort them out. The ruling class are all like hemorrhoids.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 5, Funny) by Kromagv0 on Thursday September 24 2015, @03:08PM
Burn 'em all, let God sort them out.
Why do you hate god?
T-Shirts and bumper stickers [zazzle.com] to offend someone
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday September 24 2015, @03:41PM
He asked for the job. Or demanded it. What else does he have to do, anyway?
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 2) by penguinoid on Thursday September 24 2015, @05:05PM
God probably has a really good spam filter.
RIP Slashdot. Killed by greedy bastards.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Thursday September 24 2015, @04:07PM
See, I hate George W Bush more: The Clintons are scumbags, but Bush did a *lot* more damage than either Clinton did, measured both in lives (dropping the ball on counterterrorism that allowed 9/11 to happen, Iraq and Afghanistan War casualties, the utterly inept response to Hurricane Katrina), and dollars (biggest budget deficits in the history of the US, ignoring all the bad behavior that led directly to the 2008 crash). Plus the crimes aren't even on the same scale: Bill Clinton lied about sex, Hillary Clinton lied about some emails, George W Bush admitted to activities that the US considered crimes against humanity in 1945 and is bound by treaty to prosecute (and the fact that we didn't is a major strike against Obama in my book).
It would be sort of like looking at a convicted mass murderer and a convicted thief and thinking the thief was a more horrible person.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Thursday September 24 2015, @04:45PM
I'll only argue one of your charges. Katrina. Bush did - ohhh - just about what he should have done. For a day or five, he kept his face shut, and stayed out of the way. Finally, when the country was just eaten up with suspension, he contacted the incompetent, insufferable liberal idiots who ran the state and the city affected. Either or both of those nincompoops could have appealed to the federal government for relief within minutes or hours of the hurricane making landfall. And, that was their JOB. Local authority shoudl cope with minor emergencies, state authority should deal with greater emergencies, and the feds should be called in to help with major disasters. That is the way things work.
As witnessed time and time again, in so many settings, unless help is desparately needed, the locals actually resent curious onlookers. That ranges from dimwitted passersby, to the media, to higher levels of government. When a city is actively dealing with an emergency, they don't really want the governor looking over their shoulders, and second guessing them. Ditto at the next higher level.
It was five days before Bush fired off his missives, demanding to know what was going on, as I recall. All in all, I judge that to be a little slow, but not criminally. The criminals were in Louisiana, hunkered down, waiting for God only knows what, to stupid to pick up a phone, or a radio, to call in the help they so desparately needed.
I followed the Colorado National Guard into New Orleans, on about day 19 or so. They could have, and would have, been there two weeks earlier, if only the idiot bitch had asked them to come. People all over the country were standing by, just waiting to help - not just the various National Guard, but the Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard - the resources were available. Just a simple "help me" would have sufficed.
As already stated, I have no love for Boy George - but that one particular charge is mislaid at his feet.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 24 2015, @05:44PM
Heckofajob Brownie!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Thursday September 24 2015, @06:42PM
See, I lay that charge at Bush's feet for one specific reason: He thought it was appropriate to place somebody with absolutely no experience in emergency management whatsoever in charge of FEMA. Picking subordinates is one of the key jobs of a president, and he decided that that pick was an OK one to spend on somebody who had effectively bought his position for campaign donations as opposed to, say, ambassador to a friendly country that we're rarely negotiating with.
Obama, for all his many faults, didn't do that, which is a big part of why Hurricane Sandy wasn't anywhere near the same level of disaster that Katrina was.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Thursday September 24 2015, @06:16PM
Let us not forget that Bill Clinton is largely responsible for the massive prison industrial complex we now enjoy, where we have more people in prison on an absolute basis than any other nation on the planet. In the race to the bottom that is the Bushes and Clintons -- it's really hard to know who is scraping the gutter harder, but it's easy to know that neither is a rational choice.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 24 2015, @10:29PM
> And just to make sure the Chinese, Russians and everyone else could read her mails at will, she hosted using M$ products.
I'm sure that flame plays well with the stereotypical soybean here, but come on... As we learned during the IRS email fiasco, the US government uses MS products for all of their shit. I'm sure the official state department email system is also msexchange,
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2015, @04:32AM
You are correct. I work for DoD and we do, in fact, use M$ exchange for email. Make of that what you will.
(Score: 2) by Covalent on Thursday September 24 2015, @03:36PM
I'm gonna put my tinfoil hat on for a minute, and pose a conspiracy theory:
1. You want to show that there's a right-wing conspiracy to discredit you. You do this because your husband was hounded by them for nearly a decade.
2. You know FOR SURE that you are going to be running for president in the next election cycle.
Is it possible that, given these two points, Hillary PURPOSELY set up a personal email server, then PURPOSELY used it to send completely innocuous emails so she could demonstrate that the GOP would go to any lengths to discredit a (female) liberal! SLANDEROUS!
It's not out of the question. She's a smart politician...
You can't rationally argue somebody out of a position they didn't rationally get into.
(Score: 3, Funny) by snick on Thursday September 24 2015, @03:54PM
If the recovered contents of the server proves her innocence, THAT PROVES HER GUILT!!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 24 2015, @03:55PM
> Could this be artificially generated?
No. The essence of conspiracy theories is back-fitting as if what happened was exactly what was planned.
If she had that kind of control over events she would've beat Obama 8 years ago. She's also be God.
Also this scandal hasn't done one good thing for her - the party nomination was hers to lose and this scandal is so bad that the kingmakers behind the scenes are now queuing Biden up as an alternate for the slot of "establishment candidate."
So yeah, major conspiracy illogic at work there.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday September 24 2015, @04:35PM
If Hillary is doing this on purpose, then she really is an idiot, because all this thing is doing is making it more likely that she'll lose in the primary to either Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden (if he runs). Also, and you would think she would have figured this out by now, most people don't really sympathize with somebody with $100 million in the bank whose sole job right now is zooming around the country on a private jet and giving speeches.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 3, Informative) by ledow on Thursday September 24 2015, @03:37PM
"Doing a multi-pass overwrite with random data isn't exactly esoteric knowledge -- that's pretty basic stuff. "
And pointless.
Nobody has ever been able to demonstrate recovery of data via magnetic history. Plus, the chances of something going wrong are far too high.
Encrypt the disk - as required in many countries by law for such high-level usage - and then overwrite the key if you must. At least then any reallocated sectors are useless and you don't have to worry about how long it takes, etc.
But your "pretty basic stuff" is inaccurate and unnecessary and not comprehensive enough.
(Score: 2) by snick on Thursday September 24 2015, @04:07PM
I always wondered about that. The amount of effort needed to retrieve a single overwritten bit, combined with the level of uncertainty of the results for each recovered bit would seem to make successfully recovering useful chunks of data ... unlikely.
(Score: 2) by ledow on Thursday September 24 2015, @07:11PM
There was, for several decades I believe, a $1m prize for anyone that could do it. Not one data recovery company etc. was ever able to claim it.
Magnetic history is a nonsense - why would a magnetic pole somehow "revert" to a previous polarisation after being forced to change.
Even if you assume that, en masse, the magnetic poles change, and you somehow read the outliers that are somehow physically "missed" in subsequent passes, the margin of error basically brings it into random noise.
Nobody's ever done it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2015, @11:10AM
Sorry if I'm off-topic; I also wonder about this.
Does anyone know if there's a possibility to statistically demonstrate that a known file was previously written on a disk? Off the top of my head, I vaguely remember reading it was possible to guess the previous state of a bit with an accuracy of a little more than 50%. It seems to me that it could be enough to calculate a match with a high probability over a large number of bits, like matching the fingerprints of a ghost file.
Disclaimer: I'm a non-expert, this could be total bs
-Paranoid AC
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 24 2015, @04:15PM
The assumption is that the server used a spinning platter hard drive and not an SSD. Over-writing a SSD doesn't work very well. As the Parent said, encrypt it all and then remove/wipe the key. On BOTH types of drives.
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Thursday September 24 2015, @08:25PM
1) The headline says the FBI recovered emails. But neither TFS nor TFA have information on what has been found. There is no news here.
2) Hillary apologists. Please, there are enough reasons which have nothing to do with email that you shouldn't want her anywhere near the Whitehouse.
HRC voted for the patriot act
voted for the Iraq war
advocated censoring video games
advocated arming Syrian rebels (ie. Al Qaeda)
tried to ban flag burning
supported bombing Libya
wants Snowden prosecuted under the Espionage Act
Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Qatar all donated to the Clinton Foundation and got State Department OK to buy American-made weapons
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 24 2015, @10:23PM
Thank you for your commercial. Aren't you compelled by law to state "Paid for by the Campaign for ..." at the bottom?
Well, he is accused of stealing classified data (a whole shit ton of it - 99.9% of which has NOTHING to do with the altruistic bullshit he spouts as his reason), admits that he stole classified data, accused of illegally giving it away, and admits to illegally giving it away. I would be pissed at any politician who wouldn't want to prosecute him. If you want some compromise, give him 99 years minus 1, the minus 1 being for the fraction of the percent of info he took that had to do with what he says he did it for. What kind of Stockholm Syndrome crap you got going on? Is Klaus Fuchs your hero too?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by shortscreen on Thursday September 24 2015, @11:32PM
I couldn't make out that last word. Did you have someones's cock in your mouth?
I haven't been nuked by the Russians or Chinese. Have you? MAD seems to be working fine so far.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 24 2015, @11:51PM
That's OK... President Trump will fix everything.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Thursday September 24 2015, @11:52PM
Jeez -- how much have you earned for your astroturf work for the Hillary campaign today?
Everything GP pointed out was fact. Your screed is just misdirection -- do you get paid by the word or the post?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2015, @12:25AM
That will find nothing in the end, but will have wasted tons of tax dollars. The bill for it should be paid by the RNC. Either way, half true advertising will be put to the airwaves by the latest Koch funded group, that will be about as truthful as Carly Fiorina's alleged dying baby video.
(Score: 3, Informative) by steveha on Friday September 25 2015, @01:03AM
Hillary Clinton, instead of using the secure server set up for her to use, took premeditated steps to use a server under her control.
It seems obvious to me that the real reason she did this was so she could control access to the emails; one never knows when a Freedom of Information Act will let someone look at the email records, so this way she could have a veto over FOIA requests against her email. For example, the emails she turned over had a two-month gap [thedailybeast.com] with no email discussion of Benghazi. Either she had really excellent discipline about never discussing Benghazi in email (and I don't know how she knew to do that ahead of time), or else she never turned over the Benghazi-related emails. (I guess now we will find out which.)
However, the above paragraph is speculation; I don't know why she did it. So, let's discuss what we can discuss without considering intent.
Once she made the decision to use her own server, she was absolutely obligated to make sure that no classified information ended up on it. We already know she failed to do this. Even in a small sample of emails taken from what she released, multiple classified items were discovered, including at least two that were the highest level "Top Secret". Her defense was that the information wasn't marked as classified until later, but this is provably not true for some of the items. In particular, she personally sent multiple emails containing classified information; it was her duty to avoid sending classified information via non-secure channels.
Because of the known, proven failures to keep classified items out of the insecure server, the FBI now has the task of figuring out all the information that was on the server, so that the government can assess just what secrets were leaked. (Everyone is assuming that all the contents of the server are known to foreign intelligence services, because she was using a Microsoft server. Even the Microsoft servers run by the experts in the US government have been 0wned from time to time, and there is no reason to think that Hillary and her IT staff did better than the IT experts in the US government.)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1251552653 [democraticunderground.com]
Also, we have evidence that suggests that Hillary had a system set up, where the "ops" group in the State Department would read classified email on the classified system, and then send Hillary Clinton a summary via her insecure personal server. This is a huge, shocking breach if true. The FBI isn't going to let go of this; it is not going to go away.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/state-department-releases-7000-pages-of-hillary-clintons-emails/ [cbsnews.com]
This article explains the importance of the situation. Unless all the quotes are fabricated and the facts are wrong, this shows that Hillary Clinton has seriously messed up and is in serious trouble. Key quote: "The FBI will get someone to talk, we always do."
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/09/02/will-hillary-clinton-s-emails-burn-the-white-house.html [thedailybeast.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2015, @01:39AM
(Everyone is assuming that all the contents of the server are known to foreign intelligence services, because she was using a Microsoft server. Even the Microsoft servers run by the experts in the US government have been 0wned from time to time, and there is no reason to think that Hillary and her IT staff did better than the IT experts in the US government.)
Even if the server was running Linux or OpenBSD, I would assume the server was compromised. The experts she hired would not have been on the same level as those in the government and probably didn't watch it 24/7 and read all the logs, etc. Plus, there is a good chance, although I've not seen a definitive answer either way, that it was on a VPS, which opens a whole different can of worms.
(Score: 2) by fnj on Friday September 25 2015, @05:46AM
BWAHAHAHA! You say that as if it puts her at a disadvantage.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2015, @07:09AM
NO. The office server was NOT designed for classified info, and there's no evidence so far it had better security. (There seems to be a separate system for classified info, but they don't give out that detail for obvious reasons.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2015, @11:27PM
The office server was NOT designed for classified info
Right, the server for classified info is on the network for classified info and should be air-gapped from the actual Internet. It seems that this was too inconvenient for Hillary Clinton so she just did what she wanted to do.
(There seems to be a separate system for classified info, but they don't give out that detail for obvious reasons.)
It isn't a secret that classified info lives in a special classified network and special classified servers.
(Score: 1) by dboz87 on Monday September 28 2015, @07:36PM
The only thing I learned from this entire post is that AC's (except _gewg_) should just be skipped over on these political threads. If you can't take the heat of having your position follow you into the future, you probably shouldn't be posting it. Makes me wonder if they even believe what they are posting.
p.s. I did consider posting this as AC just for the irony.