Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Emails Show NSA Rejected Hillary Clinton's Request For Secure Smartphone (cbsnews.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the another-day-another-email dept.

An anonymous reader writes from an article on CBSNews: Newly released emails show a 2009 request to issue a secure government smartphone to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was denied by the National Security Agency. Clinton's desire for a secure "BlackBerry-like" device, like the one provided to President Barack Obama, is recounted in a series of February 2009 exchanges between high-level officials at the State Department and NSA. Clinton was sworn in as secretary the prior month, and had become "hooked" on reading and answering emails on a BlackBerry she used during the 2008 presidential race. "We began examining options for (Secretary Clinton) with respect to secure 'BlackBerry-like' communications," wrote Donald R. Reid, the department's assistant director for security infrastructure. "The current state of the art is not too user friendly, has no infrastructure, and is very expensive." Reid wrote that each time they asked the NSA what solution they had worked up to provide a mobile device to Obama, "we were politely told to shut up and color."

4 of 229 comments (clear)

  1. Totally justified by 31415926535897 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Ah yes, when you can't get your own way and get what you want, that totally makes it okay to break the law.

    That's why a police officer who can't get his confession can keep bashing the suspect's head in.

    That's why politicians can sell votes.

    Following the law is for chumps who have no leadership potential.

  2. Quite the opposite by Albinoman · · Score: 3, Informative

    It seems more like this would indicate that she knew full well she was dealing with sensitive information that she knew had to pass through a secured device. So, ignoring the law, she sent that sensitive information through a server that she knew she shouldn't. We know she knew she shouldn't because she told her own staff they couldn't do the same.

  3. Clippy, Jr. by PopeRatzo · · Score: 3, Informative

    The best part of this story is that the device the NSA wanted to give Hillary uses Windows CE.

    I am not shitting you.

    http://arstechnica.com/informa...

    Despite $18 million in development contracts for each of the vendors selected to build the competing SME PED phones (or perhaps because of it), the resulting devices were far from user-friendly. The phones—General Dynamics' Sectéra Edge and L3 Communications' Guardian—were not technically "smart phones," but instead were handheld personal digital assistants with phone capability, derived from late 1990s and early 2000s technology that had been hardened for security purposes—specifically, Windows CE technology.

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
  4. Re: This negates the entire email scandal by tranquilidad · · Score: 3, Informative

    The other Secretaries of State didn't need to release emails because the State Department already had them.

    She was trying to escape FOIA requests and got caught with other crap as well. She was also skirting federal records keeping laws.

    What other Secretary of State kept their own personal email server and then, only after being ordered to do so, decided which emails were actually government records that she should then return to the agency for which she was employed.