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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."
Pence has the correct consonant after his name, so we don't need to investigate this any further. Only people with that cursed mark of the Devil need to be investigated (repeatedly) for offenses relating to email. We all know that Mr. Pence is the very model of morality and will be completely transparent and forthcoming on this innocent mistake.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Turn on a news channel (or Twitter) to hear Trump rant about how evil and unacceptable email hacks are any second now.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
For a moment I thought there's really one area where the Dems are even stupider than the GOP.
The world is in balance again.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Queue the reasonable arguments regarding unsecure email habits by powerful politicians that avoid partisan bickering.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Did Mike share top secret information over his personal email? No.
Actually, we do not know what was shared. They are explicitly witholding "sensitive" emails.
Did Mike use his personal email to discuss P4P "donations" to a personal charity? No.
See above.
If there is no issue, then why is Indiana explicitly withholding emails due to sensitive nature?
http://www.indystar.com/story/news/politics/2017/03/02/pence-used-personal-email-state-business----and-hacked/98604904/
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The administration of Pence’s successor, Gov. Eric Holcomb, released 29 pages of emails late this past week. But it withheld others, saying they are deliberative or advisory, confidential under rules adopted by the Indiana Supreme Court or the work product of an attorney.
Holcomb’s office declined to disclose how many emails were withheld.
>scrub his email server hardware after the fact during an investigation
That's called destroying evidence involved in a federal investigation. It comes with a 20 year sentence for anyone subject to the laws.
And you missed lying under oath. 15 years ago, in a wholly trifling personal matter, got a president Impeached. Now our elected officials can be caught red handed destroying evidence against themselves in a federal case and be greeted by the press and public with thunderous applause.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
The summary mentions that. However it's still an incredibly bad idea for an elected official to use a personal email for any type of official work as it provides an easy way to hide documents and correspondence that should be in the public record or at least archived. The fact that he only recently started archiving the work emails from his private account strongly suggests that he had no intentions to do so unless pressed for them. In light of the furor that Republicans built up after Hillary's email issue, the fact that someone high up in the current administration did essentially the same thing (no matter if it was allowed or not) smacks of hypocrisy.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
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.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
The mere act of using a private email for government business is wrong and should be punished. However, let us not forget that the point of all of this anger isn't the fact that a personal email was used. The anger came about because of what was found on said personal email server. Let us compare between the two politicians:
Did Mike share top secret information over his personal email? No.
Did Mike use his personal email to share deleterious information about any of his campaigns? No.
Did Mike say or do anything particularly damning in his emails (pizza anyone)? No.
Did Mike scrub his email server hardware after the fact during an investigation? No.
Did Mike use his personal email to discuss P4P "donations" to a personal charity? No.
How do you know? He's had months to scrub the emails before he began archiving them. That's why politicians shouldn't use private accounts for official business whether it's illegal or not. Even if he didn't intend to, it gives the appearance of deception and clearly provides the opportunity to do so. Scandals are created and careers destroyed on the mere possibility of impropriety all the time. Look at Flynn.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
The use of a private email server wasn't prohibited by federal government statues applying to Hillary Clinton either... but that didn't seem to stop significant public concern.
Use of privatized and hacked email servers seemed to be of great issue to the general public which significantly contributed to many voters decisions during the 2016 election. So, based on the general public's flawed logic of determining significance relative to elected officials, this information regarding Pence is also quite pertinent to know.
Coverage on private email server issues from both sides was/is idiotic, but maybe this type of information is needed to help educate the public for their future choices.
Sensitive =/= classified.
Remember, Hillary repeatedly justified her use of a private server by claiming she "never sent or received classified material" (later amended to say "never sent classified material", later amended to say "what hard drive backups?")
The FBI investigation into her server did not focus on "sensitive" information, which is not a legal definition. It focused on "classified" information, which is explicitly defined in the statutes she was found to have broken.
Until such evidence that classified information was passed through an unclassified system, this is going to continue to look like the discordant screeching from a panicked and impotent leftist establishment that has been the story du jour of the past few months.
A large part of Clinton's problems were because her use of private email servers looked like an effort to avoid legally required oversight: avoiding use of any government email account, not depositing government records when she left government service, and only disclosing things when caught. None of those factors look likely in Pence's case, but maybe something will turn up yet.
In addition to AC's comment above, another salient issue is data retention laws, which is why official use of a private email account is such a red flag. I only RTFS, but it seems the personal account in this case was is still archived by Yahoo! and therefore searchable.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Did Mike share top secret information over his personal email? No.
Actually, we do not know what was shared. They are explicitly witholding "sensitive" emails.
AC conspiracy-mongering aside, we do know for a fact that he didn't share top secret information over his personal email for the profoundly simple reason that he wouldn't have had a top secret clearance at the time.
So there's no way he could have had top secret information to share -- unless, of course, Hillary emailed it to him.
Of all the complaints about her emails, this has to be the most mind-boggling to me. Allow me to explain why.
The claim is that the purpose of her use of a private server was to evade public records laws and scrutiny. This is directly in contrast to the chain of events that led to the discovery of her email server:
1) Congress sends State Dept. a subpoena for Clinton's emails.
2) State Dept. IT, aware that they don't have them, sends a request to Clinton's people for the emails.
Now, what would you expect someone that was trying to avoid scrutiny to do, at this point, when they received the first official request for those emails? I'm pretty sure the answer is anything but "promptly and immediately start handing them over." I guess you can quibble about the emails that were marked as personal and not handed over, but really, I've yet to hear anything solid about that other than "she's shady I don't trust her and she's probably got all kinds of dirt hidden in those 'personal' emails." Moreover, this is direct evidence of a massive double standard, when people give those like Pence the benefit of the doubt, but refuse to give any to Clinton.
Hillary ran her own server in her basement and had her three stooges delete 30,000 wedding and yoga emails. Pence used an AOL account - the contents of which could have been obtained via subpoena at any time.
The former stinks of coverup - the latter just looks like an old guy using AOL because he didn't know any better.
My general answer is "I'm not surprised" by anyone of of a certain age, and at a certain level of power/responsibility, mixing up their email. Why? Because it's endemic, and not just for politicians. Try dealing with C-level executives that aren't themselves out of IT/IT security (and sometimes not even then). Good security practices do not arise naturally from the general population, especially for those that never grew up with it, and don't deal with it as a major part of their job. To be fair, those who did grow up with it can be pretty terrible too, though that tends to be more in the social media area (and also, they tend to not be in charge of major organizations yet due to their younger age).
So, no, I didn't think it was the massive scandal that so many people tried to make it out to be. Was it good? No, but it was hardly anything substantial compared to the plethora of other real scandals that other politicians (and non-politicians running for office) have had.
Is it a big deal that Pence did it? Nope, not really either, and easily forgotten were it not for the hypocrisy factor. The argument there is not that it was okay for Hillary to do it but bad that he did, but rather, that the conservatives/Republicans are doing the exact reverse - i.e., making a big deal of a Democrat doing something, and making excuses or diminishing a Republican doing the same.
EXCEPT, when this began coming out and she didn't turn them all over, Congress issued a subpoena for the rest of them. 3 days after she received the subpoena, yes exactly 3 days AFTER, she deleted 30,000+ emails from her server and all the backups she had. We even have the email requesting everything be wiped, with the date of 3 days after the subpoena.
So handing over stuff you know won't cause you issues is what you are claiming shows she is not guilty. Deleting evidence AFTER a subpoena is what I am saying makes her guilty of... destruction of evidence during an investigation, by definition.
I'm not going to address the non-criminal points you make. Those are character issues. I will address the one issue that is a matter of law:
Did Mike share top secret information over his personal email?
The reason she was never prosecuted was quite simple. She didn't actually break the law. The fact is that as best the FBI could determine, Hillary Clinton didn't knowingly share any secret information. If that were not the case you can be quite sure they would have prosecuted her after Trump was sworn in.
I do not block ads. I do block third party scripts.
Fake News would imply the content was incorrect, invented or misleading.
I think there are two different definitions of "fake news" running around. In the original "fake news" story it was about a left-wing activist who wanted to "prove" right wingers were dumb and will fall for stupid shit so he created a news blog with completely made up facts, like that protestors were being paid $3500 to protest against Trump. This wasn't true, protestors were being paid around $16 via craigslist posts by people affiliated with Moveon.org, but it's useful disinformation for those who don't pay too much attention. Mention some protestors are being paid, and someone can scream "that was fake news!" And they're half right because they heard about the $3500 fake news and not the $16 real news. Anyway, then he'd post his fake news site in the comments sections of right wing blogs, and immediately someone would say "don't spread this crap, it's fake." The author then goes on NPR and says "hurr durr Trump won because these right wingers are peddling all this fake news I made!" Uh, if the left wing hack weren't making the fake news there wouldn't be fake news, if he weren't spreading it fake news wouldn't spread, and nobody believed him anyway. It's literally the "I was just pretending to be retarded" meme.
Then we have the way the mainstream media does fake news, which is fake context. People don't think in terms of facts, they think in terms of narratives. CNN does shit like this where you have a true fact (the video of the sister) but a fake narrative ('urged peace;" she did not). Or this story, where they're trying to conflate Pence's legal use of a private email account for state business with Hillary's illegal use of a private email server for classified information. The facts don't really matter. They're working a narrative ("Trump's administration is full of sloppy crooks who are puppets to Russians/Jews/aliens/Lizard Men from the Hollow Earth") using confirmation bias. Put out enough scary-sounding headlines describing legal behavior or wild speculation and confirmation bias takes over until people unironically believe that ultra-nationalist Jeff Sessions is a commie-rooskie agent. This won't work on Republicans or most normal independents, but the left has lost their grip on reality long ago, and Dems are probably checking under their beds for Russians at this point.
I have no idea how to break people out of these hallucinations. I wondered when Trump won the New Hampshire primaries and HuffPo ran their headline, literally in all caps "WAR IN EUROPE" sized that "NEW HAMPSHIRE GOES RACIST SEXIST XENOPHOBIC!!!!!" what would happen when Trump wins the general election? New Hampshire voters went for Trump because he said he'd get the $10 heroin off their streets, not because they're secret nazis. Would their readers snap out of it and realize HuffPo was misleading them? Nope. My FaceBook page is still full of hysterical women who think Russian Hitler is about to gas all non-straight white christian males. And the media just keeps adding fuel to the fire. How does this end?
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Clinton and Pence both hired a law firm to determine which emails would be considered private and which emails would be subject to the records keeping act. It was not illegal for neither Pence nor Clinton to use a private (non-gov) account, as long as they submitted all "official business" emails for record-keeping. Both did.
There is no material difference between using an AOL account or using a private server. Indeed, one could argue that using a private server you can at least account for who have had access to the emails. In the AOL case, there is no way of knowing. A private account - on AOL or a private server - cannot be used for classified material.
In the Clinton case it *was* determined that she had sent
- some emails where the contents was retroactively classified. This is not criminal, as Clinton the material *was not* classified at the time.
- A total of 3 emails which contained classified information at the time. However, the "classfied" markings were non-standard which could explain why Clinton did not notice them.
It was not illegal to set up at private server. Clinton was clearly aware that she should not use it for classified material; otherwise you would see a lot of classified material with standard markings on the server. Which there was not.
Maybe she should have realized that there was a risk that she may accidentally send classified material. IMO the greater risk was that state dept. employees would send classified material *to* her account. Was it reckless? Possibly. Criminal? No.
If Pence has sent classified material from his AOL account, it is equally illegal, regardless of whether the account was "official". If he did not instruct aides to avoid sending classified material *to* his account, it would be equally reckless.
Fun fact: Pence was hacked. Clintons email server was not.
Reading slashdot one-liner: (irm http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot).rdf.item | fl title,desc*
Yes, let the hate flow.
Read what the OP said again. Don't Kelly Ann the conversation by changing it.
The use of a private email server wasn't prohibited by federal government statues applying to Hillary Clinton
That is a true statement.
The OP left out 2 things:
Things were done wrong, but just having a private e-mail server set up and secured by the Secret Service for the former President's use, and then used by Senator and Secretary H. Clinton was not what was wrong.
It was stupid to use it, but if no classified information had ever been sent or it wasn't done to skirt disclosure laws, then she would have just been embarrassed and not investigated.
The exact same thing applies to Pence. It is really dumb for him to use a private account for government business. If no Indiana "secrets" were revealed ( ie corn or soybean crop yields, pork belly futures), and it wasn't done to skirt disclosure laws, Then Pence is just stupid but not criminal.
Just as most of the Democrats still don't seem to realize that nominating one of the most despised figures in American politics as your candidate for POTUS is not a good strategy for winning an election, most Republicans don't seem to realize that being seen as acting exactly like the Democrats they're always complaining about results in the public despising Republicans as well.
The Democrats didn't win this last election, but neither did the Republicans. Trump won. Trump beat 12 Republicans on his way to the nomination. He wiped the floor with them. Some of them were extremely high profile, well funded candidates. Most of them were a waste of space. None of them stood a chance against Trump. Two years ago Trump was booed at CPAC, and Ted Cruz was held up as a shining example as the perfect, righteous candidate to lead the nation into its future. Trump walked all over "Lying" Ted Cruz.
Boehner, Ryan and others seem to act like they won last November. The Republicans lost. They lost a little less than the Democrats did, but Trump still whipped Republican @$$.
Sadly, both parties seem to be doubling down on the strategy of 'business as usual', which is a much greater threat to the country that the great orange one's erratic tweets.
"Mike Pence Used His AOL Email..."
He uses AOL....I think we've heard all we need to hear. The man is clearly unfit for office.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
You will see an investigation - the investigation into the Russian collaboration with the Trump campain . You can bet that those emails will be requested.
I like Hillary but I think herein lies the problem. She didn't turn them all over. She had her own people go through and decide which ones were personal. Sorry once you mix work and personal emails this way, you have to turn over the whole trove. Presumably she didn't want to do that because there may have been embarrassing personal things. I'm sure my personal email would get me raked over the coals. But I don't mix work email with personal. It was a terrible decision to mix the two emails. That part is a bigger problem than the fact that it was a private server.
I have seen Bernie Goldberg make the argument that what media organizations do is simple bias, while fake news is stuff like Pizzagate. Except that media organizations make up stuff out of whole cloth, like the report about trannie suicides going thru the roof since Trump became president.
I'm actually glad that by slamming the MSM as fake news, Trump has blurred the lines b/w your average Michael Moore type of guy manufacturing stories out of whole cloth, vs the MSM doing it. Both have intentions to mislead, and both due to the same reason: their bias.
I think there are two different definitions of "fake news" running around. In the original "fake news" story it was about a left-wing activist who wanted to "prove" right wingers were dumb and will fall for stupid shit so he created a news blog with completely made up facts, like that protestors were being paid $3500 to protest against Trump...
...Then we have the way the mainstream media does fake news, which is fake context...
The facts are in the article. Nothing factually incorrect is being stated. If you think a news site is highlighting certain stories or over hyping stories that to you are non-entities that would represent a "biased" news source, not "fake news". Using the term "Fake News" to refer to an item you think is biased against your world-view is disingenuous at best and a down right lie at worst.
There is plenty of biased news articles out there on both sides of the political spectrum. Let's call them what they are though. Biased, not fake.
Now in this case, as a moderate centrist myself, I do think what Pence is wrong. I think it makes him a hypocrite to boot. Am I fuming and jumping up and down demanding his resignation. No. I personally think he's a lousy pick for an executive of the country, but this latest story doesn't sound like a huge deal to me. I think it's important to be brought up as news, it's certainly not biased to mention it. The bias will be if this is still headlining a week from now- that will be making a mountain out of a molehill. I'd be very surprised if the media hasn't moved on to the next scandal by then.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
A total of 3 emails which contained classified information at the time. However, the "classfied" markings were non-standard which could explain why Clinton did not notice them.
Here is Comey himself testifying that they were incorrectly marked:
Director Comey: No, there were three e-mails. The “c” was in the body in the text, but there was no header on the email or in the text.
Rep. Cartwright: So if Secretary Clinton really were an expert at what's classified and what’s not classified and we're following the manual, the absence of a header would tell her immediately that those three documents were not classified. Am I correct in that?
Director Comey: That would be a reasonable inference.
In addition, they had already been declassified at that time (which explains why the headers were removed):
“Generally speaking, there’s a standard process for developing call sheets for the Secretary of State. Call sheets are often marked – it’s not untypical at all for them to be marked at the confidential level - prior to a decision by the Secretary that he or she will make that call. Oftentimes, once it is clear that the Secretary intends to make a call, the department will then consider the call sheet SBU, sensitive but unclassified, or unclassified altogether, and then mark it appropriately and prepare it for the secretary’s use in actually making the call. The classification of a call sheet therefore is not necessarily fixed in time, and staffers in the Secretary’s office who are involved in preparing and finalizing these call sheets, they understand that. Those markings were a human error. They didn’t need to be there.”
Source: FBI Director Comey: Emails Were Not Properly Marked as Classified
Trump won, but his coattails are questionable, and I say this as someone who supports Trump over the GOP. Like in NC, the first candidate who ran in a primary linking her name to his, lost. Similarly, in AZ, Kelly Wirt lost to John McCain, despite it being an open secret of how Trump's last minute endorsement of the latter was more due to Priebus putting pressure on him
In the Congress, the Republicans can claim that they won. Like in the senate races, 2 of the Republicans who distanced themselves from Trump - Kelly Ayotte and another candidate from IL - lost, but other GOP senators and congressmen who ran despite distancing themselves from Trump due to the Access Hollywood tapes, not only won, but won convincingly. The GOP successfully defended every senate seat, but failed to win a few, like Harry Reid's, while in the house, they lost around 5, when they were expected to lose a lot more.
As for CPAC, Trump skipped it last year, and was the star this year, b'cos he came out w/ an even more convervative cabinet than Reagan - forget the Bushes. That, as well as his EOs. If one wins the way he did, one gets to redefine what's Conservative, and what's not.
The "three stooges" were lawyers, and they were responding to not a subpoena, but a Freedom of Information Act request (so a much lower bar). That does not stink of coverup, especially since there was apparently plenty of
If you want better examples of coverup, look up the Bush email scandal, or the current Trump administration's (meaning the White House) use of "secure messaging" apps. Or the fact that many of them have gone back to using RNC email servers the the majority of their communications. Any bet we see another failure to backup of those emails when they get subpoenaed?
But more importantly: while then-Goveneor Pence was on the campaign trail criticizing Hilary Clinton about her use of a private email address, he was actively using his own for government business. The hypocrisy runs think there.
I wonder if anyone thinks at all, about the difference in security between a federal account heading the secretary of state, and an account for anyone working at a state level...
I don't think ANY state communication would be classified secret, much less top secret.
Also did anyone ASK Pence if he used public email account? Because a big part of Hilary's issue (beyond just the federal crime of using an unsecured server for Top Secret documents) was that SHE LIED ABOUT DOING SO (Hello, Nixon!!) - and DELETED THOUSANDS OF EMAILS. Pence didn't delete anything, it's being archived as it should.
Both the Democrats and the press have gone mental trying to equate a number of email uses to the vastly different degree of security required between accounts... it's mind-boggling they keep trying to run up these different uses of email as equivalent.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If You or your media outlet was one of the ones that defended or didn't criticize as a fatal flaw: Hillary Clinton and her most glaring case of using personal E-mail server to cause security exposures and Fail to deliver items ordered by the court,
Then you already lost any right to criticize Pence, Etc, for lesser cases Of use of a personal e-mail account.
That seems to be pretty much All people and All the media outlets, by the way.
I don't agree, but For some reason we as a society decided it was all OK, At least for anything that was going on before 2016.
I think they were both wrong to use a private email server but did nothing criminal.
But I do think I have a right to criticize Pence.
1) He continued using a private email server after he knew it was no longer acceptable to do so, not criminal or even outrageous, but he definitely knew it would be frowned upon.
2) He was part of a ticket that called for his opponent to be thrown in jail while he committed those very same supposedly jail-worthy acts. It's blatant hypocrisy and is very worthy of criticism.
I stole this Sig