Hillary Clinton: You've Got Mail

[Triple C]

A four letter name starting with a C?

[tuna]

^^^

Reminds me of the old joke:

A bishop and a rabbi are sitting on a train, the bishop is doing a crossword puzzle.
He looks over at the rabbi and asks, "What's a four letter word for woman, ending in 'nt"?
The rabbi doesn't even look up from his paperback, "Aunt".
The bishop says, "Of course! Do you have an eraser?"

[JAD_333]

Tuna is right. This wouldn't be as a big deal if Hillary weren't a presumptive candidate for president. To be honest, speaking as a Republican, a hit on Hillary is okay with me. We didn't plan this. In fact, behind the scenes, it's likely Republican planners admitted as much to each other--no big deal, but we're not coming to the rescue.

But since we're among friends here, I have to admit the MSM and the attack dogs are overdoing it, particularly the security aspect. I am only speaking in Hillary's case. As Secretary of State she surely had a good sense of what was and what was not too sensitive for private email. The top dog always does. So secrets were probably not revealed. I suspect she just wanted to vent in private on personalities and freely use expletives without having them show up later in the official record.

So, what does State do? I can certainly see State looking over the emails she has so far released to them and saying we can't put this stream of consciousness out. Maybe they want to stonewall until after next year's election. What excuse can they make? If they use the national security dodge, they would be in effect saying what she did was definitely illegal, and the longer they stall, the more people will suspect that is the case.

She's not helping herself at all the way she's handling this thing. Holding back 20k+ emails because they contain personal info doesn't mean they also didn't non-personal information. So there's a black hole. And giving all the rest to State to vet for security' sake is almost like saying there may have been classified info in them. She might have been better off just saying it was a personal email account and there's nothing classified in them, which is the same right everyone has. Even a top dog has some right to privacy.

[Sitting Bull]

If the Republicans push this too far they run the risk of having one of their own shoot themselves in the foot in the same way. Outside of political circles I don't see the issue making that much of a ripple, particularly in a country where it's common knowledge that the state eavesdrops on e-mails.

[gf0012-aust]

the volume and content of the emails is garnering all the attention - but the main issue is about her mail server, its administration, how a single server was structured to be the same gateway for different levels of classified material - and more importantly, the bearer path

from a security and forensic perspective, the email content is just fluff as its visible evidence, its the other issues above which hold more weight if anyone is looking at running a proper investigation

if you are going to issue subpoenas and/or warrants for anything it would be against the server manager, server administrators and IT companies that built and maintained the platforms and associated supporting footprints. (you'd also be seizing far more than the server)

some of the public media commentary demonstrates that they either are clueless re the actual security issues or they're just in for the noisemaking ride. This is an iceberg issue, and focussing on the visible bit of the iceberg (email content) seems to me to indicate that this is more sideshow fury rather than seriously addressing the fundamentals

from a security perspective, I'd be ripping the wings off a lot of people in the delivery chain below her. from a security perspective, its borderline appalling. a lot of people in State are culpable in this as well

[Triple C]

^^^

Reminds me of the old joke:

A bishop and a rabbi are sitting on a train, the bishop is doing a crossword puzzle.
He looks over at the rabbi and asks, "What's a four letter word for woman, ending in 'nt"?
The rabbi doesn't even look up from his paperback, "Aunt".
The bishop says, "Of course! Do you have an eraser?"

Name of an East Asian country, tuna! That said, the C word is the second oldest vulgarity on the book. :-P Baaack on subject.

[citanon]

Obama adviser behind leak of Hillary Clinton

the connivery thickens like delicious barbeque glaze.

[Wooglin]

As I've been saying...

FOIA Expert: Hillary's Email Justification Is 'Laughable' | The Daily Caller

An expert on the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is calling Hillary Clinton’s assurances about her use of a private email account “laughable.”

“There is no doubt that the scheme she established was a blatant circumvention of the Freedom of Information Act, atop the Federal Records Act,” Daniel Metcalfe told The Canadian Press.

Metcalfe is currently a professor at American University. Prior to that he served in the Justice Department’s Office of Information and Privacy from 1981 to 2007 where he helped federal agencies understand and comply with FOIA regulations.

“What she did was contrary to both the letter and the spirit of the law,” Metcalfe said.

Besides using only a private email address, Clinton also used a private server registered to her Chappaqua, N.Y. home.

By having sole access to her emails, Clinton was able to avoid providing the records to FOIA requests. She also said Tuesday that she deleted more than 30,000 emails she claims were related to her personal life.

At least six FOIA requests were filed for records pertaining to Clinton’s emails or to any alias email accounts she may have operated.

But those were unfilled. While the State Department has failed to respond to some of the requests — something that the Associated Press is suing over — it has also completely rejected others claiming that no records could be found.

Those rejections should not have happened. Emails pertaining to official business must be turned over through FOIA even if sent through a private email account. Clinton only made her emails available to the State Department in December, nearly two years after she left office.

“You can’t have the secretary of state do that; that’s just a prescription for the circumvention of the FOIA,” Metcalfe told The Canadian Press. “Plus, fundamentally, there’s no way the people at the archives should permit that if you tell them over there.”

Clinton defended her use of the private account and her failure to convert her emails into records available to FOIA by claiming that a majority of them would have been archived as records because they were sent to others in the State Department or at outside federal agencies.

But that is a dodgy response, many have noted. It does not answer the question of how Clinton’s official emails to non-governmental employees — private corporations, her charity foundation, Bill Clinton, outside advisers — would have been captured.

Asked how he would have responded upon hearing that a federal official had set up a private email account while commandeering sole control over whether they would be turned over or deleted, Metcalfe told CBC, “I would’ve said, ‘You’ve gotta be kidding me.’”

“Her suggestion that government employees can unilaterally determine which of their records are personal and which are official, even in the face of a FOIA request, is laughable.”

[Wooglin]

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-me...low-all-rules/

Federal Records

There was not an explicit, categorical prohibition against federal employees using personal emails when Clinton was in office, said Daniel Metcalfe, former director of the Department of Justice’s Office of Information Policy, where he administered implementation of the Freedom of Information Act. High-level officials like Clinton need the flexibility to sometimes use a personal email, such as responding to a national security emergency in the middle of the night.

So it seems she didn’t break a rule simply by using a personal email to conduct business. Rather, by using personal emails exclusively, she skirted the rules governing federal records management, Cox said.

A federal record is any documentary material, regardless of physical form, made or received by a government agency, according to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), which oversees federal recordkeeping. Records are preserved as evidence of the agencies’ activities, decisions and procedures. Each agency is responsible for maintaining its records in accordance with regulations.

It would have been a violation of the NARA's rules in the Code of Federal Regulations for Clinton to use personal email exclusively, Metcalfe said. The code requires federal agencies to make and preserve records that duly document agency activity, so that they are readily available when needed -- such as for FOIA requests or congressional inquiries. Using personal email exclusively is contrary to proper record preservation.

"Anyone at NARA would have said you can’t use a personal email account for all of your official business," said Metcalfe, who held his position in part during former President Bill Clinton’s administration.

Had Clinton used a @state.gov email address, every email sent and received would have been archived in the State Department system. Clinton, who served from 2009 to 2013, has argued that her emails were archived in the system because she was in the habit of sending them to other government employees with .gov email addresses.

However, experts said this defense is insufficient. Under this practice, the State Department records management system would have captured emails from Clinton to a State Department employee, but it would not necessarily capture emails from Clinton to government employees in other departments or non-government employees, said John Wonderlich, policy director for the Sunlight Foundation, which advocates for government transparency.

Although they may contain the same individual emails, Clinton’s outbox and other employees’ inboxes are considered two separate records, which is important for locating the records in response to specific requests.

For example, even if Clinton had sent every email to individuals with state.gov or other federal agency addresses, that procedure would hamper State Department compliance with Freedom of Information Act requests for Clinton’s emails, said David Sobel, who directs a FOIA project at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital freedom advocacy group. It would not be apparent to agency personnel conducting the search that they would need to search the accounts of myriad employees to locate all of Clinton's emails, he said.

"In fact, State likely would have argued that it would be unreasonable to conduct such a far-reaching search," Sobel said.

In 2013, Gawker filed a FOIA request to the State Department for emails between Clinton and long-time adviser Sid Blumenthal after a hacker had revealed emails that Blumenthal sent Clinton. Although the emails were already known to the public, the State Department told Gawker that no such correspondence existed. Gawker believes this shows that Clinton was able to use her personal email to thwart the FOIA process.

"Using a personal email account exclusively is a potent prescription for flouting the Federal Records Act and circumventing the Freedom of Information Act," Metcalfe said. "And there can be little doubt that Clinton knew this full well."

In response to a State Department request last year, Clinton turned over 55,000 pages of emails and documents from her private email server, leaving out emails and documents that she said were of a personal nature, like wedding and funeral plans. She later said she deleted these personal emails.

Cox said the fact that Clinton’s staff -- rather than a State Department federal records officer -- chose which emails to destroy is "honestly breathtaking." Her private employees don’t have the authority to decide what does or doesn’t count as a federal record. Further, when she was making these choices, she was acting as a private citizen, not a government employee.

In Clinton’s defense, we should note that it was only after Clinton left the State Department, that the National Archives issued a recommendation that government employees should avoid conducting official business on personal emails (though they noted there might be extenuating circumstances such as an emergency that require it). Additionally, in 2014, President Barack Obama signed changes to the Federal Records Act that explicitly said federal officials can only use personal email addresses if they also copy or send the emails to their official account.

Because these rules weren’t in effect when Clinton was in office, "she was in compliance with the laws and regulations at the time," said Gary Bass, founder and former director of OMB Watch, a government accountability organization.

"Unless she violated a rule dealing with the handling of classified or sensitive but unclassified information, I don’t see how she violated any law or regulation," said Bass, who is now executive director of the Bauman Foundation. "There may be a stronger argument about violating the spirit of the law, but that is a very vague area."

Security

Whether or not Clinton’s email address complied with security regulations is a harder question. Clinton argues that she never emailed classified information, instead using other secure methods of communication approved by the State Department.

However, in 2005 (before Clinton took office), a State Department manual said information that is "sensitive but unclassified" -- a broad category that covers anything from meeting schedules, to visa applications, to ordinary emails to other federal agencies -- should be emailed through servers authorized by the department.

We also don’t know if the State Department had signed off on Clinton’s private server or if the server met government security standards, though the State Department was aware of the server. At the press conference, Clinton said the server was set up for former President Bill Clinton’s office and that it had "numerous safeguards."

The State Department has said there is no indication her account was breached.

"Her assurance that there was no security breach is an empty assurance, because there’s no way to know that for sure," Wonderlich said.

As we found in a prior fact-check, Clinton’s office sent a memo in 2011 to State Department staff that said they should not use personal email accounts for department business. The memo went to diplomatic and consular staff worldwide in response to a warning from Google that hackers had targeted the Gmail addresses of government workers. While the memo encouraged staffers to avoid using personal email accounts, it fell short of prohibiting their use.

In sum, Clinton’s exclusive use of private email makes it difficult to know with certainty whether she complied with rules governing transparency, recordkeeping and security. We may never know what emails she deleted. Additionally, we may never know the details of her conversations with the State Department officials who briefed her on records management and security, and why they agreed to let her use a private email exclusively.

Metcalfe pointed to Clinton’s use of the word "allowed" and "opted" throughout her press conference, when referring to her decision to use private email. He said both words give the false impression that the law and its proper implementation presented her with a choice. She might have been "allowed" to use only a private email account in that no one stopped her, Metcalfe said, but that’s not the same thing as lawfully complying with rules.

[Blademaster]

Obama adviser behind leak of Hillary Clinton

the connivery thickens like delicious barbeque glaze.

Probably payback for the judas thing pulled off by former SecDef Panetta criticizing Obama in Syria and Iraq which was sanctioned by Hillary and her gang.

[JAD_333]

As I've been saying...

FOIA Expert: Hillary's Email Justification Is 'Laughable' | The Daily Caller

An expert on the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is calling Hillary Clinton’s assurances about her use of a private email account “laughable.”

“There is no doubt that the scheme she established was a blatant circumvention of the Freedom of Information Act, atop the Federal Records Act,” Daniel Metcalfe told The Canadian Press.

Not to defend Hillary here, but Metcalfe cannot possibly know what her motivation was for setting up the private email account. It might have begun as a way for her to communicate personal matters so they wouldn't be captured by the official email system and morphed into a way to communicate job-related comments. We just don't know.

While Metcalfe may be right, he'll need a smoking gun to prove it.

The FOIA request delays are more serious than her motivation. Up to now she has maintained that her emails do not include classified info. The only way to prove that and lift black cloud of suspicion is by honoring the FOIA request. State's stonewalling may be an attempt to avoid revealing that some of her emails did indeed contain classified or sensitive information, in which case Hillary would truly be in legal hot water. Another reason State be stalling is that the emails contain harsh language about certain people that would embarrass her and the US.

Hillary keeps digging a hole for herself. State is too. What State should do is cull out any emails it believes would be detrimental to the US and stand on that reasoning to deny the FOIA request and release the rest. That is a perfectly reasonable response. FOIA is not meant to be an open track for discovery of everything communicated within government. Most FOIA requests deal with documents about matters that are no longer current. The government is not obligated to provided everything requested, but must cite a reason when a request is denied. The problem here is that State is well past the timeframe allowed for denying or fulfilling requests.

IMO we should not wholesale release her emails if they contain compromising information. We don't want another Snowden/Manning moment.

[Albany Rifles]

As governor, Jeb Bush used e-mail to discuss security, troop deployments - The Washington Post

Just sayin'....

This was a common practice by many politicians until last few years when the laws changed.

Remember, bad practicies are not illegal.

That said, I'd rather to see the shortfalls mentioned than to look to the "leaders" as mentioend in the following editorial.

It's 2015 for crissakes!!!!


Offline and out of touch in the Senate - The Washington Post

[JAD_333]

I love the way the technical elite criticize old fogies for not using e-mail. E-mail isn't always the best way to communicate; telephone is far better. Nuanced communication is difficult in e-mails. And e-mailers tend not to think things through. You write it,you send it, and lt's gone. With a letter or a phone call you can elaborate or take a second crack at it.

Anyway, all these revelations about other officials having private e-mail accounts are beside the point. It's not having an account that matters, but about the legality of using it for job-related communications.

All the rest is conjecture. Most of the technical and legal experts weighing in on the issue are talking out of their ass. They have no clue about the different levels of communication between officials and their confidants, or the need for this informal chatter. To know what I mean all one has to do is join the embassy and private cocktail party circuit in DC and listen to the chatter (if you can). Even better are internal gossip and closed-door meetings within departments and agencies. Let the media try to find out what's being said, but they have zero right to know.

E-mail came along as another way of engaging in let-your-hair down chatter. Now we're seeing it morph into something sinister. Well, I suppose we had to go through this soul-searching phase about whether e-mail is a good way to do this. Apparently, it isn't; so back to the telephone, private written notes, and face to face chats. Let the media try to get those through FOIA.

[gf0012-aust]

I love the way the technical elite criticize old fogies for not using e-mail. E-mail isn't always the best way to communicate; telephone is far better.

VOIP and ROIP are being recorded as well on the higher networks

I'm just gobsmacked that any material related to your duties is allowed to be carried on private email. that is an absolute no-no in a number of countries

the press still can't see the forest for the trees. this is way beyond an issue of content

[Julie]

Ahem, from a woman's perspective, there was no way Hillary could have communications with her personal aide Huma, and turn that over for review. I mean really. Weiner, the scandalous and embarrassing husband. Huma paid as a full-time government employee while still a full-time employee at a consulting firm. Speaking of which, has anyone seen Weiner accompany his wife to any events the last 9 months, or even been seen in public? No, cuz he is now an official house bitch and probably wont see the sun for years to come.

If Hillary was to turn over all the cover-up baggage for review and public scrutiny, she would be dead in the water by the primaries.

Nixon is probably rolling over in his grave by now. Must be nice to be above the law.