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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.

27 of 223 comments (clear)

  1. Wait... they can't tell the difference? by dgatwood · · Score: 2

    I could see being confused about the difference between a G3 and G4 tower if you're colorblind, but a G5? I mean, it was either grey plastic or it looked like a cheese grater....

    --

    Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

  2. Re:Clinton should be in jail!!! by chill · · Score: 4, Informative

    Because at the time she did this is was against State Department internal regulations, but not a criminal offense.

    You only put people in jail for criminal offenses that have jail as punishment codified in the law, and even then jail is usually only one of many options available as punishment.

    --
    Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
  3. But the Power Mac was having difficulty handling.. by ls671 · · Score: 2

    "But the Power Mac was having difficulty handling the additional load created by Blackberry usage from Secretary Clinton and her staff..."

    Seriously?

    --
    Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
  4. Re:But the Power Mac was having difficulty handlin by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Bill was also using it to watch...videos.

  5. Re: Clinton should be in jail!!! by x0ra · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That's not the point, any conviction would prevent her accession to the US Throne. US AG Loretta Lynch (and upper in the hierarchy) can't allow that, who knows how much "corruption" stories she could remember while in jail...

  6. Re: Clinton should be in jail!!! by chill · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

    --
    Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
  7. Re: Used hardware? by x0ra · · Score: 2

    ... and the last time was the day right before Bill ran into Loretta Lynch to talk about their grand-children.

  8. Re:But the Power Mac was having difficulty handlin by h33t+l4x0r · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Difficulty handling the relentless brute force attempts more likely.

  9. Re: Clinton should be in jail!!! by wasted · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    The scary part is that she didn't seem to understand the differences between handling classified data and unclassified data. Almost anyone else in government who mishandled classified data similarly would be a guest of a federal correctional facility for many years.

  10. Finally, News For Nerds by Areyoukiddingme · · Score: 2

    Finally, news nerds actually care about. Now we can have the argument over whether Hillary Clinton should be barred from office for life for using a Mac or instantly sainted for using a Mac.

    Here, I'll start the ball rolling. Ban her from office! Unclean!

    1. Re:Finally, News For Nerds by PopeRatzo · · Score: 2

      Now we can have the argument over whether Hillary Clinton should be barred from office for life for using a Mac or instantly sainted for using a Mac.

      She's history's greatest monster, but she hates systemd, so I'm really conflicted.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
  11. Gross Negligence and 18 USC 793 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "Gross negligence" is defined as "such a gross want of care...as to justify the presumption of willfulness "
    --Black's Law Dictionary 1185 (4th ed.1968), the definitive dictionary for the legal profession;

    "Whoever, being entrusted with...any document...relating to the national defense...through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody...shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both."
    --18 U.S.C. 793(f);

    "Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information...110 e-mails in 52 e-mail chains have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received. Eight of those chains contained information that was Top Secret at the time they were sent; 36 chains contained Secret information at the time; and eight contained Confidential information, which is the lowest level of classification...To be clear , this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences. "
    --James Comey ( transcript source: FBI National Press Office, "Statement by FBI Director James B. Comey on the Investigation of Secretary Hillary Clinton’s Use of a Personal E-Mail System",July 5, 2016 )

    The FBI just released its notes from the meeting with Hillary Clinton regarding the email server.

    Hillary Clinton used her mobile phone on a balcony outside of secured areas to check her email:


    Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton knew that she was not allowed to use mobile devices in her office — so she would walk onto the 8th floor balcony of the State Department building to check her email messages, new FBI documents reveal.

    Clinton’s office was located in a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF), where mobile devices were not allowed. “According to [Huma] Abedin, Clinton primarily used her personal BlackBerry or personal iPad for checking emails, and she left the SCIF to do so, often visiting State’s eighth floor balcony,” the FBI investigation noted.
    [. . . ]
    Presumably, anyone watching the movements of the Secretary of State would have known that when she appeared on the balcony, she was about to use her mobile devices, either to access her email or perhaps to make telephone calls, as soon as she appeared on the balcony.
    (source: "FBI: Hillary Clinton Checked Email on Public State Dept. Balcony", by Joel B Pollack, September 2, 2016 at http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/09/02/fbi-hillary-clinton-sent-received-emails-state-dept-balcony/)

    Hillary claimed to the FBI she didn't receive training on handling classified information, yet her signature shows otherwise; how is this not a direct lie to the FBI?

    Hillary Clinton told FBI questioners numerous times that she did not receive the various guidance documents and training sessions from State Department officials that employees get to ensure they protect and preserve their official emails and computer documents.
    [...]
    She said she was not trained on handling classified information.

    That claim is a puzzle because her signature is attached to a 2009 State Department document testifying that she was trained on handling classified information.

    That contradiction was highlighted by

  12. Re: Clinton should be in jail!!! by chill · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The whole "I don't remember getting a briefing" is such colossal bullshit. Those briefings are required by law *annually*, not just once. And she would have gotten a separate briefing when she got her clearance, and any time it was upgraded.

    She understands the difference. She thinks she is above all that. Rules, like taxes, are for little people.

    --
    Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
  13. Re:Clinton should be in jail!!! by quantaman · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Because at the time she did this is was against State Department internal regulations, but not a criminal offense.

    You only put people in jail for criminal offenses that have jail as punishment codified in the law, and even then jail is usually only one of many options available as punishment.

    Unless you really don't like somebody.

    Then even the smallest transgression is apparently worthy of jail time.

    --
    I stole this Sig
  14. Re: Clinton should be in jail!!! by quantaman · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    The scary part is that she didn't seem to understand the differences between handling classified data and unclassified data.

    The difference is that at a high level the state department is dealing with a crapload of data and it's not obvious whether it's classified or not.

    Did that information come from source X? Well then it's classified. But from Y, well then it's not classified. Only parts A-C are classified, but D is fair game. Someone is calling Z classified but it's in a newspaper article, etc, etc.

    Maybe you could make a system that makes it easy but that system apparently doesn't exist. And you could treat everything as classified but then nothing would ever get done.

    Almost anyone else in government who mishandled classified data similarly would be a guest of a federal correctional facility for many years.

    That would be a more convincing argument if someone ever had been in jail for something similar.

    --
    I stole this Sig
  15. Re:But the Power Mac was having difficulty handlin by ls671 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    hmmm.... I have been running my own properly configured home based mail server for years and the load is negligible....

    --
    Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
  16. Re:It was unequivocally a criminal offense by king+neckbeard · · Score: 2

    If you want to prevent Donald Trump, get Clinton to back down. You can nominate a ham sandwich and that will be enough to beat Trump.

    --
    This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
  17. Re: Clinton should be in jail!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    for a long term of incarceration it would have be very intentional mishandling. people mishandle classified data all the time, punishments range from having to spend an extra couple of hours in a training course to loss of clearance or in extreme cases loss of job, it is extremely rare for prosecution.

  18. Re:It was unequivocally a criminal offense by hsthompson69 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Intent is not necessary to violate 18 U.S. Code 793

    https://www.law.cornell.edu/us...

    (f) Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense, (1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer—
    Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.

    tl;dr - she didn't have to know it was wrong, she simply had to be "extremely careless" (aka, "grossly negligent")

  19. The real fear. by hsthompson69 · · Score: 2

    The real fear about Trump isn't that he would *be* president, but that he would abuse the *power* of the presidency.

    The real fear is that now that we've allowed unchecked expansion of the powers of the presidency for decades, we're worried about it being abused.

    The real answer is to use the system of checks and balances to limit the power of the presidency.

    Having the obnoxious, hated, vilified Trump in office would in fact, be the greatest incentive for the judiciary and the legislative branches of the government to *do their jobs*. Heck, maybe even the press would finally hold the president accountable for corruption, law breaking, and bad faith!

    If you want this country to get better, the best way is to have a president hated so much that we begin to finally curtail executive abuse of power.

    Trump 2016

  20. Re:Server software? by guruevi · · Score: 5, Informative

    OS X has had a Server "version" since the era described (10.3 or 10.4). So most likely cyrus/postfix.

    --
    Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
  21. Re: Clinton should be in jail!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    At this point, what does it matter?

    I mean, the whole point of the Benghazi damage control lies was that she did it because the attack HAPPENED THE WEEK BEFORE THE ELECTION and some short term lies were necessary to prevent a severe October Surprise event. Yet nobody, even the opposition, stresses this time sensitive narrative in their analysis of the matter. Nobody discusses that the lies threw the re-election of the president.

  22. Re: It was unequivocally a criminal offense by dgatwood · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

    --

    Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

  23. Re:But the Power Mac was having difficulty handlin by Uberbah · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Difficulty handling the relentless brute force attempts more likely.

    That's what I find to be the biggest farce - the Big Ebil Russians hacked the DNC email server in a matter of weeks to swing the election to Trump, yet they left Hillary's private email server alone for YEARS. Otherwise, it would mean Hillary was an incompetent fool, and we can't have that...

  24. Re: Clinton should be in jail!!! by quantaman · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Again, lots of hypothetical examples without any actual incidents.

    Your ignorance

    A sailor going and photographing classified sections of a submarine over a period of months. Basically looking like he was engaged in active espionage.

    So no, not a comparable incident.

    subject

    Petraeus deliberately shared highly classified materials with his mistress and biographer.

    Not a remotely comparable incident.

    not our problem.

    Oooh, "10 people were actually punished for similar or lesser offenses than what Mrs. Clinton got away with yesterday".

    This should be good for a laugh.

    1. "pleaded guilty in 2005 to illegally sneaking classified documents from the National Archives by stuffing papers in his suit. He later destroyed some of them in his office and lied about it.”

    Nope, he was deliberately removed classified documents and they proved he lied about it.

    2. "Peter Van Buren, a foreign service officer for Hillary’s State Department, was fired and his security clearance revoked for quoting a Wikileaks document AFTER publishing a book critical of Clinton. In fact, the Washington Post reported that one of his firing infractions was “showing ‘bad judgement’ by criticizing Clinton and then-Rep. Michele Bachmann on his blog.”

    Sounds more like someone being punished for writing a book critical of their employer.

    3. Was a CIA director storing classified info at home. This is the most comparable though the CIA director was dealing with more sensitive information, should have been more aware than Hillary, and it sounds like he knew he had mishandled classified intel.

    So a little worse than Hillary though roughly comparable. He also got pardoned by Bill Clinton before he even finished the plea deal. So that actually kinda sets a no jail-time incident.

    4. “A Navy intelligence specialist admitted Thursday that he smuggled classified documents out of Fort Bragg in folders and his pants pockets, then sold them for $11,500 to a man he believed was a Chinese agent.”

    Wow, #4 and they're already claiming a guy trying to sell classified intelligence to the Chinese was a lesser offence than Hillary?

    I seriously checked all of the examples and even read the links on a few that looked promising.

    This one was actually hilarious:

    Lab Tech Steals Data from Nuclear Facility. Jessica Lynn Quintana, a former worker at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, pleaded guilty in federal court to “knowingly removing classified information from the national security research laboratory, after she took home sensitive documents and data from the lab last year.”

    Talk about misrepresenting the facts. She was charged because she was running a meth lab!!

    Still I learned something, don't believe a damn thing you read on "The Political Insider".

    --
    I stole this Sig
  25. Employees != Elected/Appointed Officials by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    "there is constant compliance crap that *all employees* have to do" - FTFY

    The rules for government employees and contractors are different from the rules for elected officials and appointees. If an employee sexually harasses someone, there are consequences, including being put into a new job, training, and the threat of firing. If an elected official or appointee sexually harasses someone, they can't be fired because they weren't actually hired. http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/local/story/2012/dec/02/sexual-harassment-complaints-against/94163/ - if an elected official harasses someone, there's no real process beyond the victim getting a new job that isn't in proximity to the harasser, getting tired of the process not working and going public, and the harasser hopefully eventually resigning or losing an election.

    Employees get their clearance when they're hired, and if they don't get the clearance, they're fired because they can't do the job. Elected and appointed officials get their clearance as part of the job, regardless of whether the investigating agencies would normally have given them a clearance or not. I have no idea whether they have the same rules as we do or not, but you can't generalize from an experience as an employee and assume the same rules apply to elected or appointed officials.

  26. Except... by kenh · · Score: 2

    "The truth is, she was using (the private email server) for a year before I sent her a memo telling her what I did," Powell said.

    Source: CNN

    Then again, who are you going to believe, Powell or Clinton?

    --
    Ken