Re HRC's emails: Give me facts, not innuendo

[Bill USA]

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2015/03/05/hillary-clinton-emails-president-clinton-lanny-davis-editorials-debates/24465449/

Fact: Hillary Clinton's use of a private e-mail account when she was secretary of State was lawful. The law restricting such private accounts by public officials was changed in 2014.

Fact: The 2009 Archives Preservation Law was not violated. Secretary Clinton's e-mails were preserved on the server, regardless of whether it was located at home. More than 50,000 pages had already been turned over. On Wednesday, she asked the State Department to review and release them.

Fact: Thousands of State Department officials and others received e-mails from Secretary Clinton during her tenure, and all knew that she was using a private e-mail address. This flat out contradicts all the baseless innuendo that she was attempting to hide her use of a private e-mail address.

Fact: Secretary Clinton's use of a private e-mail account for both personal and official diplomatic communications was not unprecedented. Former secretary of State Colin Powell has said that his private e-mail account was used for both purposes, too.

~~
~~

Fact: Former Florida governor Jeb Bush also used private e-mail for personal and official business. Despite a misleading statement from his spokesperson, Gov. Bush did not disclose all his e-mails. He selected which ones not to disclose.
(more)

[OKNancy]

1. Fact: State Dept. has yet to clear its computer network of hackers: WSJ

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/02/20/us-cybersecurity-statedept-idUSKBN0LO03R20150220

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

2. Hmmm

Fact - Hillary's folks claim she had to use private servers because the State Dept ones were unreliable.

Question - Why was the correct response not to fix the State Department servers so everyone who works there had reliable servers?

Obviously Republicans didn't bother because they constantly tell us that government is not the solution, is inefficient, doesn't work. So they have a vested interest in leaving broken parts of government broken.

But why wouldn't HRC push to fix the State Dept servers for all, rather than just set up private ones for herself and a few other folks? How does that fit with how Democrats supposedly view government?

[DavidDvorkin]

3. Fact: That's an excellent question.

[COLGATE4]

4. You've never dealt with the Federal bureaucracy. The whole problem

with State's e-mail was that the whole Federal system was put together piecemeal by different contractors. Trying to fix a camel ("horse designed by committee) like that is a herculean task which touches many agencies. Not at all something either easy or quick to fix, if it really is fixable at all. Certainly nothing so routines as 'Hillary calls in her IT guy and tells him to fix the glitches'. Which is why many government people avoid using it.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

5. She had what, 4 years?

Did she even try to make a start on it?

[COLGATE4]

15. Do you know for a fact that she didn't?

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

16. No, but you'd certainly think by now somebody would have mentioned if she had.

As part of her 'defense' against the 'non-scandal'.

[COLGATE4]

17. OK. The answer is no. nt

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

18. And I'm sure you've never in your life discussed the possibility of anything you don't know is fact.

And then had someone try to shut down discussion with the 'You don't know that's a fact' tactic.

Oh wait, the entire discussion is based on 'facts' that we're being provided by sources that not everyone trusts.

No one in any of these debates knows for sure what the 'facts' are, because no one here is on the inside.

So don't pretend you have any more 'facts' than me or anyone else.

[Thor_MN]

19. IT in government takes 4 years to decide to do something and choose a vendor

by which time the requirements are obsolete. Hell, with the GOP obstructing everything, I doubt that any money could have been appropriated to fix the servers.

[Bill USA]

6. have you heard of the Republican party & what they do to budget proposals from Obama administration?

http://thehill.com/policy/finance/227969-budget-war-looms-for-obama-gop

Democrats have argued that maintaining an outdated funding level for DHS prevents the administration from implementing new programs on cybersecurity and counterterrorism.

[Bill USA]

8. e.g. GOP cut Obama admin's request 4 State Dept's Worldwide Security program 2011, 2012, 2013

http://www.democraticunderground.com/101663126

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

9. Reading the very link you gave me

they cut staff and security funding. I don't see any mention of IT funding. I'm sure you've already made the same decision Secretary Clinton did. That fixing the servers was less important than spending money maintaining lots of staff at various embassies. (Do we really need 100 people in Venezuela?)

I tend to think secure email servers for EVERYONE at State might have been a wee bit higher priority than making sure various large donors and bundlers had fun playing ambassador. But that's just me, coming from a background where I've spent a lot of years in IT before trying to switch over to nursing.

[Bill USA]

10. I used that as an EXAMPLE of what it's like to get funding requests approved by the GOP! Security

efforts I think anybody would agree is something that should have been relatively easy to get approved in 2011 -2013. Getting approval for IT improvements would not be any easier.

[font size=+1"] the GOP has been practicing the Politics of Destruction ever since Obama went into WH. THey are not interested in helping Obama achieve anything even when cutting allotments, funding requests hurts the country.

Dont' be an ass: "than making sure various large donors and bundlers had fun playing ambassador" ... or a Republican -- the security requests were for making embassies more secure. [/font]

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

12. Are you saying that a Secretary has absolutely no discretion in how they spend their own funds?

I wasn't suggesting she go hat in hand to the Congress and say 'Please sir, some more IT gruel?'

I was saying shuffle money around internally and devote some of it to doing vitally important upgrades.

[Thor_MN]

20. At the expense of what? Embassy security perhaps?

"Shuffle money around" means taking money away from something else.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

21. Well sure.

After all, the vast majority of our embassies have never had any real security issues. Heck, the Venezuelans are saying we have to shed 83 staffers from our embassy there. Why did we need 100 people in Venezuela anyway?

[Thor_MN]

23. Maybe you haven't heard, but there was this litle Bengahzi incident???

The buck should stop with the head of a department, but it is doubtful that the SOS spends much time on planning IT infrastructure. That would be the responsibility of the IT group. If you want to complain that she had an inadequate IT department, go ahead, otherwise your complaints sound about as meaningful as complaining about the quality of the toilet paper in US Embassies being Hillary's fault.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

24. Yeah, I heard about it, and so what?

I didn't say 'strip all security' or even 'take security from all embassies and consulates'. It's a big world out there, and most of our overseas postings are in far safer places than Libya. You could certainly leave security alone in the hot spots, and still remove some of it in many other places.

[Thor_MN]

25. Yeah, you would blame her for single ply...

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

26. I didn't blame her for 'Benghazi' but you think I'd blame her for toilet paper?

Alright, I'm not replying any more, you've taken this into the land of ludicrousness.

[Thor_MN]

27. It's been there a while, you passed that landmark a longtime ago.

[Maedhros]

31. Erich, your shouting into the void.

The answer to every mistake by a Democrat will be that "the Republicans made them do it."

Anyone with any knowledge of network security understands the risks of running sensitive communications through a private server. Deflecting by blaming Republican obstruction is just making excuses.

[Bill USA]

34. their are regulations about how money is appropriated & allocated to the agencies of th Government

The money must be spent for the purpose for which it was appropriated. You cannot shuffle money around as you please.

Funds appropriation and allocation in the Government is very complicated. Money for Embassy Security operations cannot be spent for Communications and data processing equipment (computers). Now if you are thinking - well, Embassy Security Ops would include communicating between security personnel and to superiors - in country and back in the U.S. That would be true. But because communications ops and equipment (especially concerning computers) is a very sophisticated/complex issue it is handled by people within State who have expertise and training in this area. They are the people who should be making decisions about what equipment is used and the rules re secure communications.

I'm afraid you really have no concept about how complicated it is to run an operation of the size and complexity of .. well, virtually any department within the Federal Government. But Dept of state has the vastly more complex/challenging problems of operating in foreign countries and the necessary communications (secure communications) and personnel security challenges faced by such far-flung foreign country based operations.

The Secretary of State is entirely focused on the conduct of United States foreign policy - the detailed operations are the responsibility of one of the six Under Secretaries of State. There are two Deputy Secretaries of State whose responsibilities are foreign relations program focused. There are six Under Secretaries of State. The Under Secretary responsible for operations is the Under Secretary for Management.

U.S. Department of State - Department Organization

The Under Secretary for Management: Patrick F. Kennedy

The Under Secretary for Management leads the bureaus of Administration, Consular Affairs, Diplomatic Security, Human Resources, Information Resource Management, and Overseas Buildings Operations, the Foreign Service Institute, the Office of Medical Services, the Office of Management Policy, the Office of Rightsizing the U.S. Government’s Overseas Presence, and the White House Liaison.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

35. You're right that I don't know how complex things are, or how the delegation of responsibilities run

But because communications ops and equipment (especially concerning computers) is a very sophisticated/complex issue it is handled by people within State who have expertise and training in this area. They are the people who should be making decisions about what equipment is used and the rules re secure communications.

But if they're so 'expert' and 'trained', one would expect that the servers wouldn't be in such a crappy shape in the first place, that the Secretaries wouldn't even trust or want to use the State servers. You can't have it both ways. Either these people are highly trained experts, in which case you'd expect them to know what the heck they're doing, and for things to be kept in good working order, or else they need replaced with people who will get the job needed to be done, done.

[Bill USA]

36. wow! impressed with the speed of your response. I can only say, and this may sound like a 'cop-out'

but in an ideal world - especially when it comes to computing equipment - what you say would be true. But, in the real world, including in the private sector, maintaining expertise is challenging. Maintaining your expertise and 'edge' keep in mind is partly a matter of competing for talent and that takes money. Also, especially in the area of computing equipment and software (security of data has as much to do with your systems software as much as hardware), - maintaining an 'edge' is challenging and often management doesn't know their organization's 'edge' has become somewhat dull until something goes wrong (as in - you get hacked).

You may have heard, even Microsoft get's hacked.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

37. I happened to have just stepped back to the computer when you posted your comment.

I got a masters in systems analysis, then worked in the private sector for quite a while before getting burnt out and trying to switch fields. And I have to say, even in the tiny company I worked for, if my boss didn't feel he could trust our servers, and I didn't fix things to the point where he felt he could within a month or two, tops, I would have been unemployed, unless I could show him that the problem was a hack for which there was no known patch or hardware fix. He didn't believe in excuses, he just expected working equipment.

[Bill USA]

38. I think the key here is: " tiny company " .. Small companies without Human Resources dept. are run

by the owners. I'm sure you are aware that the smaller the company the quicker they can react and 'turn on a dime' much moreso than larger companies - say, like a Microsoft, or IBM, whatever.

Also: "unless I could show him that the problem was a hack for which there was no known patch" ... I thought this was what we were talking about re network security - exogenous threats rather than internal software glitches - which are something everybody deals with all the time or at least every time a new/modified product or piece of code is launched. Management feels much more able to act when repetitive software glitches due to internal failures occur (or too much time is needed to fix the glitch) as they feel they are paying their software people to know about the internal variables such that glitches don't happen more than to a tolerable extent - or can be fixed in a reasonable (largely determined by business considerations outside your control) period of time.

BTW, if you were the entire software shop, or the sole administrator, you were taking on a very difficult task. When it comes to writing software or managing a system, even for a small company, the permutations you get into with interfacing products - when changing any piece of code in any one of the working programs - are enormous. Frankly, I think a company - even a very tiny one - is asking for trouble depending on just one Software Designer. This is a situation - finding the needed fix to a glitch - where two or more heads are better than one.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

39. The boss was a coder as well.

And, off and on, he hired a third guy on for specific issues. The boss wrote point of sale code, I did web code and database work for both my code and his, and dealt with just about everything else. The java guy never worked out, the php guy did do some decent front end pages, and our linux guru type was addicted to spaghetti code, but over the years it was mostly me. Where I probably came closest to getting the boot was in getting the credit card servers up to code to pass their mandated industry security tests - that took longer than I would have liked, and certainly longer than he wanted.

[FSogol]

28. I'm sure the job of Secretary of State takes up enough time without self-adding

the task of fixing the Government's IT problems too.

Your post essentially reads, "Why didn't she fix EVERYTHING?"

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

29. She doesn't have to do it herself.

State has a ton of employees.

My post reads, 'When your Department is screwed up, get it in shape. Otherwise, you're as crappy a manager as the person before you.'

[quadrature]

7. Fact: HRC ordered others not to use private email for StateD business...nt

[Bill USA]

11. got any links/documentation? Democrats require documentation, unlike Fox viewers..LOL!

[quadrature]

14. well, that is the rumor I am hearing...nt

[Bill USA]

40. I rest my case. (at least you're honest - admitting it's based on rumor)

[Bill USA]

13. Read OP: "FACT: The law restricting such private accounts by public officials was changed in 2014"

[libdem4life]

22. Good OP. This is still a low political news cycle...both sides suddenly think they have some real

red meat.

And who is "redder" than good ol' Hillary. "Did too, did not, did too, did not." Classic. Non issue...except for...see above. Even Democrats have tired of the Old Reliable Hillary Scandals and are hot on the new trail. Pretty sure they will cycle back as soon as this one clears the news cycle.

[leveymg]

30. Fact: All of Lanny Davis' "facts" aren't

(NOT) Fact: Hillary Clinton's use of a private e-mail account when she was secretary of State was lawful. The law restricting such private accounts by public officials was changed in 2014.

FACT: The law that was violated was the 1950 Federal Records Act as amended in 1976. That imposed a duty on all federal agency heads to preserve and turn over all records regardless of form, specifically the '76 amendment specified "machine readable" documents. Hillary's private servers were not set up to secure email, instead to keep its existence secret and under her own control. FOIA and committee requests issued that touched on this data were ignored or unavailable for release by the Department. The data that survived was not disclosed until two months ago. The 2014 change in regulations isn't relevant.

(NOT) Fact: The 2009 Archives Preservation Law was not violated. Secretary Clinton's e-mails were preserved on the server, regardless of whether it was located at home. More than 50,000 pages had already been turned over. On Wednesday, she asked the State Department to review and release them.

FACT: The "2009 Archives Preservation Law" is not a law, it is an order that applies to Presidential Records, not federal agencies. The complete list of laws and orders relevant to the archives is here, including the 2008 Presidential Records Historical Preservation Act of 2008 that Davis may be referencing: http://www.archives.gov/presidential-libraries/laws/ The Presidential Order of 2009 is here: http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/executive-orders/2009-obama.html#13489

(NOT) Fact: Thousands of State Department officials and others received e-mails from Secretary Clinton during her tenure, and all knew that she was using a private e-mail address. This flat out contradicts all the baseless innuendo that she was attempting to hide her use of a private e-mail address.


(FACT) Nobody who Clinton communicated with outside of her inner circle knew that her email wasn't being backed up by government servers and that these messages would not be released until nearly two years after she left office.

(NOT) Fact: Secretary Clinton's use of a private e-mail account for both personal and official diplomatic communications was not unprecedented. Former secretary of State Colin Powell has said that his private e-mail account was used for both purposes, too.

(FACT) Two wrongs don't make a right. In fact, the Bush Administration destroyed hundreds of thousands of emails, but weren't indicted for it when this was discovered in 2007 because the law has no teeth - no specific penalties for noncompliance, a fact that was widely noted at the time.

~~
~~

Fact: Former Florida governor Jeb Bush also used private e-mail for personal and official business. Despite a misleading statement from his spokesperson, Gov. Bush did not disclose all his e-mails. He selected which ones not to disclose.

OK - Two wrong don't make a right. Besides, Jeb is a state official and these federal laws and rules don't apply to him. Besides, nobody much cares what he has said, which isn't much.

[Maedhros]

32. The only fact I am concerned with is this:

The Obama Administration has been prosecuting whistle blowers and journalists for their roles in leaking government secrets at an unprecedented rate.

Yet, knowing that today's Internet environment is plagued by malware and hacking they allowed State Department communications to be conducted through unsecure servers. That tells me they really aren't that concerned with leaks, but more with intimidating people who would reveal government malfeasance.

[leveymg]

33. +1000