I don't get why HRC e-mails are such a big deal.

[leftyladyfrommo]

So far hackers have managed to hack into every govt. agency out there. They got the IRS, the military and on and on and on.

Is the argument that classified info might not be safe on her personal server? Classified info isn't safe anywhere anymore. So far it looks like it was safer there than on any other govt. system.

[leftofcool]

1. You nailed it!

[HFRN]

2. it's all about FOIA (Freedom of Information Act)

having work emails off of official servers can be interpreted as hiding the emails from a FOIA request

from a federal worker I know, this is very serious stuff, whether classified or not - and I knew long before the issue with Hillary ever came up, and was frankly surprised that she didnt get into much more trouble, much faster

a lower lever employee would be in deep trouble for doing something like that

[Proud Public Servant]

8. ^^^THIS^^^

It's not about hacking. It's about letting a government official pick and choose which of her emails will be archived and made available. Ordinary federal works, like me, know that anything we put in a .gov email is property of the government and FOIAble (as we say in bureaucratize). That's not to say I never use a personal account for work-related email; I have done so on occasion when unable to access my .gov email remotely (the State Dept is a bit of a technological backwater) and when I've wanted to speak candidly about a colleague in a job recommendation (or non-recommendation -- hence the need for candor). But by and large, by communication is part of the government record, and I have no control over that. The same should have been true for Hillary (and Powell, and Bush, and many others) but was not. That's why it was a big deal.

[Bettie]

9. Then every previous SOS

should be in the same trouble as it seems to have been a common way to deal with email.

Kerry is the first SOS to use State Dept. email.

So, it is a non-issue.

I'm not a big supporter of Hillary, but this is not even a real issue. It is a made up right wing talking point.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

16. Democrats run on a platform of 'We're not as bad as Republicans'.

It undercuts that electoral message when you turn around and say 'But they do it too!'

If your defense of your actions is Republicans do it too, then you can't really claim to be 'better' than them.

[Bettie]

25. It wasn't the standard at the time she was SOS

It is the standard now.

It isn't that R's do it too, it is that there was no real procedure in place, so she did what she thought was acceptable.

But, if you truly believe that this is the biggest issue about HRC, then go for it. I find plenty of disagreement with her on actual issues without parroting fox news.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

29. I don't care who thinks 'what' is her biggest issue.

She has too much baggage to board the train.

[HFRN]

17. 'but this is not even a real issue. It is a made up right wing talking point. '

that's a lazy 'i don't want to have to think about this' dismissal of a serious issue

[Proud Public Servant]

19. State Department email didn't become remotely available

or even available on desktops until the Powell years. So not every SoS, no. But Powell and Rice, yes.

[Ms. Toad]

65. Every previous SOS is not running for president. Clinton is.

Mingling personal email with government email, and destroying the server without an independent audit of the private separation of the emails is inexcusably poor judgment.

Just because people on the right are also concerned (although their concern seems to stem from a different source than mine), does not make something a right wing talking point. It is a legitimate concern about her judgment, and about her willingness to comply with the spirit of the law as opposed to seeing an inadvertent gap in the law as an excuse for arrogance (I'm not going to be transparent because of a loophole - AND - I am going to destroy any possibility of being transparent so there is no possibility I will ever have to disclose the information).

[whatchamacallit]

13. Exactly

If you wanted to conduct an operation without oversight or of questionable legality, this would be one way to CYA. It seems whenever official business is conducted off government servers, documents get accidentally deleted (Opps!). There's no way the SOS doesn't know and understand the protocol for this.

[Adrahil]

15. I was a federal worker for 20 years.

WE sometimes had to use personal email because the federal system sucked.

Mountains. Molehills.

[HFRN]

18. you put a server in your home, too? nt

[Adrahil]

23. Well, I stored the email in my house.

I used Comcast, which is a lot less secure than a personal server, for sure.

[HFRN]

24. a physical server implies a systematic deliberate end-run, as opposed to an occasional hotmail nt

[Adrahil]

28. It implies no such thing!

That's a serious stretch. If HRC was using her own server for convenience, it follows it would have to be her OWN server. She could have it configured to meet her particular needs, and allow access from only certain MAC address, etc.

[madokie]

3. They're not

its a gop fishing expedition. I suggest they take up real fishing it they want to get something for their efforts. I'll defend Hillary on this Benghazi bullshit any day. The fault, if there is one, is placed at the pukes feet for cutting funding for our diplomatic compounds, Actually


Why can't the dems stand up and scream this from the roof tops loud and clear? Have they no shame

[TwilightGardener]

4. You can't bring home classified information and documents and store them on your home computer.

You can't put it on a thumb drive and bring it home. You can't pile papers into your car and bring it home, or stuff them down your pants, or hand binders of classified information to a girlfriend who isn't legally allowed to receive it (Petraeus). You can't send and receive messages with classified information on an unsecured non-government server and then store them there, secretly, for years, until you finally decide to hand them over to the appropriate agencies. There are a lot of laws and regulations that cover this, for federal employees, military, and contractors. Is that not clear to you?

[Lee-Lee]

11. Pretty much this

This discussion will probably break down the line between those who have had or do have a security clearance and dealt with all the responsibilities that go with it, and those who have not and don't grasp the implications.

I really hope she didn't put classified information on a privately owned server. Really, really, really hope she didn't. Because if she did that's a HUGE lapse of judgement to me as someone who has made sure that all my time dealing with classified info I followed all the proper procedures no matter how big a pain it was. That meant things like I had two computers on my desk and something as simple as adding info from an unclassified report to a classified one meant copying and retyping it all by hand from one screen to another because you were not allowed to swap media from the secure system to the nonsecure so copy/paste couldn't be done- taking what would take 5 minutes and turning it into a tedious hour+ task.

[Adrahil]

20. Couple notes....

Generally speaking, classified cannot be sent by regular email at all. So it would be equally problematic on a .gov address. It is the responsibility of the sender to ensure any information they send is permitted to be sent by that method, and to ensure it is properly marked.

The person RECEIVING such information is not typically held at fault, since they don't have a way to know what info they are receiving is classified.

If intel organizations sent her classified info, that's a problem for THEM. That's why the NYT article is so fucked up.

[TwilightGardener]

30. There needs to be a deeper investigation of the origins of the emails, who inserted or discussed

unmarked classified info on a home server. I'm not sure ignorance can be an excuse here, until we know more about the nature of the senders and the emails. If there was an accidental one-time transmission from a person or agency, that's very different from having your staff routinely and deliberately lift information from classified sources and communicate it through the wrong system--which is my guess as to what happened. Were any emails with such info SENT from that server to other places? And no, it's not "equally problematic" to have sent/received/stored such items to a .gov address, outside the classified system (siprnet or whatever State uses), because the emails would have at least been stored under a government-secured and controlled system and agencies would have been aware of their existence and could have searched for them, archived them, and most importantly could have discovered they were transmitted inappropriately, etc. As it is, no one knew these emails, with classified info, EXISTED-- except Hillary and her crew.

[Adrahil]

37. "As it is, no one knew these emails, with classified info, EXISTED-- except Hillary and her crew."

Really? So no one saved the sent emails? Pretty sure those have to be saved too.

[TwilightGardener]

39. The State Dept. apparently can't find some emails that Congress has in its possession.

And no one knows what all was on that server, the Clinton lawyers may still have the contents on a drive somewhere, which is a problem.

[jeff47]

55. The "sender at fault" thing doesn't deal with storage issues, and really only covers

when people with a clearance send classified.

Someone without a clearance sends Clinton a document that Manning leaked. That's a breach. It would be unlikely to be considered Clinton's fault.

But Clinton stored the email on her server. That is her fault. (Security officer has the option to say "just delete it" since what Manning leaked is de-facto public at this point, but the inappropriate storage would have to be reported.)

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

21. I'm also a bit dubious of claims of not knowing something was classified 'at the time'.

Even if you give the benefit of a doubt on any given piece of email, surely the leader of the entire Department knows what TYPE of information should be classified. Unless she never got any of that sort of info in emails (which, according to what's being said now simply isn't the case) shouldn't she have been emailing back, saying 'This seems like it should be classified, why are you sending it to me via unsecure email?'

[TwilightGardener]

36. Considering her 8 years as First Lady, 6 years as Senator, four years of SOS--

who's going to buy that she didn't have at least SOME sense as to what may be classified info? She's not a noob to the government. If she really had no idea that such stuff was probably not good to discuss in private email (and I tend to think it's mostly her staff that was doing the sending/receiving, not that it helps much), then she's simply too dense to be President.

[jeff47]

60. It's very easy to slip.

It's very easy to accidentally talk about something that is classified.

Some things are extremely obvious, and you're not going to slip. You aren't going to accidentally say "John Smith, our spy in Moscow, has been doing great work".

But not everything is so obvious. Let's say a classified warning is sent around about a new piece of malware that is pre-installed on one brand of computers. Months later you've forgotten where specifically the information came from, and you tell one of your non-security-clearance friends "don't buy that brand, it comes with malware". That's leaking classified information.

It's extremely easy to slip up on minutia. And that minutia is what keeps the intelligence agencies in business - picking the bits and pieces up and figuring out that obvious information that will not slip out.

[pnwmom]

62. It isn't uncommon for classification decisions to be revisited and changed years later.

These decisions are subjective and political and change with changing circumstances.

Information that may not seem sensitive at the time can turn out to seem more important later, with additional knowledge.

[pnwmom]

42. She didn't email classified information. The NYTimes story alleging this was proven wrong.

Your Hillary-hate is showing.

[RufusTFirefly]

43. Why did she feel she had the right to set up her own separate network?

Should every high government official be entitled to do that?

It's interesting how people who get outraged over Snowden, Manning, or Assange, are quite content to give Hillary Clinton a pass. She was potentially putting important communications relating to U.S. foreign policy at serious risk. More importantly, whether intentional or not, the separate network was a means of avoiding Congressional oversight, a Constitutional privilege.

[TwilightGardener]

47. I realize that Clinton fans want to focus on inaccurate portions of the NYT story

(related to whether the DOJ was brought in as a security matter or a criminal matter) and chalk the whole thing up to bad journalism, but multiple outlets have confirmed that she did indeed have classified info--classified AT THE TIME THE INFO WAS TRANSMITTED--in emails on her server. This is a clear mishandling of classified information. Further investigation is obviously called for.

[Walk away]

5. Apparently the smear campaign is working! 100% of Foxnews watchers...

are convinced that Hillary Clinton is the head of ISIS!

[HFRN]

26. yup - that's the 'go to' of the HRC campaign - the 'Vast Right Wing Conspiracy'

is behind any awkward question they don't want to answer

[Walk away]

64. That's interesting. So you believe in all of the smear and lies!

You must be having a field day with the NYT slander! I'm a life long Democrat so I take wingnut garbage for what it is.

[TexasProgresive]

6. I have made the same point

I don't think classified material should be transmitted electronically except by government controlled cryptography that is completely isolated from the internet, intranets or other such means of transmission including unsecured telephones whether cellular or landline. If material is classified it must be secured and there is no security on the web. It just isn't there no matter what some people think.

That said probably 99.99% of those emails are not particularly important except to rabid RWNJs that want the Secretary's head on a platter. They gotta get at least one Obama appointee on some kind of corruption charge and the are going for the gold ring (forget about brass).

[Romulox]

7. If she broke the law, we deserve to know. nt

[Proud Public Servant]

14. Even if she didn't, it's revealing of her judgment and temperment

You don't exactly dispel those comparisons to Nixon by displaying a penchant for this kind of secrecy and control.

[Romulox]

27. It's never the crime, it's the coverup. This is PR 101. Who is advising her? nt

[NOVA_Dem]

10. It's called spillage and you'll lose your clearance, get fired, and possibly prosecuted.

People know Hillary had that email server at her house to hide her emails. It reinforces her image as duplicitous.

As the Secretary of State you cannot perform your job without regularly receiving and sending classified information. Hillary Clinton expects people to believe that this was her only email to conduct business and didn't send and receive classified information...THAT IS BULLSHIT.

The email server should have been configured according to national security guidance;
The email server should have received an annual security assessment;
The email server should have been continually monitored;
The Blackberry and Ipad devices should have been specifically configured to handle Top Secret data and encrypted;
The entire systems should've operated using a Virtual Private Network.

Hillary has made no comment that these precautions were put in place. Hillary doesn't have the political skillset of Barack Obama. We cannot count on how bad the republican candidate will be to win the election.

[leftyladyfrommo]

12. Haven't we spent enough tax dollars trying to prove the Clintons broke the law?

A friend of mine said that the Clintons are just too sneaky to get caught - Whitewater, etc. etc.

But maybe the real reason is that they haven't done anything to get caught at. That's the reason it's been so hard to find anything. This witch hunt is getting really tiresome.

[whatchamacallit]

22. We get it, conflate and equate real issues with conspiracies to discredit

I'm sure you'll claim otherwise, but if it was a republican SOS, you'd be singing a different tune.

[leftyladyfrommo]

31. No, I wouldn't.

I hate these kinds of attacks on anyone but it seems to have become the American way to do politics.

I really liked what Bernie Sanders said. That he liked Hillary Clinton and was not going to attack her. He wanted to talk issues. That is how I feel about it, too.

[whatchamacallit]

33. Forget politics

it's a matter of national security protocol, which should be a concern to everyone.

[leftyladyfrommo]

46. What national security?

Hackers are putting everything out there everywhere. We don't have any national secrets anymore.

No one has any secrets any more. Our privacy is completely gone.

[karynnj]

32. that's not the problem

1 Her email should have been included in FOIA searches and wasn't because she did not give it to the SD.

2. There is ambiguity as to whether it was legal to exclusively use a personal email account, BUT IF SHE DID THE MESSAGES SHOULD HAVE BEEN ARCHIVED WITH THE SD after she left.

3. When the SD pushed her to give them the messages, she sorted them. It appears that she comingled her private and work emails. She then had the server wiped, which feeds suspicion that she hid stuff.

4. Her actions have led to the SD spending a huge amount of time and money dealing with her emails and facing suits against it for things she did. Frankly, I far prefer the wonderful John Kerry spend his time working for a more peaceful planet rather than dealing with a Clinton created mess.

5. Her admission they STILL have classified documents is a problem because she is not still the SOS.

[merrily]

35. This is all too reminscent of her sitting on a subpoena for a year when the Clintons were in the WH

then "finding" papers in the dining room of the family quarters.

[MH1]

41. Yes, it is troubling. Overall I think Hillary could be a good POTUS, but

the mingling of work and personal emails to such an extent ... and all the points you mention ... really concern me as unprofessional, and sort of naive technically but also beyond technically ... how could she not realize that someone would come looking for those emails? Whether or not she ran for president but especially if?

I think Dems shrug this off at their peril.

On the other hand, I'm a techie and information geek so I don't need Fox News to tell me this is an issue. They're making an issue of it only as part of their strategy of "throw it at the wall and see if it sticks". THEY don't know real reasons it's actually an issue. They will just try to use it to paint her as untrustworthy. (But look at their clown car ... they want to call HILLARY untrustworthy?? LOL.)

Maybe to real people who are not Fox News watchers and not info geeks, this won't even make enough sense to resonate. But I don't like our chances if we rely on that hope.

[karynnj]

50. foe all those reasons, I don't think the techie issues

Will be the problem.

If there is a problem, it will be that as in the 1990s, she is hiding things that laws require access to on some level. It reemphasizes one of her least attractive features. Her secretive nature extends to everything from this almost paranoid need to keep her email away from everyone, to the way she ran the Hillary care work, to not ever being proactive in getting bad stuff out, to refusing to give positions on things that split the Democratic base.

This particular mess is 100 percent self inflicted. I don't get why when she was the heir apparent since 2008 that she did this. NOTHING in her email could have been worse than this ongoing story - not to mention, any email that bad would come out. I resent that she has put Obama in this position.

[TwilightGardener]

52. She's not naive. She's getting away with something. That was the whole point.

Her fans cheer such activities, they love the way the Clintons are always dodging the RW and skirting the law. That's how they see this. They don't see it as dishonest, unscrupulous, a mishandling of national security, an arrogant assertion of privilege (rules and oversight for thee but not for me).

[merrily]

34. This probably should not be in GD.

[nichomachus]

38. So, then, you would have no problem

If your doctor kept your medical records on a laptop in his bedroom rather than on the secure hospital servers.

Or if the president of the bank kept all your financial information on his home computer rather than on the bank's secure servers.

No system is immune from attack, but some are better protected than others. A server setup in your basement or back bedroom is probably the least secure.

[RufusTFirefly]

40. Agreed! In addition to being reckless and insecure ...

... it seems to betray a sense of arrogance, privilege, and pathological privacy that, ironically, reminds me very much of a President we had in the late 1960s and early 1970s. What led her to conclude that she was entitled to set up her own parallel system? What if every high government official operated according to the same risky, selfish standards?

Frankly, it adds further evidence to the perception that President-elect Clinton is untrustworthy.

Hillary Clinton: As Honest And Trustworthy As Donald Trump - WaPo

And for anyone who thinks the notion of trust is overblown, it behooves you to learn how the limbic system works.

[randome]

45. It never made any sense.

If Clinton received some emails that should have been classified, then we are all equally culpable in deceit when we receive emails from a Nigerian prince.

It's overblown to an extraordinary degree by those who fervently pray they can find something to take down a fellow Democrat.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Birds are territorial creatures.
The lyrics to the songbird's melodious trill go something like this:
"Stay out of my territory or I'll PECK YOUR GODDAMNED EYES OUT!"[/center][/font][hr]

[leftyladyfrommo]

48. If you need to know something

Just ask the Chinese. They know more about us than we d do.

[randome]

53. They probably do.

The crowd that cheers on Wikileaks is suddenly 'concerned' about potential leaks that might have been made by Clinton.

The willful disconnect is incredible.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]There is nothing you can't do if you put your mind to it.
Nothing.[/center][/font][hr]

[TwilightGardener]

49. There are responsibilities for people who handle such info. Particularly high-level officials.

You can't just say, "whoops", or David Petraeus wouldn't have been investigated at all. It would have been just an affair and not a criminal matter.

[randome]

51. Why would anyone need to say "Whoops" if someone sent them an email?

You are basically saying that Clinton should have been monitoring every email server across the globe to make sure no one sent her something she should not have had.

Do you realize how ridiculous that sounds? Because that's where the 'concern' is centered right now -on emails sent to Clinton's server.

As for Petraeus, he willingly shared classified info to his mistress. Big difference.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Birds are territorial creatures.
The lyrics to the songbird's melodious trill go something like this:
"Stay out of my territory or I'll PECK YOUR GODDAMNED EYES OUT!"[/center][/font][hr]

[TwilightGardener]

54. You don't understand how it all works, people in government at the lowest levels ARE MADE

TO UNDERSTAND the appropriate handling of classified material. In the military, junior enlisted even understand it. They have the fear of God put into them to be careful what they transmit, what they discuss, they understand that they are responsible for the proper handling, storage, and transmission of information even if they themselves didn't send it. My husband was a comm guy in the Air Force, he couldn't say "someone sent me this email by accident, so I just left it on my Gmail account" and get away with that. He would have to report it even if he suspected it was sent in error.

[jeff47]

57. Because people with clearances have to do things the rest of us do not.

Receiving an email from a non-cleared person that includes classified would probably not be punished. But it would have to be reported.

Improperly storing classified information, such as leaving it on your email server, could be punished. The maximum likely punishment would be loss of security clearance. Since Clinton no longer has one (it ended when her job as SoS ended), that's moot from a "punishment" angle.

What is not moot is she's running for office. Having to explain the difference between criminal offenses and violations of executive orders is not good for a campaign.

[Lee-Lee]

56. I think a bunch of people here don't grasp the seriousness of mishandling classified info

The argument "if she only received it she's not to blame" isn't remotely valid.

Let's say she only received it. If she allowed that to happen without taking action, she's just as guilty as whomever sent it.

If someone sent classified email to her unsecure email she had an obligation to:

1- immediatley tell that person they screwed up and to not send classified data to get that way.

2- immediatley report that security breach to the proper authorities- the supervisor and security manager of whomever sent classified email to an unsecured system should have been notified and their security clearances revoked pending investigation.

I don't think people grasp what it takes to mix emails like that. The secure systems used for classified data are not linked to the regular internet. You can't just email any random email address, you only can email those on the secure network.

For her to get classified emails required the people sending them to take data from the classified network, move it to a different computer not rated for classified data hooked to the Internet and email it- not one violation but a whole series of them.

That takes effort and requires a person sending it to knowingly break protocols they have been regularly briefed and trained on. I find it hard to believe that if it did happen it didn't happen with the direction and approval of her and her staff.

If she didn't immediately tell whomever sent the classified data to stop and report the breach, then she failed in her responsibility. And that could be taken as a sign she knew and condoned it.

[jeff47]

58. Don't forget Wikileaks.

Someone sends Clinton an email referring to information contained in a document leaked by Manning. That's also a security breach. Even though the sender did not have a clearance, and did not include a properly-marked classified document.

[Lee-Lee]

66. That hits home for me- if I google my name/rank from when I was deployed I get wikileaks hits

And I always make sure not to click the links even when they have my name and are reports I authored.

And the fact that my stuff showed up is what convinced my that Manning was not a whistle-blower, but an irresponsible dumper. There was zero whistleblowing value to what I did, it was all logistics reports and work.

[TwilightGardener]

59. Good info, thanks.

[madville]

61. Here's where this could really go south for her

She better hope that every official email she sent or received is in that 55,000 they turned over to State. There are other forms of records of what she sent and received out there, all her recipients and senders would have copies as well.

So if emails start emerging from other sources that are not in the 55,000 she turned over that would look pretty bad.

[Orsino]

63. MSM is determined to attack her, but not on any issue of substance. n/t