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Clinton Regrets, But Defends, Use of Family Email Server
dcblogs writes: Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Tuesday that, in hindsight, her decision to use a private email server to conduct official business was not the best one. But she is defending it and said the system was secure. Clinton, at news conference in New York, said the email server that she used had been set up for former President Bill Clinton. The system had "numerous safeguards" and is on home property protected by the U.S. Secret Service, she said. "There were no security breaches," said Clinton. "I think the use of that server, which started with my husband, proved to be effective and secure," she said. It still remains unclear about just how appropriate Clinton's system was. As a general rule, government IT policies don't give federal employees the option of using their own email accounts to exclusively conduct government business.
The sad irony here is that the Clinton presidency was the first where they had to set up a real email presence, and they hired some really smart people to do it. They did a great job. But that was a long time ago, and things have moved on. So they're getting criticized for using SSL 2.0 for transport security, which is a valid criticism now, but is still better security than most people have. And of course it's not like security on government servers is better. So this is kind of obviously a deliberate attempt to create a fuss over something that really isn't as significant as it's being pumped up to be.
On the plus side, maybe more people will start using strong TLS transport security for their email...
"It still remains unclear about just how appropriate Clinton's system was."
The most ridiculous part of the summary. Except for the whole "convenience" pseudo-argument. At best this excuse suggests that Clinton is willing to prioritize personal convenience over transparency and accountability, which is probably not a great look for someone who is expected to announce a presidential campaign in the near future.
Too much focus on the server. Using a home server or a contract server makes no difference from a legal/ethical standpoint. You don't conduct federal business on a private email account. That seems to clearly have been violated If you do, then that private account should be subject to access from the appropriate authorities.
Secure from the privy eyes of accountability.
I take my children to see Madonna(..), but I never for once ever thought I was in the same business.Chris Rea.
Seems to me the reasons for her decision to use a private server for government business are pretty simple. It means that she (and her staff) get to decide which documents should be forked over in response to FOIA requests.
In a just world this server would now at an independent expert for thorough inspection.
Same thing for congressional oversight. Case in point: Benghazi.
Also, it keeps all of her correspondence out of the official protocols. She wants to delete some stuff? No problem. That would be more complicated if she had used her government-issued means of communication.
I seem to remember from earlier incidents (like the hack of Sarah Palin's personal mail) that this is *not legal*. For good reasons.
Finally, it is basically a given that some of her correspondence contains sensitive, if not outright secret, information. If someone like Thomas Drake gets threatened with ridiculous punishment for having *un*classified information on his home PC, surely this here should land Mrs Clinton in a whole lot of trouble. But, well, who am I kidding, right?
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
It's a losing battle anyways. Clueless sycophants will defend politicians anyways. She's Ms. Clinton after all. Naturally she gets a pass.
Life is not for the lazy.
Clinton printed over 50,000 pages of e-mails, which were then shipped to the State Department. It would have been less work for her to send those e-mails electronically. What was her purpose in doing that extra work?
Printed texts take more time to search, and they do not contain all the internal meta-data. Perhaps too she just wanted to show her middle finger to the people who asked for her e-mails.
This is honorable behavior?
No it isn't sedition. It was a reminder of how the constitution works and that the president despite his insistance otherwise does not have the authority to nullify laws passed by congress which the sanctions are. Congress and even state governments have long reached out to foreign officials and even negotiated trade agreements without administration participation. Look up the sister cities project if you doubt that
And we will hear about the clinton email specifically because congress has requested copies of it for oversight purposes and there appears to be gapps in what was provided.
Tell me how supposedly one of the most important jobs in the country can be run by a person who's communications are separated from her official office?
When in WDC, she can't refer to incoming email from staff who are just around the corner or down the hall? Someone calls from London and says "look at the email I just sent." and Hillary has to say what? Maybe "I'll look at it tomorrow when I get home." What the hell is that for a high level functioning government cabinet position?
So she must have had official emails for HIllary being sent addressed to some lower person in the Secretary's office (probably clippy.)
This sounds to me like the perfect way to raise funds for a personal project from governments around the world, and eventually destroy the hard drive.
Of course we can blame her for this. She's the one that made the decision to use personal email for government and public purposes, hiding her correspondence from government archives, and hidden from freedom of information requests. If not outright illegal, this is morally wrong. When she becomes president will she continue to hide her official correspondence from government archives and the public? Nixon would have loved to have had a system of off-the-record private correspondence instead of those pesky papers that leave trails.
...the IT people that worked with her that never said anything, or raised any kind of fuss over the problem.
That assumes she didn't simply dismiss their concerns with the type of entitled attitude that has come to be a defining mark of both the Left and Right wings of the Demopublican Party.
Go on, citizen, stamp the vote card. R or D, your choice.
She was Secretary of State for years. She resigned the job years ago. If this issue is really that important, why did nobody speak up after her first couple of months? I'm not saying let her off the hook, but the controversy seems timed for political reasons.
She doesn't regret using personal email. She regrets getting CAUGHT using personal email.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
As far as we know, ONLY Hillary Clinton used her family email server. The rest of her staff used government mail servers. Therefore any correspondents between her and her staff or the president is recorded on an official email server anyway.
I'm not saying that I agree with her using her own personal email server, but I also don't think this "controversy" rises to the level of me really giving a rat's ass about. Actually it rises to the level of "She should have known better... but meh".
What does concern me is that the right decided to use this low grade political material so early that it will be forgotten by the time the election season actually hits full stride. So the more important question is what's going on that requires the gullible media's distraction on something as trivial as email usage by a retired secretary of state?
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So the defense now is "Bush did bad things, too?"
"Hey - Nixon engaged in obstruction of justice, too! We have precedent!"
Let's see how that one goes over.
You also realize this was the major factor in law being passed to prevent that. Documentation for the National Archives is law concerning state document retention. While I agree at the time she used the system it may not have been illegal, but a memo released and signed by Obama https://www.whitehouse.gov/the... suggest otherwise, http://www.whitehouse.gov/site...
However we are reminded time and time again no law was broken, what was broken was procedure, if one can not follow a simple procedure set out by their employer their actions are questionable and their motive becomes dubious.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Ok, I'm not big on all the hubub around these emails either -- but we need to be the change we want to see in the world. If Democrats like Hillary want our political discourse to be better then they need to set the standard, not act like children and point the finger back across the aisle. If all we're going to do is wait and see which party will do the right thing first, then they will NEVER do the right thing. We, as a governed populace, should be looking for a government that does the right thing even when it means admitting they had previously done the wrong thing.
I don't have a problem with that.
The American public has been doing that for how long now, and without knowledge it was going on?
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
They're hoping to find a "gotcha" email in her corespondence. Especially one of the ones deleted or not handed over. Then they hope the pressure keeps on and she loses the primary. You forget that primary season is starting soon,and the republicans know they have no good candidates at this time. The Gov. from Wisconsin is their best bet. Dems have Hilary, Elizabeth Warren and people even seem to still like Anthony Weiner.
She has months of gaps in her emails. That's not credible.
There is no way she sent no official emails while head of the state department for months.
As to your ad hominem on Fox news... it doesn't matter who says a thing. If the devil himself stood before you and said 1+1=2... is he lying?
Saying that it is from fox so is wrong is equally stupid. It is ad hominem. Do better.
As to requirements to use the US government servers, yes she is required to use them. She can use private email if she BCCs or CCs all the email to the government account. Otherwise she can't do it.
And even then that is frowned upon.
If on top of that she destroyed government documents then that is a felony.
She has MONTHS of gaps in her emails. Which means she's either filtering mails in sensitive periods of time to carefully redact information she doesn't want to reveal or she actually deleted them.
I suspect it is the first option. The server should have been ceased and gone over by independent computer forensic investigators. Same thing you'd do if you were auditing a corporation that wasn't cooperating with discovery.
She'll almost certainly get away with it. But that is more because she's powerful and has powerful friends rather then because she didn't do anything.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Every blurb I see about this story, she defends her decision to use a private email server on the basis that it was "secure." Regardless of the veracity of those claims, the security of the system is not the point. She conducted official government business on an email server under her control. When subpoenaed, she produced all emails she deemed to be responsive to that request and all other "non-business" emails had been deleted and says, "trust me, this is everything."
Security is obviously a concern, but the reason that these rules regarding emails exist is for oversight. Government email servers aren't under the control of the politicians using them, and that mitigates the risk of spoliation of evidence. With that in mind, defending her decision on the basis of security is non sequitur. The ridiculousness of her defense becomes more apparent through hyperbole: Yes, I ate babies, but safeguards were in place to make sure those babies were free of bloodborne pathogens.