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Judge Orders State Dept, FBI To Expand Clinton Email Server Probe
An anonymous reader writes: In a hearing over Freedom of Information Act requests to the State Department, U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan said that former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton didn't comply with government policies. He ordered the State Department to reach out to the FBI to see if any relevant emails exist on Hillary Clinton's email server. Judge Sullivan was surprised that the State Department and FBI were not already communicating on the issue following the FBI's seizure of Clinton's email server and three thumb drives of emails. More than 300 emails are being examined for containing classified information, and dozens of the emails were "born classified" based on content. Some of those emails were forwarded outside the government. There are also clues emerging about how some of the classified information made its way onto Clinton's server. The email controversy is beginning to show up on the campaign trail, an unwelcome development for Secretary Clinton. Reporter Bob Woodward, who helped bring down President Nixon, said the scandal reminds him of the Nixon tapes. It is interesting to note that the post-Watergate reforms have helped move the investigation forward.
Even if your a loyal Democrat, this is not good. Keeping highly sensitive documents on personal servers when your a top government official is just wrong. No matter if there is a smoking gun or not. Just the fact this goes against all protocol setup and defined to protect information is very troubling. It shows Mrs. Clinton totally disregarded protocol simply for her own benefit and possibly for a convenient way of controlling history and her legacy in case she messed up.
This goes far beyond a Richard Nixon moment and I cannot believe how many people still thinks she is the best the Democrat's have for President??
In my mind, she is just what America doesn't need in the White house. Another politician who makes up her own rules and disobey's government policy. Really?
We want more of that in government? Hey, if your a Democrat do what you will next year at election time. But if Hillary Clinton is a choice. Do the right thing and don't vote that disgraceful piece of work into office. She has no place in public office of any kind.
As an older IT guy/programmer I can tell you most non geeks over 60 have no idea about IT stuff.
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That is irrelevant. The disgusting sack of shite had paid advisors and consultants to take care of this stuff. There are procedures in place. Obviously, Clinton decided that she was going to do things HER WAY - and in the process broke a metric shit-ton of laws.
Her understanding of technology is totally irrelevant to the investigation.
That said - I strongly suspect that she understands a lot more tech than you are giving her credit for. Who set up that server? Who administered the server? How did she access the server? Who decided what to turn over to the state department? Who made the decision that she would have her own private server, under her own control?
The unsophisticated old coots down at the community center certainly don't have their own servers.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Let me point out something very, very important - Thinking the other side is worse justifies nothing.
The way that you get everyone to follow the same laws is to enforce them fairly and predictably, regardless of who violates them. M. K. Gandhi is widely credited with saying (something like) "An eye for an eye will leave everyone blind", which exemplifies why the enforcement of this kind of thing should be as impartial as practical: otherwise it looks like partisan hits, which is corrosive to both compliance with the law and the larger political environment.
Hillary Clinton should know what a "server wipe" is because she was in charge of the people who were managing this, she was the head of a Federal Department, and she wants to be President. Your parents might be random schmoes with no reason to know simple computer jargon, but high-level executives in the modern world do not have that excuse.
Even the average person who reads the news knows by now that TS/SCI materials can't legitimately end up in unclassified email systems. The very best she could argue is "I had no idea what it was and deleted it immediately" at which rate she's still guilty of not handing over the machine(s) to the federal government to verify that the data is actually gone.
She needs to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law because the alternative is that we live in a country where contractors and lower level civil servants go to Leavenworth while the elite gets to make cutesy jokes about destruction of evidence in a national security scandal.
Reuters is engaged in a witch hunt that much is clear. The only thing Clinton is guilty of is bad email practice. There has been no smoking gun; nothing that come close to treason or giving away state secrets. Jesus Christ, check every member of Congress and see how they handle email, are they all in compliance.
Where those her terrorists? If not, find a better strawman to burn.
Look, I'm not a US citizen, but in the current circus that is the US elections, I tend to support the democrats. This is a breach of security unacceptable for a low level officer; in a secretary of state it would be tantamount to treason. The bottom line is that she broke the protocols in place and did something illegal with a huge potential to cause harm to the country.
That simple fact would disqualify her from running for presidency and most likely would put her behind bars. That a lot of people still supports her blows my mind away; it means that in today US politics, party lines trump human decency and respect for the law.
The emails were subpoenaed by Congress for an investigation. She deleted them 14 months AFTER the subpoena, which she then claimed she never got. The Congressman who subpoenaed them came on news the next day showing what he sent her requesting the emails. She deleted evidence during an investigation (obstruction of justice).
Since then they have gotten more evidence of why she deleted them. This is all based on her original obstruction of justice and now they want to find out what she is hiding by not turning them over. She has lied at every step for not giving them over.
1. I wanted to use 1 device. She used 3
2. They were private emails to husband. Bill Clinton doesn't use email
3. No classified documents. There are classified documents
4. No documents were classified at time. They included signal intelligence which is classified at all times
5. Server protected by secret service at her house. It was in a Denver apartment that didn't have an alarm.
6. There are no backups. There is a backup server in New Jersey that is still not in government control.
That's actually a necessity, not a practicality. Laws have to be enforced equally and predictably for the system to function.
By avoiding government systems Clinton potentially put lives, diplomatic relations, and US secrets at risk.
The emails in question were believed to not contain classified info
That's simply not true (and I'm surprised you could believe Clinton's utterly false claims). As per State department rules, anything related to foreign countries is classified by default, without any need for such marking.
Catalin Braescu
Ofaly.com
No we don't know if she violated any laws yet, although it looks more and more like she probably did. We do know she at least violated some government practice documents, she was not obligated to comply with but should have.
The issue isn't if she broke the law or not. There are bunch of people that would enjoy seeing Clinton in the slam but it won't affect things much beyond that. What matters is she should be losing this election. She was the Secretary of State for the United States of America. She either could have and should have recognized that she was dealing with sensitive information classified or not and cared enough about operation security to do something about it.
So she knew or should have known the risks of E-mail its not 1998 anymore, everyone has heard the post card analogy with inter-domain mail. If she did not know she should have people around her to tell her that. If she did not listen or only select a bunch of yes men and women that is also a problem.
Even if all the operational security issues and risks of e-mail were a surprise to her, you'd think her behavior would have very suddenly improved when Bradly Manning and a few other events took place, again nope, so we are left with willful ignorance, or gross negligence. Crime or not, prosecutable or not, there isn't a good spin you can put on it. Even Her own justifications about carry multiple devices etc have been contradicted, she has been evasive about it and her story keeps changing so she is only compounding it with lies and bad ones. She isn't a good candidate to lead the country pure and simple.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
What she probably said was "I want a server that isn't subject to legally mandated retention or public records requests". The IT person then responded with "Sure ma'am" like you suggest.
The fact that doing this also makes security hard is just a side effect. The security problem didn't happen because she told someone to make it secure without supervising them closely, the security problem happened because she decided she'd rather not be subject to the rules, and not being subject to the rules automatically comes with bad security unless you're really careful.
There are procedures in place.
Yup, from Rice and Powell the procedures were to wipe the server and delete all records of the emails so that they wouldn't be included in any records retention or available for inspection.
If Clinton had followed the standing procedures, none of this would have happened. ;)
-Rick
PS: Don't take this as defense of Hillary. It's offense at the cherry picked nature of this witch hunt.
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Every time someone accuses Hillary of doing something nefarious with these emails I picture explaining to my mother that she will need to use two different email accounts for different purposes and the resulting blank looks that would ensue.
Your mother was the Secretary of State?
Your mother is running for president?
Your mother has a staff that could have set up the phone for her to receive emails from two addresses?
I really doubt your mom has the resources and training that Hillary has. The only thing your statement demonstrates is that a lot of people will not realize this is a big deal because they have no idea how things work.
President Walker will gladly exercise all the new executive powers that Barack Obama has snatched for the Presidency. Too bad you were silent then.
Of course, that is now blowing up in her face...but seriously, there aren't many other valid reasons to just NOT use the govt supplied and managed email servers.
Setting up your own email server isn't rocket science....but why bother when you have all the security questions taken off your shoulders and allowing the govt security types to set up and run your email for you? Unless you fear you will have something to hide....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Actually, some documents are classified upon generation / receipt. The term I have heard is "born classified", meaning they are classifed from the beginning. The "Marked Classified" is a lame attempt at obfuscation of the seriousness of the problem here. Hilary knows she's politically dead. The real question is, is she bound for Prison or will Obama pardon her.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Ding ding ding. We have a winner!
The entire purpose was to dodge Freedom of Information Act requests and to prevent her communications from entering into the National Archives. A nice side-effect was that her political enemies would have a tougher time snooping on her.
She believed she could skirt the law (as so many in DC do). Regardless of what happens with her over the issue, it looks like there will be severe penalties for future Secretaries of State that attempt this.