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."

Comments

total bullshit?

[mveloso]

Clinton: "I was so busy dealing with the world's problems that instead of using my work email that I get for free I got some guy I knew to build a server for me, my associates, and my husband's foundation."

Does anyone actually believe this line of bullshit?

Re:total bullshit?

[ganjadude]

no but this gem, i believe

I was not thinking a lot

Re:total bullshit?

[shrikel]

Apparently 46.1% of Democrats do. Though that's down from as high as 75% in July

Re:total bullshit?

[fustakrakich]

Does anyone actually believe this line of bullshit?

Unfortunately, yes... It should be obvious. Lots of people are going to vote for her regardless... There's not a lot that be done. Maybe, if we can wake up the non-voting block, it might be possible to defeat democrats and republicans. Even together they are a minority block of less than 40%.

Re:total bullshit?

[rmdingler]

no but this gem, i believe

I was not thinking a lot

We hold some truths to be self-evident.

I mean, FFS, the Clintons have been in positions of power for what? 36 years... (since the 1st term began as Governor of Arkansas.)

It's clear she should have an inkling how to act in office, and yet, like so many of the political ilk, she uses her skills for evil instead of good.

Re:total bullshit?

[TWX]

Does anyone actually believe this line of bullshit?

Honestly, if she was using the e-mail address associated with that SMTP server before she become Secretary of State, yes.

Most people don't like to use several e-mail accounts. It's a pain in the butt. If she was used to using that one and used it as she communicated with the officials that became her superiors and subordinates before becoming Secretary of State while planning the transition, then they were used to contacting here there and she was used to contacting them from there.

Should she have switched to a government-provided e-mail account? Probably. I don't say, "absolutely," specifically because of the high profile leaks that we've seen over the last decade, such that the mail might actually have been safer on that server that no one thought to compromise than on a government one.

As an aside, Governor Palin used private e-mail for government functions too, actually registering addresses with public mail servers (yahoo if I remember right) after becoming Governor of Alaska, and specifically citing her newly-found position as the account name. There was no prosecution over that either.

Re:total bullshit?

[rmdingler]

Palin panders to that minority of the right wing that buys the Obama 'birther' and Muslim arguments; apparently the same crowd that initially encouraged Trump.

Hillary cannot hide behind the retarded defense as believably as Sarah.

It's much more likely she saw an advantage to being able to delete her own emails

Re:total bullshit?

[The Grim Reefer]

no but this gem, i believe

I was not thinking a lot

I like this one:

"I didn't really stop and think what kind of email system will there be."

Isn't this why they have a staff to make these decisions and procedures in place as to how the "email system" should be?

Clinton said she used the private server out of convenience

Oh, so we should all be able to make these kinds of decisions for our own convenience. Obviously that's the most important consideration.

Re:total bullshit?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. She thought she wasn't leaving a paper trail which could lalter be used against her if she said or did something she might later regret.

Re:total bullshit?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if you're not willing to prosecute Bush for not thinking, why the zealism to get Hillary prosecuted?..

Re:total bullshit?

[davester666]

I'm sure it was more like "The rules only apply the schlubs, they don't apply to me."

Re:total bullshit?

[roccomaglio]

Way to muddy the waters. Palin used her official state email. She also used a yahoo email. It is illegal to use official email for campaigning tasks. So you have to have both. Someone hacked her yahoo account and release all her emails. She did not get to decide what was released. All of her emails were released she did not get to pick which ones were released. Hillary not only picked the emails that were released she carefully wiped the server with multiple writes to prevent anyone from being able to recover emails. If she had used yahoo the FBI which is investigating her emails activity (classified TS/SCI information) could have received a copy of all her emails.

Re:total bullshit?

[LetterRip]

Leaks or not, the law says she was supposed to use her secure government-provided email for work. She ignored that law.

No it didn't say that till two years after she left office. Also the government email isn't secure and can only be used for non secure communication. Secure communications require usage of an internal distribution server that is secure and is not actually email.

Re:total bullshit?

[ganjadude]

bush isnt in power and isnt seeking power. i hated bush (my post history shows as much) but move on

hillary can do damage still, bush cant

Re:total bullshit?

[Dutch Gun]

but since there was no rule against what she was doing

No, that's the problem. There were not only rules, but there were laws against what she was doing. Had you or I broken those laws, then ignored a federal order to turn over those e-mails and wiped our e-mail server instead, we'd be sitting in an iron cage right now.

Re:total bullshit?

[towermac]

No, I don't remember Palin using her Yahoo account for government business.

I remember that it is a felony to use the government email for campaigning and other non-government uses.
I also remember scores of times in her hacked and published Yahoo mail where she said, "...this is government business, please reply to my .gov account..."

But no, I don't remember her executing gubernatorial duties through her Yahoo account. I'm pretty sure the Democrats would have seized on such a thing, but if you have something they missed, please, share it.

Re:total bullshit?

[LetterRip]

No, that's the problem. There were not only rules, but there were laws against what she was doing. Had you or I broken those laws, then ignored a federal order to turn over those e-mails and wiped our e-mail server instead, we'd be sitting in an iron cage right now.

According to the State Department she violated neither policies nor laws.

The retention laws only required that copies of relevent emails be saved but it didn't specify how - one of the ways that was accepted was printing out the emails, another was to CC a government email address that would retain the email.

There have been new laws, that were enacted two years after she left office that would now require usage of a government email address for correspondence or a copy of the correspondence to be on a government server within 15 days.

Re:total bullshit?

[Culture20]

Hillary not only picked the emails that were released she carefully wiped the server with multiple writes

According to her, she used a cloth.

Re:total bullshit?

[Known Nutter]

Isn't this why they have a staff to make these decisions and procedures in place as to how the "email system" should be?

Yes, there are IT staff responsible for this. So, what role did those folks have in allowing classified e-mail to leave (and re-enter) the network? Or are we supposed to believe that she just appended her signature block to hillary@mysever.com and nobody noticed when Bashar al-Assad asked Clinton for her biscuit recipe? Did Clinton just use an auto-forwarder configured in an Outlook client?

Can someone clue me in on the technical background of this? FFS, I can't send a single e-mail from my corporate network without the legal bullshit automatically appended.

Re:total bullshit?

[ganjadude]

i know right? next you are gonna tell me "but washington was for freedom of speech? we cant stop her!"

bush isnt in office, and isnt running for office. bush can no longer harm us anymore

hillary can

Re:total bullshit?

[Anonymous Coward]

You do know that Hillary Clinton was the first birther, right? Seriously.... look it up.

Re:total bullshit?

[jmac_the_man]

As an aside, Governor Palin used private e-mail for government functions too, actually registering addresses with public mail servers (yahoo if I remember right) after becoming Governor of Alaska, and specifically citing her newly-found position as the account name. There was no prosecution over that either.

There was prosecution over that. The son-of-a-Democrat-state-Congressman who hacked her email was convicted and IIRC, he did jail time. But there was no official business in Palin's emails. Remember, the emails at one point were in the custody of the son of an elected official from the Democratic Party. If there was anything incriminating in that email, you'd think the kid, or his father, or his father's party, would have publicized it better.

Re:total bullshit?

[jmac_the_man]

Also the government email isn't secure and can only be used for non secure communication. Secure communications require usage of an internal distribution server that is secure and is not actually email..

???

Secret email is email. It's on a segregated, airgapped network, but it's still POP3 or IMAP and SMTP. Everyone who works for the government has a regular email address that you can't use for classified communications, and then if you have access to be on a classified network, you have an additional email address on the classified side.

Re:total bullshit?

[Dutch Gun]

According to the State Department, the former head of the State Department violated neither policies nor laws.

Well, case closed then!

Re:total bullshit?

[Anonymous Coward]

Leaks or not, the law says she was supposed to use her secure government-provided email for work. She ignored that law.

No it didn't say that till two years after she left office. Also the government email isn't secure and can only be used for non secure communication.

Nice cherry-pick, but her home email server is not considered secure communications either. I'll address the "two years after she left office" below.

Secure communications require usage of an internal distribution server that is secure and is not actually email.

What in the fuck are you talking about? Secure communications are carried out using the same fucking tools as unclassified communications on networks that appear *nearly* the fucking the same to end-users. In this context, ZOMFG, Hillary is an end-user. One that is a headache for admins, but an end-fucking-user nonetheless.

There is literally nothing Hillary could do better on her home server than she could do on the state department's servers, except violate the Federal Records Act; unless of course your argument is that the functional portion of 44 U.S. Code 3101 (June 30, 1949, ch. 288, title V, 506(a), as added Sept. 5, 1950, ch. 849, 6(d),64 Stat. 58) was not in effect when Hillary left office in Feb 2013 (hint: she was just shy of 3 when the law went into effect). For fuck's sake, the law was modified halfway through her term, by Obama's executive order and she still fucked that up (regardless of your feelings about EOrders and their impact on Federal agencies, agency heads are expected to salute the flagpole or GTFO).

I find it really hard to believe neither of the lawyers in that family could see that was a bad idea. I picture the dumber of the two saying something to the effect of "Um, hon, running an email server out of the house for SECSTATE business is dumber than me sticking a cigar up Monica's hoo-hoo and then cumming on her dress."

Look! I'd really, really like to embrace Hillary as a candidate, but I find her history of sneaky, slimy, dishonesty fairly well established.

I also hate every Republican candidate, for varying reasons. I hope I'm not put into a position of choosing between one of them and her in the ballot booth.

Quit trying to defend her. Stop siding with THEM. I gives a fuck - one side or the other PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF EVERYTHING, FLOAT A CANDIDATE THAT IS SOMETHING OTHER THAN A FUNCTIONAL RETARD SLURPING ON THE GENITALS OF MULTIPLE 501(c)(3) PACs.

Let us all stop being sheep, please.

Re:total bullshit?

[JWW]

Why the hell else is the IT guy who set this all up for her taking the fifth??

If he actually explains to anyone how he set up that private server and then connected it to the state department servers he is going to be going to jail for a looong time.

Re:total bullshit?

[Anonymous Coward]

Torture.

Stupid fuck.

Re:total bullshit?

[CaptQuark]

Most people don't like to use several e-mail accounts. It's a pain in the butt. If she was used to using that one and used it as she communicated with the officials that became her superiors and subordinates before becoming Secretary of State while planning the transition, then they were used to contacting here there and she was used to contacting them from there.

"Pain in the butt" is not a justification of using a personal email account for official government business.

Should she have switched to a government-provided e-mail account? Probably. I don't say, "absolutely," specifically because of the high profile leaks that we've seen over the last decade, such that the mail might actually have been safer on that server that no one thought to compromise than on a government one.

The answer should obviously be "absolutely". The law states all official correspondence must be on a government secured system. This assures all email is kept, archived, and secured. She used a personal email system specifically to get around these safeguards, going so far as to warn her people not to use their government accounts to contact her. She knew exactly what she was doing -- keeping her comments and communications out of the government archived system.

Nixon erased 18 minutes of tape - Hillary erased 50% of her emails. Both were trying to hide things.

--

Re:total bullshit?

[cold fjord]

Yes, let's move on for a war criminal wanted for crimes against humanity and focus on a mail server that was receiving non-classified email as much as a state state.gov address would ....

Neither President Obama nor Bush is "wanted" for any "crimes against humanity" by the ICC, INTERPOL, or any government. The emails that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton turned over from her server have been found to include at least two emails with Top Secret information, and that information was always Top Secret, as well as hundreds more with classified information. The FBI is investigating this matter, has seized the server, and the emails held by her attorney. It seems pretty clear that one or more people were reckless with handling classified information, and may have passed it on to people without security clearances and an official need to know. There is a genuine possibility someone will be prosecuted for this.

Clinton emails contained spy satellite data on North Korean nukes
New Clinton Violations In Use Of Thumb Drives For Emails

Re:total bullshit?

[Rick Zeman]

Nope. Nothing the US did constituted torture under US law at the time.

You also got the use of "stupid" wrong.

And the Holocaust wasn't illegal under German law at the time. When AT&T allowed NSA to tap their lines that was illegal at the time, and Congress then passed an ex-post-facto law exonerating them.

Please explain how both of those fall into your simplistic picture, preferably without your head exploding from the contradictions.

And she wants to be President!

[Anonymous Coward]

She doesn't understand why this is a big deal, and says "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." - really? She's the Secretary of State and doesn't think of security? Why would anyone want to see her as President?

Re:And she wants to be President!

[Anonymous Coward]

We had so many problems around the world. I didn't really stop and think what kind of email system will there be.

And she wants to have her finger on The Button (tm). Doesn't anyone else find this disturbing?

Re:And she wants to be President!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't we do an experiment? Elect Clinton and see how many wars are started. This constant smear campaign story submissions about trivial flaws is tiresome since her rivals are likely an order of magnitude worse.

Considering she instigated the whole Libya civil war, I'd say we can expect to see a lot.

Not to overplay the "ironic" label, but...

[rmdingler]

Since Edward himself proved the secure government data itself was rather not.

Re:Not to overplay the "ironic" label, but...

[towermac]

What is this history of public service? She had a Senate seat that was given to her, simply as preparation to be President. As if she's from New York, or anywhere near it...

Well, she did make a 10,000% profit in commodities in six months, and giant profits on Arkansas land deals while her husband was Governor. I'll grant those feats are pretty impressive. Not as impressive as a 'charity' foundation that rakes in many millions from overseas billionaires while she is simultaneously Secretary of State. What public service, exactly, has that charity funded by the way?

That's what I see in the 'public record' AC. What do you see?

Re:Not to overplay the "ironic" label, but...

[multimediavt]

Uhh, the Bushes ain't from Texas, nor Florida neither, so what's your point? Yje Bushes and Cheney's made ridiculous profit off their war in Iraq while committing war crimes. But please, keep playing your false equivalency games.

Re:Not to overplay the "ironic" label, but...

[towermac]

Bush the Younger lived and worked in Texas as a young man. I believe he is retired there even now.

Hillary, on the other hand, had to quickly buy a house in NY as she got on the ballot. There was some question at the time as to whether she was actually a resident.

But I didn't attempt to draw an equivalence between the two families in the first place.

Re:Other employees did the same thing

[Rob Y.]

How is this any different from Colin Powell's email - whose private server did he use? Is it only different because he's not running for President - and there's no bogus Benghazi commission looking for stuff to embarrass him with. Or is there really something particularly dangerous or sinister here (and I don't mean 'potetntially sinister' - there will always be conspiracy theories around the Clintons).

Anti-Clinton people always talk about Petreus's prosecution for sharing secret info - except that he actually shared it. That's not parallel at all. There's not even any allegation of criminal behavior that I'm aware of.

Lies upon lies

[Tailhook]

"I didn't really stop and think what kind of email system will there be"

Clinton thought hard about the kind of email system there would be. It was the kind under her exclusive control; to be wiped at will. As usual, the Clinton's statements are 100% out of phase with the truth.

Someone should have been perp walked by now.

Gowdy is starting to subpoena people; Pagliano — one of Clinton's henchmen from the State Department — may have to publically take the 5th as soon as next Thursday. Democrats need to get use to the idea of months and years of ugly, damning headlines, just like the 90's. But don't worry; eventually Clinton will get back on the "rich+corporations pay their fair share" message and our hate filled sheeple will put her in office, because that's who we are.

Trying to be dismissive

[93 Escort Wagon]

We had so many problems around the world. I didn't really stop and think what kind of email system will there be.

It's obvious she's trying to imply that there were lots of important issues to deal with, and she didn't want to waste time on trivialities. But she's wrong.

The role of Secretary of State often deals with sensitive information from both our own government, governments of other nations, and opposition groups living under repressive regimes. Safeguarding that information is paramount. Being dismissive regarding the security aspects of an important communications tool that was routinely used for classified comminications is troubling because, no matter which way you try to spin it, she comes off either as ignorant or supremely arrogant (or perhaps both). Yes, there was unrest all over, Hillary - and you don't see how mishandling sensitive information about that unrest was problematic?

I'm not looking forward to this next election. Whether you look to the left or to the right, it's clowns all the way down.

Re:Snowden is the best reason for private email

[Anonymous Coward]

Edward Snowden devastated U.S national security interests by releasing tons of classified emails.

But you know who's emails Snowden didn't release? Hillary's...

I think Hillary's private email server was a truly bad idea even if just politically.

That said she kept her emails safe from Edward Snowden.

You know who else's emails he didn't release? Palin's, Jeb Bush's, Trump's, .... Just because the guy in division X doesn't have access to the resources in division Y, doesn't mean division Y is safe or doing it right.

Oh, Democrats know she's lying too

[Anonymous Coward]

But they have to pretend she wan't because they know they'll end up holding their nose and voting for her anyway.

Because it's their graft, dishonesty and corruption, and Republicans can never be allowed to win, ever, for any reason.

Re:Oh, Democrats know she's lying too

[Anonymous Coward]

you say it as if Republicans aren't exactly the same thing. Do you think a lot of them thought Bush would be a great President?

Re:Oh, Democrats know she's lying too

[jmac_the_man]

here is food for thought: perhaps more conservative organizations were questioned by IRS because proportionally THEY do more bad things?

I think most conservatives would want to fire a police chief who told his deputies to go out and find some N-------- who weren't doing anything and harass them. From what we've seen leak out of Lerner's emails, that's what the IRS was doing.

Re:Total Innocence

[Snotnose]

Doesn't matter. First, she should have known that as SoS classified information would be flowing through that server. Second, she was ordered by a court to turn over all her emails. She stonewalled as long as she could, then printed out some of the email (the ones she deemed 'important'), then wiped the server and claimed there were no backups.

You or I would be sitting in a jail cell awaiting trial for either of these. She's not only running for president, she's got a large majority of idiots willing to vote for her. I don't give a squat about her positions on any issues. She is corrupt, slippery, slimey, and elitist.

I sincerely hope Biden runs. Not because I think he'll win, but hopefully that will be the final straw that brings other, better democrats out of the woodwork to run for president. As things go now it's looking the the repubs are going to win the White House next year.

I'm not buying the "confused grandma" defense

[steveha]

Hillary Clinton is not stupid, and she's a lawyer. Before anyone is given access to classified information, my understanding is that they have to take a class in how to manage classified information and they have to sign an agreement saying they will abide by the rules governing classified information.

Now Hillary Clinton is saying that she doesn't really understand all this confusing stuff. "Wipe the server.. you mean with a cloth?" Oh sure, Mrs. Clinton.

About a week before the news broke about her private server, Hillary Clinton was on a talk show and she said: "So I have an iPad, a mini iPad, an iPhone and a Blackberry." Then she said that the reason she set up a private server was so she could carry a single device. Now she's saying she was so busy saving the world that she didn't have time to think about what kind of server to use... which is why she didn't just use the server provided for her to use, but took steps to set up her own server and get everyone to use it?

I'm not buying it. The obvious reason why someone in her position would set up her own server, under her control, is to make sure that she would have control over which of her emails could be unearthed (e.g. by a Freedom of Information Act request). Notice that when she was finally forced to turn over emails, she picked and chose which emails to turn over, and then wiped the server to make sure nobody could ever get anything else.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3209380/Former-attorney-general-says-classified-email-scandal-disqualifies-Hillary-Clinton-serving-president-s-prosecuted-breaking-federal-law.html

Also, we can't be sure that her private server wasn't compromised. If her admins didn't get every security patch applied fast enough, someone could have 0wned it over the Internet; and if it wasn't guarded 24/7 someone could have gained physical access to the server in the middle of the night. Secretary of State is a high-profile job with access to a whole bunch of secrets; I think China and Russia probably both have copies of all her emails from her time as Secretary of State. (Whereas the USA only has the ones she turned over, printed on paper.)

And we just found out about a really bad smoking gun. Hillary Clinton has claimed that no classified emails were on her server, but we have evidence that she had one or more people systematically copying messages from a secured system and sending them to Hillary's server. Details here. The key quote:

The subject line of the February 10, 2010, e-mail exchange is "Insulza." The exchange is about a speech, apparently by a foreign official. Perhaps the subject line refers to Jose Miguel Insulza, a Chilean politician who has been secretary general of the Organization of American States since 2005. In any event, the U.S. government's internal reporting on the speech has clearly been classified (not surprising in light of what Shannen Coffin and yours truly explained earlier: foreign government information is presumptively classified). This is clearly very irritating to Secretary Clinton, who is anxious to read the speech. In the first e-mail, Clinton curtly instructs Sullivan, "It's a public statement. Just email it." Minutes later, Sullivan responds, "Trust me, I share your exasperation. But until ops converts it to the unclassified email system, there is no physical way for me to email it. I can't even access it."

So some group known as "ops" is going to "convert" a message from the classified message system to "the unclassified email system"? That's go-to-prison stuff right there.

If you are a fan of Hillary Clinton... are you okay with a

Re:I'm not buying the "confused grandma" defense

[Obfuscant]

So some group known as "ops" is going to "convert" a message from the classified message system to "the unclassified email system"? That's go-to-prison stuff right there.

No, sanitizing classified material and releasing unclassified versions is their job. No "go to prison" there.

'Go-to-prison' comes in when someone orders a subordinate to send them a copy classified material over an insecure communications system. It also disproves any "I didn't know" defense.

Re:I'm not buying the "confused grandma" defense

[phantomfive]

If you are a fan of Hillary Clinton

Kind of weird now that you mention it, I don't know anyone who's a Hillary fan anymore. I know plenty of people who were, but aren't anymore. But I don't know anyone who would describe them as a fan.

Re:Left with bad choices

[mister_playboy]

Write in vote for Sanders.

Be fair to clowns

[Bruce66423]

I think associating well organised and genuinely entertaining people with the present shower of politicians is deeply unfair...

Re:Total Innocence

[BoRegardless]

"She is corrupt, slippery, slimey, and elitist." These are the qualities needed to attract Bill.

China

[ebonum]

We constantly blast China for hacking. I tend to think: If the data is worth stealing, US companies/gov/individuals have a duty to lock it up and protect it. I know it is very American to blame all of one's problems on someone else. If you get hacked, it is your own damn fault.
People such as Hillary have a duty to protect sensitive information. If her email was hacked, don't blame the Chinese (Or North Koreans or Russians...). Blame her.

All systems are compromised

[sphealey]

= = = ... 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."= = =

It is becoming increasingly clear that there is no such thing as a secure computer. Even if it is never connected to the Internet, but certainly if it is. Government computer/network, corporate, private, personal; they are all penetrated or will be if someone cares to do so. And someone certainly cares to do so for every high level government official in the US, UK, Russia, China, etc.

sPh

Re:Depends on who is the threat

[dunkindave]

If "security" is just protecting against external threats, and she knew of internal threats, then a private email server makes sense for some types of email.

Yes, but the "internal" threats were these pesky things like the Inspector General, Congressional Oversight, Special Prosecutors, FOIA requests, etc.

Re:And she wants to be President!Bullshit..

[subk]

I think she knew *exactly* what she wanted in an email server. This is classic "double speak"

What other choice is there?

[TiggertheMad]

A lot of people are going to vote for her because she seems to be the only Democrat that is going to have a chance of winning, and sweet Jesus, the candidates that the Republicans are putting up are terrifying. I don't even like her, but I will vote for her just to keep a Republican out of the white house. Some of those people make George Bush Jr. look like a genius.

Sanders is interesting, but I doubt he is going to get national traction. What other realistic choice do you have?

Re:What other choice is there?

[HairyNevus]

I don't even like her, but I will vote for her just to keep a Republican out of the white house.

This is why we need Instant-runoff voting. It's the same for both sides, there's usually a third-party candidate for either side who is more practical politically, but doesn't have enough corporate sponsors to really run in the race--to stand a chance.

Re:What other choice is there?

[FlyHelicopters]

I don't even like her, but I will vote for her just to keep a Republican out of the white house.

The irony is that you're part of the problem. The same people who will vote for any R just to keep a D out of the white house.

Further, your vote might not even count, if you're in one of the majority of states that aren't a contest, which is even more of a crime.

Frankly, our elections are a joke, anyone with any brains can see that. You think we really have a choice?

Re:What other choice is there?

[Kavonte]

We already have something better than plurality voting, but most voters don't bother to utilize it. Instead they sit at home during the primaries and only bother to vote until they have only two choices, if they bother to vote at all.

Since the states have their primaries on different dates, the effect is a sort of run-off voting. The first states vote, and those candidates who do poorly are ignored by voters in other states who vote on later dates, so that they can put their votes where they will make a difference: choosing between the two most popular candidates. Since there are many different dates over which the primaries occur, this is a gradual process, with each election causing a few more of the least-popular candidates to drop out of the race, or at the very least, causing voters who might have voted for them to reconsider since they now realize they have no chance of winning.

Indeed, even without primaries, we still have pre-election polls which are usually clear enough in telling us who the top two contenders are, and we can simply choose between those two candidates. With no "wasted vote" effect, polls can tell us each candidate's true level of support, since no one has any reason to tell a pollster that they will vote for any candidate other than their favorite, even if they will do so in the election after seeing the incredibly poor poll results for their favorite candidate.

I'd love to have condorcet voting if we could make it happen, but I don't believe its absence is the cause of our problems.

Re:Key facts

[Snotnose]

1. She claimed she did not knowingly send or receive classified info through her server. It's quite possible somebody ELSE sent her classified info when they should not have, and didn't label it properly. Whose "fault" that is, well, we will wait and see.

She was Secretary of State. She didn't think classified stuff would be flowing through that server? Uh huh.

2. The "office" server she should have been using was NOT designed for classified material either. (There was a separate system(s) for that.) Thus, her home server being more of a secrecy risk than the regular office server is a questionable claim.

But when her email was subpoenaed it would have been turned over in a timely manner, without her getting to choose which emails got turned over.

3. Messages that were deemed to have classified info were either mostly or entirely re-classified after the fact. The scope of this is still under investigation.

See #1.

4. Using a home server was NOT illegal at the time, as long as a copy of each work message came from/to a gov't server, which would typically be the case. (So far they have not found a non-copied work message that I know of.)

True. This is how we know that when she cherry picked her messages to turn over, she left quite a few out. "Chelsea, meet me at Starbucks at 3" is quite different from "Hil, this dude will give me $500k for a speaking fee if you don't hold fast to calling them a terrorist supporter".

5. She has admitted twice that her "home server" decision was a poor decision.

Mostly because it turns out that wiping the server made things worse, considering there were ways to reconstruct messages that weren't deemed "important" by Hil.

6. Jeb also has "email problems" such that if the two face off in the final election, the email issue is mostly a wash.

The only reason I would ever vote for Hillary is if Jeb were her opponent.

Re:Why Snowden?

[Antique Geekmeister]

Edward Snowden is also a computer professional with direct experience of of federal failure to obey laws in the name of political benefit, and direct experience of how "secure" documents can be duplicated and leaked.

Re:Left with bad choices

[ganjadude]

or rand paul

Re:Total Innocence

[Sarius64]

Because destroying government evidence compelled by Congress is clearly the right of ex-official gleaning millions of dollars in slush money into her charity which took in more than $140 million in grants and pledges in 2013 but spent just $9 million on direct aid. Pretty good gig, huh? http://nypost.com/2015/04/26/c...