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FBI Launches Internal Investigation Into Its Own Twitter Account (thinkprogress.org)
An anonymous reader shares a report on ThinkProgress: The FBI has launched an internal investigation into one of its own Twitter accounts. The account at issue, @FBIRecordsVault, had been dormant for more than a year. Then on October 30 at 4 a.m., the account released a flood of documents, including one describing Donald Trump's father Fred Trump as a "philanthropist." But it wasn't until two days later, when the account tweeted documents regarding President Clinton's controversial pardon of Marc Rich that the account began to attract significant attention. The account has not been active since that tweet. ThinkProgress has learned that the FBI's Inspection Division will undertake an investigation of the account. Candice Will, Assistant Director for the FBI's Office of Professional Responsibility, said she was referring the matter to the FBI's Inspection Division for an "investigation." Upon completion of the investigation, the Office of Professional Responsibility will be referred back to the Office of Professional Responsibility for "adjudication."
Sure...I trust the FBI to tell the truth about their own wrongdoings. (Oh wait...maybe not.)
Is that what you call it, "controversial"? I'd sure hope that pardoning a convicted criminal at the last possible moment in exchange for a couple of million in "donations" is more than just "controversial". What does Bubba need to do in order for people to finally admit he has no moral compass? Publicly behead someone?
Perhaps its time to investigate:
1. Electronic voting, all those open Wifi connections, and crap Windows 95 based terminals with exposed USB ports. Do you really want Putin to choose the next president?
2. Encryption, NSA allowed zero day exploits to go unpatched, and there has been an undermining of encryption. This has made USA less secure and it needs to be fixed. Quit talking shit about Syrian terrorists blowing up babies and start considering all those REAL political, business and industrial secrets that have been exposed to nasty foreign powers and their puppet agents.
3. Baltic states in particular have online voting and a large Russian population among which agents could be hidden. That's very very foolish. They need to look at the soldiers Russian planted in Ukraine to shit stir and realize their online voting is a liability, not an embrace of modern technology. It would be trivial to rig an election in Latvia the way its rigged in Russia.
from releasing real documents about the Clintons' criminal activities!
no send them down to Spooky Mulder office.
I swear there's been a secret coup and The Onion has taken over the world.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Yes, the computer script controlling the account is clearly partisan.
I thought they already explained this: the Twitter account automatically tweets when a certain number of FOIA requests have been reached for a set of documents. I'm guessing that a bunch of FOIA requests from early in the election season finally went through, so you're getting tweets just now that are all related to Clinton. Nothing "partisan" or "evil" about it: just a script reading a bunch of finished FOIA requests that were probably started a year ago during the leadup to the Democratic primaries.
"blatantly partisan manner"
It's only allowed to be blatantly partisan if you're Comey?
Bumbling, uncooridnated, impulsive, and just plain stupid. All the qualities of Fife but without the charm.
After that, it's up for review by the Department of Redundancy Department.
The whole point of distribution of power is to not have an office responsible for adjudicating itself.
#jamescomey: I want to be the most powerful person in DC to wear a dress.
#inspectorclouseau: You fooel! She wears a paintsuit.
FBI launches investigation into FBI investigation-launches. Investigators are investigating where to investigate investigators for the investigation. They're thinking Buffalo.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Looks like the FBI has disclosed that not only was Clinton's email server almost certainly hacked, but the hacking got so blatant that even Clinton's own part-time staff who did the incompetent setup of a Microsoft Exchange server were able to figure out that something was going on and shut it down temporarily while she was still using it.
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/g...
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
I thought they already explained this: the Twitter account automatically tweets when a certain number of FOIA requests have been reached for a set of documents. I'm guessing that a bunch of FOIA requests from early in the election season finally went through, so you're getting tweets just now that are all related to Clinton.
Who is the "they" that explained it this way? It's trivially easy to disprove. Just look at the Fred Trump document. it appears to be a 1991 release of data in response to a 1966 FOIA request, containing information covering the years 1962-1988. The only thing new is "adding" the document to this WWW-based "vault." I'm sure similar metadata could be retrieved form the Clinton documents. This is just a blatant Hatch Act violation.
In a better article I read the other day, it was explained that this account is supposed to tweet things automatically in response to requests for records, but it had not been working for about a year due to some sort of system malfunction. This issue was cleared up with a recent software upgrade, so the tweets began appearing again.
So maybe the Twitter account bot is not partisan. What about the processing of the FOIA requests? There is a possibility that the FOIA process has been used for partisan purposes.
In fact, the simple fact that the Twitter process is being investigated while the FOIA process is not suggests very strongly that there is partisan shenanigans going on in the FBI.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
The software was set to not spit out requests for some records and others that where to blacked out just crashed the system.
Reading my own comment, I realized that these releases could still be blamed on ignorance. If an FBI archivist was trying to make his or her own personal voting decision, pulling up the FOIA records from whichever hard-to-access database they live in, and then (in ignorance of the fact that a script would post the info to Twitter) copying them over to this easy-to-access web archive, there might be an excuse. I guess.
Are we really at the point where trying to expose criminals is itself a crime? What the fuck is going on?
or, early when the system was broken and people were looking into his father trying to find dirt this got queued up but never sent until the update fixed it?
funny how so many people want to use hanlons razor in regard to hillary but not the fbi. double standards much?
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
well the fact that the FBI didnt recommend charges to begin with show a clear partisain BS slant at the DOJ
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
"The department also has a policy of not taking unnecessary action close in time to Election Day that might influence an electionâ(TM)s outcome. These rules have been followed during Republican and Democratic administrations."
So I guess it was "necessary" for the FBI to leak, four days before the election that George (H. W.) Bush was himself in-the-know on Iran-Contra?
Clinton's campaign made great hay with this particular October Surprise. That was the election where Clinton displaced Bush, denying him a second term and giving us the FIRST Clinton Presidency.
Ross Perot pulled down more than three times the difference between Clinton and Bush. Clinton was 7% short of a popular-vote majority.
Any bets on whether at least a third of Perot's votes, or at least enough of those (plus conservative voters who just didn't vote for president) to flip a few states and their electoral votes, were people who would have voted for Bush but were disgusted by this and voting for Perot as a protest?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
WaPo is owned by Bezos, you won't find anything whatsoever that could jeopardize HRC's presidential run there.
But on the substance of your accusation, Barack Obama is campaigning for Hillary on taxpayer dime. Is that not a violation of the Hatch Act? If not, explain.
You mean like the POTUS who's currently campaigning for Clinton on taxpayer dime and time?
If you're trying to rig an election at the voting booth, you're doing it wrong.
(As Black Box voting points out) rigging it at the central server is more effective. But rigging the voting machines mean that it's harder to determine (in jurisdictions where this test is possible) by comparing the counts posted at the precincts to the totals posted centrally.
Of course attack-in-depth gives a cheating organization more opportunities to make an election come out "correctly". For instance: Motor-Voter (mail-in registration), plus no-excuse-required absentee mail-in voting, plus inadequate or nonexistent checks for eligibility (or existence) of the purported voter, makes it trivial to generate as many extra votes as you want. (I recall the discovery that more than three thousand "voters" were voting from one address in Berkeley. ("We're just serving as a mail drop for homeless people." Really? Thousands of them?)
There are lots of other ways to do this, too. Especially if you can get your organization's members who have achieved positions as judges to block any checking of of voter eligibility as "discriminatory voter intimidation".
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Who the f--- asked for FOIA documents on whether Trump's dad was a "philanthropist"? I'm sorry, but this explanation makes virtually no sense - and presumably doesn't to do the FBI either otherwise they wouldn't be investigating it.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Behind all the fake tinsel we now find the real tinsel.
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
In 1966 a FOIA request was approved for releasing documents that would not exist in full until 1988. Are you sure about that? FOIA requests are only for existing, not future documents.
1966 was the passing year of FOIA. The requested date was probably not set, so it defaulted to the earliest date.
And then noticed what was happening, so stopped putting them on the web archive and said nothing hoping that it goes away.
Kinda does explain the insta-stop
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
"one describing Donald Trump's father Fred Trump as a "philanthropist."
Wow. Nobody mentioned that his granddad, after having fled the military service, opened a whorehouse in Klondike and meemaw was the Madam?
At least that's documented by German newspapers.
> you should look into John Podesta's BFF — "investigating" Hillary Clinton?
Yeah, the guy that Trey Gowdy (who spent the last year presiding over the 9th hyperbolic benghazi 'investigation') just said "is not a decision maker, he is a messenger." Conspiracy!
> who tipped her campaign before,
Who 'tipped' her campaign to a publicly announced subcommittee hearing. Conspiracy!
Jesus Hussein Christ! You gullible idiots keep finding conspiracy theory after conspiracy based on nothing more than your ignorance of the full story. How many times do you have to be utterly wrong before you start looking in the mirror and asking "what the fuck is wrong with me?"
First clue should have been that your sources are two of the most notorious conspiracy mills in operation: zerohedge and thegatewaypundid (aka the stupidest man on the internet).
Why would a bot be tweeting that Trump Sr is a nice guy?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
This year, the truth is partisan.
Ahh yes, ThinkProgress.org...that bastion of non-partisan journalism. I'm surprised they didn't blame Scott Walker for the tweets.
Because it's not like those over at justice would have been screaming at the FBI to shut down the Twitter account or anything. Oh wait, that's probably what actually happened.
Don't forget Trump University, his whole birther movement, the Trump foundation self-dealing and his multiple failed businesses where he deducted the loss of other people's money. Then there's all the wild conspiracy theories he kept putting out, like about Ted Cruz's father.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
You can't submit a FOIA request in advance of the records being created, and a 1966 FOIA request can't be responsible for records spanning 1962-1988.
I'm certain there's a typo in there, just not sure which date you "fat-fingered".
Ken
Wait, when you say "deleted" what you really mean is "stored on mis-filed backup tapes" - right?
And when you say "not made public" you mean because they weren't asked to be released to the public, right? They were handed over to the requesting legal bodies, no crimes were found, and the issue dropped...
Wikipedia is such a lousy source, why not turn to CNN?
BTW, The "Bush Secret Server" was a public email server, did not carry classified information, and was used in an effort to COMPLY with federal regulations (The Hatch Act), not to subvert the FOIA act...
Ken
Do we know that? Colin Powell said he deleted all of his thousands of emails, with none recoverable. How do we know what's on something that no longer exists?
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Does the phrase "October Surprise" mean anything to you?
For that matter, the FBI policy is not to comment upon investigations in progress unless compelled to by Congress...even court orders are often stonewalled...and sometimes Congress is lied to.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
No, at the time (2003) the Bush administration claimed they were 'deleted' and didn't have any backups, it took until 2009 and the Obama white house administration to 'find' them:
"Like Clinton, the Bush White House used a private email server—its was owned by the Republican National Committee. And the Bush administration failed to store its emails, as required by law, and then refused to comply with a congressional subpoena seeking some of those emails."
"researchers found a suspicious pattern in the White House email system blackouts, including periods when there were no emails available from the office of Vice President Dick Cheney."
"In 2003, a whistleblower told the National Security Archive [a private watchdog group] that the George W. Bush White House was no longer saving its emails. The Archive...refiled their original lawsuit. The plaintiffs soon discovered that Bush aides had simply shut down the Clinton automatic email archive, and they identified the start date of the lost emails as January 1, 2003."
"In court in May 2008, administration lawyers contended that the White House had lost three months’ worth of email backups from the initial days of the Iraq War. Bush aides thus evaded a court-ordered deadline to describe the contents of digital backup believed to contain emails deleted in 2003 between March—when the U.S. invaded Iraq—and September....Eventually, the Bush White House admitted it had lost 22 million emails, not 5 million. Then, in December 2009—well into Barack Obama’s administration—the White House said it found 22 million emails, dated between 2003 and 2005, that it claimed had been mislabeled."
Same as for Clinton except for the Bush administration there was:
"clearer evidence here of deliberate stonewalling and lawbreaking than anything that even the fever swamps suggest about Hillary Clinton's emails"
"So why is it that Clinton's emails have gotten coverage of such titanic proportions? Partly because Republicans have pushed the story hard. Partly because the rolling disclosure of Clinton's emails have rekindled interest on a regular basis. And partly because it fits into the well-known narrative of Hillary Clinton as evasive and duplicitous. In the LA Times today, Mark Barabak describes this syndrome perfectly: In the end, there's very little to gripe about in either of these recent Clinton stories. She made a dumb mistake using a private server and a single email account while she was Secretary of State, but in the end there's little evidence of any actual wrongdoing. Likewise, she was dumb to withhold news of her pneumonia. But obviously there's no wrongdoing here at all, just a misplaced sense of privacy that simply doesn't exist for presidential candidates"
http://www.motherjones.com/kev...
"Why has Clinton's email server gotten so much attention? She's running for president."
Yes, the attention is partly because she's running for president.
"lock her up alongside bush as far as I'm concerned"
The point was she hasn't done anything that warrants accusations or criminal charges.
"Drain the swamp"
Trump does what he feels will make him richer. One of the main differences between him and other politicians is that he's willing to lie much more to get what he wants for himself, and he wants a lot, and the more he takes for himself the less others have, and those others who end up with less aren't going to be the rich.
https://www.fbi.gov/news/press...
Considering that James Comey himself detailed exactly what crimes were committed, it is pretty amazing that you could still hold that opinion.
She leaked classified information
She encouraged others to remove classification markings
She failed to report classified information leakage
She broke the Official Records Act that supports FOIA
Yeah, she didn't do anything wrong. Keep telling yourself it is all some kind of smear campaign.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Very likely the request was something along the lines of:
All records relating to Fred Trump and Donald Trump held by the FBI.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
From your Comey link:
"Our investigation looked at whether there is evidence classified information was improperly stored or transmitted on that personal system, in violation of a federal statute making it a felony to mishandle classified information either intentionally or in a grossly negligent way, or a second statute making it a misdemeanor to knowingly remove classified information from appropriate systems or storage facilities."
and his answer as to whether crimes where committed or not:
"we believe our investigation has been sufficient to give us reasonable confidence there was no intentional misconduct in connection with that sorting effort."
"we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information"
"we cannot find a case that would support bringing criminal charges on these facts. All the cases prosecuted involved some combination of: clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information; or vast quantities of materials exposed in such a way as to support an inference of intentional misconduct; or indications of disloyalty to the United States; or efforts to obstruct justice. We do not see those things here."
"we are expressing to Justice our view that no charges are appropriate in this case."
From the group of 30,000 e-mails returned to the State Department, 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. Separate from those, about 2,000 additional e-mails were “up-classified” to make them Confidential; the information in those had not been classified at the time the e-mails were sent.
So, was classified information improperly stored? Yes.
The laws around this do not require intent, so what does the intent matter in this case? It was gross negligence. As a classification authority, Clinton was required to be able to identify classified information when it is not marked, yet she wasn't even able to identify marked classified information.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?