Clinton's First Email Server Was a Power Mac Tower (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader shares with us an excerpt from a report via Ars Technica: As she was being confirmed as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton contacted Colin Powell to ask him about his use of a Blackberry while in the same role. According to a Federal Bureau of Investigations memorandum published today (PDF), Powell warned Clinton that if it became public that she was using a Blackberry to "do business," her e-mails would be treated as "official" record and be subject to the law. "Be very careful," Powell said according to the FBI. "I got around it all by not saying much and not using systems that captured the data." Perhaps Clinton's troubles began when she switched from a Blackberry-hosted e-mail account to an account on her Clintonemail.com domain -- a domain hosted on an Apple Power Mac "G4 or G5" tower running in the Clintons' Chappaqua, New York residence. The switch to the Power Mac as a server occurred the same month she exchanged messages with Powell. The Power Mac, originally purchased in 2007 by former President Clinton's aide Justin Cooper, had acted as the server for presidentclinton.com and wjcoffice.com. Cooper managed most of the technology support for Bill Clinton and took charge of setting up Hillary Clinton's new personal mail system on the Power Mac, which sat alongside a firewall and network switching hardware in the basement of the Clintons' home. But the Power Mac was having difficulty handling the additional load created by Blackberry usage from Secretary Clinton and her staff, so a decision was made quickly to upgrade the server hardware. Secretary Clinton's deputy chief of staff at the State Department, Huma Abedin, connected Cooper with Brian Pagliano, who had worked in IT for the secretary's 2008 presidential campaign. Cooper inquired with Pagliano about getting some of the campaign's computer hardware as a replacement for the Power Mac, and Pagliano was in the process of selling the equipment off.

Comments

Re: Clinton should be in jail!!!

[chill]

She didn't tell any lies about the server. She didn't know details any more than a major corporation CEO knows what actual physical server their mail runs on.

She has enough plausible deniability and can answer with enough vagueness to not be chargeable.

"That is what the people who run the thing told me."

In short, she had no real first-hand knowledge of the server setup other than it was in her basement and handled her e-mail. The rest is typical VIP know nothing blather.

Re: It was unequivocally a criminal offense

[dgatwood]

If he were running for Congress, you'd have a point, but this is the POTUS job we're talking about. It has little to do with political science and everything to do with serving as an executive in charge of a colossal staff, coupled with being the head of the military and schmoozing politicians. Fortunately, there are solid people at the top of the military, so the POTUS can get good advice and doesn't need to be a military strategist (most aren't). So that leaves running the executive branch and schmoozing with Congress.

An ideal candidate for office would be a smart, savvy businessperson who could find ways to set executive policies in ways that cut wasteful spending and make government more effective. So if Trump were actually a great businessperson instead of a mediocre one, he'd be a good candidate. Sadly, this is not the case.

Of course, Clinton has even less experience in that area, but more experience schmoozing politicians. Clinton is marginally better, but I'd still elect the aforementioned ham sandwich over either of them any day of the week and twice on Sunday.