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Computer Specialist Who Deleted Clinton Emails May Have Asked Reddit For Tips (usnews.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from U.S. News and World Report: An army of reddit users believes it has found evidence that former Hillary Clinton computer specialist Paul Combetta solicited free advice regarding Clinton's private email server from users of the popular web forum. A collaborative investigation showed a reddit user with the username stonetear requested help in relation to retaining and purging email messages after 60 days, and requested advice on how to remove a "VERY VIP" individual's email address from archived content. The requests match neatly with publicly known dates related to Clinton's use of a private email server while secretary of state. Stonetear has deleted the posts, but before doing so, the pages were archived by other individuals. "ARCHIVE EVERYTHING YOU CAN!!!!" a person wrote on a popular thread on the Donald Trump-supporting subreddit r/The_Donald, as the entries disappeared. There are several reasons to believe the reddit user is indeed Combetta, who was granted immunity by the Justice Department during its investigation of Clinton's private server after he deleted a large number of emails. The evidence connecting Combetta to the account is circumstantial, but also voluminous. The inactive website combetta.com is registered to the email address stonetear@gmail.com, a search of domain registration information using the service whois.com indicates. An account for a person named Paul Combetta on the web bazaar Etsy also has the username stonetear. And, perhaps most damningly, there are the dates. Stonetear posted to reddit on July 24, 2014: "Hello all- I may be facing a very interesting situation where I need to strip out a VIP's (VERY VIP) email address from a bunch of archived email that I have both in a live Exchange mailbox, as well as a PST file. Basically, they don't want the VIP's email address exposed to anyone, and want to be able to either strip out or replace the email address in the to/from fields in all of the emails we want to send out..." U.S. News and World Reports adds: "On July 23, 2014, the House Select Committee on Benghazi had reached an agreement with the State Department on the production of records, according to an FBI report released earlier this month on the bureau's probe of her email use." Stonetear submitted an additional post to reddit on Dec. 10, 2014 that reads: "Hello- I have a client who wants to push out a 60 day email retention policy for certain users. However, they also want these users to have a 'Save Folder' in their Exchange folder list where the users can drop items that they want to hang onto longer than the 60 day window. All email in any other folder in the mailbox should purge anything older than 60 days (should not apply to calendar or contact items of course). How would I go about this? Some combination of retention and managed folder policy?"
UPDATE 9/19/2016: Slashdot reader NotInHere points out that there is a Slashdot user named "StoneTear" as well.
UPDATE 9/19/2016: Slashdot reader NotInHere points out that there is a Slashdot user named "StoneTear" as well.
Is it possible, somewhere behind the curtain, there's a cabal that's decided the power of the US Presidency must be reduced even if by ridicule?
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Whatever you do, one thing is extremely important. Make sure that you either vote for a Democrat, or a Republican. It's vitally important that you do so. There aren't any other options. If you want proof, just look at any media story. They will helpfully tell you not only that there aren't any other options, but they will even tell you who they predict to win and what people are thinking right now. But even though they might tell you that more than half of voters dislike both candidates, still, the system depends on you voting for one of those two. Smaller parties will not be able to win, there's no reason to even consider casting a vote for any party which does not control the Commission on Presidential Debates. If you voted for another party the entire system, including your personal finances, will probably collapse. Do your patriotic duty and vote for a Democrat or Republican, it doesn't particularly matter which one, and remember, next time we'll probably give you better choices so just suck it up and wait until then.
Don't worry, we'll change, it will be better next time, we promise we won't abuse you again.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Man, if only we had direct knowledge of what was in those emails. Oh well, it was probably nothing, right? They were probably just low on disk space or something. We can take her on her word, right?
Who said you have to take her word for it? The only thing you can do is worry about the facts that you know. You know that someone in her staff deleted emails, that's it. Any thing more is mere speculation and it will forever be mere speculation. In the absence of certainty you are projecting your own suspicions into the void. Our brains don't like voids. Our imaginations take over and we invent scenarios which are often extreme. In this case, you are expecting the worst of Clinton and your imaginary scenario is worse than the reality of Trump. A rational human being would recognize this and check their imagination. But not many people are very rational these days.
But, how can you say that without direct knowledge of what was in the emails?
Facts > speculation