Mike Pence Used His AOL Email For Indiana State Business -- and It Got Hacked (theverge.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Vice President Mike Pence used a personal AOL email account to conduct sensitive state business -- including issues related to homeland security -- as the governor of Indiana, according to a report from The Indianapolis Star. Not only that, but Pence's email account was also compromised last year, the report reveals. Because personal email accounts are not subject to same types of public transparency laws, it's up to the official and his or her transition staff to hand over any sensitive state-related messages for archiving. Emails from a state account are automatically stored on state servers and subject to public records requests. Pence's office claims the contents of his personal AOL account used for state business are in fact in the process of being archived. A larger concern, however, is security. By using a private AOL account to conduct sensitive state matters, Pence could have exposed sensitive state business. In the hacking incident last year, Pence's email account was compromised by a scammer who used it to try and extort money from members of his contact list by claiming Pence and his wife were stranded in the Philippines, The Indianapolis Star reports. This hack didn't appear to have had been designed specifically to breach Pence's office, which made clear that his AOL account could be compromised by relatively benign breaching techniques designed by spammers and low-level hackers. It is not illegal in Indiana to own and use a personal account while in office, nor is it against the law to handle work-related matters from a personal account -- so long as those emails are in some way archived. However, the Star reports that Pence made no efforts to preserve his AOL emails under after he left office and is only just now doing months after public records requests were first made. "Similar to previous governors, during his time as governor of Indiana, Mike Pence maintained a state email account and a personal email account," reads a statement given to the The Indianapolis Star. "As governor, Mr. Pence fully complied with Indiana law regarding email use and retention. Government emails involving his state and personal accounts are being archived by the state consistent with Indiana law, and are being managed according to Indiana's Access to Public Records Act."

Comments

Re:No right left to criticize

[EzInKy]

Hillary is a woman, and women are expected to make mistakes. Pence, on the other hand, is a man so he should own up to it.

Re:Nope, nothing to see here

[meta-monkey]

let 'em fly. douse the R's in the same shit they gave hillary.

DROWN them in it. let them realize that any weaspon you use, the other side will use, when its THEIR turn.

Trump was right in his statement last night about Sessions that the Dems have lost their grip on reality. Pence broke no laws. It's not illegal to use a private email account for Indiana state business. You're fixated on "EMAIL!" when the issue with Hillary wasn't email, but breaking laws about the handling of classified information. Nothing is going to come of this, and you're going to descend further and further into madness.

Re:No, because it FUCKING FAKE NEWS AGAIN

[jittles]

Fake News would imply the content was incorrect, invented or misleading.

This is not fake news, it happened. There is proof it happened. Just like most of Donald's "fake news" it's not that it's fake, its that he doesn't like it being made public.

Now, what Pence did is NOT illegal. You're not going to see an investigation into it because he hasn't done anything illegal. That doesn't mean it isn't a highly questionable thing to do. It also doesn't wash away the hypocrisy of being part of a ticket whose main selling point was that the main rival was unfit to rule for doing the exact same thing.

Absolutely not illegal what Pence did- but it's not fake news because it was a foolish choice he made and that partially reflects on his fitness to govern, just like it did, as his ticket pointed out, on Hillary's.

Well what Clinton did was illegal because there was classified data on her server. Whether or not what Pence did was illegal in Indiana, I can't say. But it should be illegal at all levels. If your city or county wants to enter into a contract to have its mail hosted by AOL, that is one thing. But all government communications should flow through a mail server specifically chosen by that government agency for record keeping purposes. Private email addresses should not be allowed

Re:Nope, nothing to see here

[mi]

deliberate took pictures of equipment he was specifically prohibited from photographing with intent to distribute the pictures to people who were not cleared to see them

Citation needed. AFAIK, he took the pictures solely as personal mementos — without "intent distribute". Indeed, no such intent. Still illegal, of course...

Hillary, on the other hand has been crucified because she received several emails that contained, improperly marked, classified information over the course of her four years at the State Department.

"Several", huh? Why would you lie on something so easily verifiable? Let's see:

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.

And there could have been more — we do not know for sure, because she ordered her e-mail server purged upon receiving a subpoena. The purging was not entirely successful, and the FBI found a few more among those, that it was able to obtain despite Hillary's best efforts of destroying evidence:

With respect to the thousands of e-mails we found that were not among those produced to State, agencies have concluded that three of those were classified at the time they were sent or received, one at the Secret level and two at the Confidential level.

Now "crucified"? Drama Queen much? She was not even prosecuted — much less convicted and punished. Don't you think, "crucified" is a bit of an overstatement? I mean, the term means death penalty — by very painful and slow means...

Material that the State department is on record saying it does not believe should have ever been classified.

First, the claims such as yours, are meaningless without a citation of that alleged "record".

Second, even if there were, in fact, on such a record, it would hardly be vindicating, that the State Department still headed by a Democrat would say anything else to help the Democratic nominee for President.

Because everyone who isn't blinded by partisanship does.

That reliably excludes present company, does not it?

But, yes, I do see the difference — a sailor is facing 5-7 years in prison for a few photographs that no enemy ever saw. Clinton is "crucified" by nothing for making thousands of classified messages (with different levels of classification) accessible to enemies. The opportunity they, most likely, have used:

we did not find direct evidence that Secretary Clinton’s personal e-mail domain, in its various configurations since 2009, was successfully hacked. But, given the nature of the system and of the actors potentially involved, we assess that we would be unlikely to see such direct evidence. We do assess that hostile actors gained access to the private commercial e-mail accounts of people with whom Secretary Clinton was in regular contact from her personal account. We also assess that Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal e-mail domain was both known by a large number of