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Snowden: Clinton's Private Email Server Is a 'Problem'
An anonymous reader points out comments from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden in a new interview with Al Jazeera about Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server while she was the U.S. Secretary of State. Snowden said, "Anyone who has the clearances that the Secretary of State has or the director of any top level agency has knows how classified information should be handled. When the unclassified systems of the United States government — which has a full time information security staff — regularly get hacked, the idea that someone keeping a private server ... is completely ridiculous." While Snowden didn't feel he had enough information to say Clinton's actions were a threat to national security, he did say that less prominent government employees would have probably been prosecuted for doing the same thing. For her part, Clinton said she used the private server out of convenience: "I was not thinking a lot when I got in. There was so much work to be done. We had so many problems around the world. I didn't really stop and think what kind of email system will there be."
The information that Mrs. Clinton handled was not classified . Some of it became classified long after she handled it. No crime existed at all nor does any of the investigative staff claim that any crime was committed. The nature of military intelligence is such that a person may never have a clue as to the secrecy of a sentence or paragraph. For example the famous incident in which General Patton supposedly slapped a soldier with battle fatigue never happened. The story was a plant intended to misdirect the German forces as to the whereabouts of General Patton which enabled him to mount a surprise attack. His true location would have been a huge secret at the time yet normal people would think nothing of remarking about where they saw the general. Intelligence not only involves secrecy but also involves deliberate leaking of misleading information. The point being that Mrs. Clinton would have no way in the world to know what materials might be considered sensitive at a later date.
Strangely this was not a problem for the hard Radical Right when Karl Rove created the same setup for the Bush Administration (probably a violation of the Federal Records Act for a President and his White House advisors) and then ordered the backup tapes destroyed when it was discovered (definitely a violation of multiple federal laws and regulations). IOKIYAR.
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