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

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."

Comments

This negates the entire email scandal

[Anonymous Coward]

If you ask me. She was going out of her way to do the right thing and getting cockblocked by our friends at NSA. I have to wonder in light of these revelations, whether perhaps Obama's phone is not susceptible to NSA tampering/eavesdropping after all, and they would absolutely not give such a thing to someone else.

Re: This negates the entire email scandal

[blindseer]

"It really sounds like she knew she might need a secure channel of communication, was denied it, and now is being raked over the coals for not having one. In short, the Republicans are playing dirty pool again, and using the media to make it look like Hillary is attempting to flaunt national security, when the NSA deemed information she received wouldn't be important enough to set up a secure channel."

She was told she could use a secure laptop or desktop. She was not without secure e-mail, she was without secure e-mail on a device she preferred.

I do not believe for even a nanosecond that she was denied a secure means to communicate with POTUS and ambassadors. It has been said many times and many ways that she was provided access to secure e-mail. When she could not get the e-mails she wanted on her insecure device she ordered her staff to copy sensitive data from the secure systems, strip it of the marks identifying it as secure, and send it to her on the insecure system. She knowingly violated the laws on protecting state secrets for her own convenience.

You call this "dirty pool" by the Republicans. Here's something that bothers me, we have a public official that broke the law, where are the Democrats in enforcing these laws? Where is the press on this? I see the press covering up for her more than anything.

Do you believe that if Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio had been accused of a similar violation of the law that they'd get the same treatment? Of course not, Democrats AND Republicans would be demanding they leave the race for POTUS. The press would be talking about this daily. I don't know if the press respects or fears the Clintons but they've been largely silent on the gross violations of the laws that the Clintons have committed. This CBS article is just further evidence of the mainstream press being little more than the PR department for the Democratic Party.

Re: This negates the entire email scandal

[Raenex]

Where is the press on this? I see the press covering up for her more than anything.

Actually, I'm surprised they covered it as much as they did. She was raked over the coals for quite a while, especially when she tried to blow it off and the press was having none of it. The story has been on the back-burner since then, but if the FBI investigation results in criminal proceedings it's going to explode.

Re: What, Didn't get Obama involved?

[Type44Q]

For some reason, it seems to require an abnormally-high IQ to see the obviousness of this (either that or nearly everyone else is even dumber than previously suspected... and that's saying something).

Funny how this turned out?

[cashman73]

Isn't it a little weird how they demanded a secure smartphone for President Obama when he took office, and he got it. And then Apple made one even more secure that even the government can't hack, and they raise hell? Kind of a double standard there, eh?

Two of Three

[ZipK]

So the only two options were (1) get a secure phone from the NSA, (2) cowboy? There was no (3) don't read government mail on a mobile device?

It only takes one

[Anonymous Coward]

classified document to jail the non-elite.

I recall an incident upon a ship I served upon where the officer in charge of the radio room went to jail because a single TS document went into the trash instead of the burn bag.

One. Single. Page.

Jail.

I seriously tire of the elites getting a free pass on the laws everyone else is forced to abide by.

Liar

[s.petry]

Please take your shilling elsewhere, or even better, don't. I have way too much experience with security at the National level for this trash to fly, and several others on this site have similar backgrounds.

Details: It is against the law to store classified documents on non-classified servers. Every politician working with classified data swears an oath to follow the law or be in violation of US Laws up to the crime of Treason. A red rubber stamp is not required for a message to be considered classified, a person entrusted with an office knows that questionable data is treated as classified until the appropriate intelligence agency determines otherwise and provides instruction. An elected official claiming "i did not know" is bullshit, because if they did not know the classification they must treat the document as the highest level of classification available to them.

Those rules were in place _before_ email was being used by political offices and have never been revoked, removed, or changed. Simply put, Hillary is a Liar just like you are a Liar.

References: NISP, DSS, and NISPOM, for starters. All standards are available from http://www.dss.mil/ for free. Further reading and standards can be found at NSA.GOV, US DOJ, FBI, and CIA. Also see DISA, and JF/AN which contains information for elected officials, NATO members, foreign nationals, etc...