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Author | Topic: The Clinton Email Controversy | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Percy Member Posts: 22507 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4 |
I haven't followed the details, but now that Trump is threatening to put Hillary in jail for using a personal email server I'd like to understand this better. This is the basics discovered after a few minutes of reading:
--Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22507 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4 |
Theodoric writes: I have seen nothing that she sent any classified information. She received some that had classified info. Anything she sent that was deemed classified was deemed classified after the fact. As I understand it there are two problems. One is that Clinton was both receiving and sending emails that included information already declared classified. I get the impression that the classified information was attachments, not the actual message typed by Secretary Clinton. Naturally a classified attachment could not originate on Clinton's server, but once received she could forward it and attach it to other emails she sent. The other problem is that the emails with their classified attachments remained on Clinton's server where, being outside the State Department's classified networks, they presented a continuing security risk.
According to Wikipedia:
quote: It's worth noting that 113 out of 30,000 is a pretty good compliance rate. Wikipedia continues:
quote: In what I quote from you here I changed "classified email" to "classified information" because I'm pretty sure that's what you meant:
A key point on all of this is that email was and has never been thought of as safe for classified information. Hillary Clinton and others were well aware of this. I'm not sure if that's true. The State Department does have what they consider classified computer networks which presumably have email accounts. The security exposure was because Hillary wasn't using those.
The State Dept system is not considered safe for that. There is evidence the State Dept system has been hacked. My understanding is that the State Department has both classified and unclassified computer networks, that the classified network has not been hacked, and that the State Department is working to improve the security of its classified computer networks. Hillary denies having computer expertise and couldn't argue that she used a personal server out of concerns about State Department computer security. Even had Hillary used internal State Department email addresses the odds are pretty good that there would have been continual leakage between the classified and unclassified networks. One would hope that the State Department now has email firewalls that prevent anyone sending classified information from the classified networks to anywhere outside it. But security and utility are often at odds with one another. The speed and spottiness with which clearances are issued probably comes into regular conflict with the urgency to share information, forcing people to work at bypassing the system to do what needs to be done, security concerns notwithstanding. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22507 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4 |
Taq writes: From the wiki page: "Three emails, out of 30,000, were found to be marked as classified, although they lacked classified headers and were only marked with a small "c" in parentheses, described as "portion markings" by Comey" So only 3 emails had any markings declaring them to be Classified at the time they were handled by Clinton's email server. Hmmm. That wasn't my interpretation of what Wikipedia was trying to say. They actually comment about this is two different places, here's a fuller excerpt:
quote: I thought this meant all these emails had classified headers ("Confidential", "Secret" or "Top Secret"), except for three that had no classified headers and were only marked with a small "c" in parentheses. I've been trying to nail down whether that's correct, and it turns out I'm wrong. There seems to be a lot of confusion out there about this, and there really shouldn't be because Comey was unambiguous in his press conference:
quote: So you're right. Interestingly, nowhere in his press conference did Comey mention a "small 'c' in parentheses," and I couldn't find the original source of that information, only articles repeating it. Fox News has link to one of these emails (Banda Email), but the topic is innocuous (setting up a phone call), it's a capital "C" not a small "c" between parentheses at the bottom of the email, there's an explicit classification of "CONFIDENTIAL" near the top with a date of this year (so who knows where that came from), and this article says it was a staff error where the confidential classification should have been removed but wasn't. What I wasn't expecting as I read articles from earlier this year was how harsh the liberal press was on Hillary. No news source gave her a break. The best spin any articles put on it was that it was pretty bad. Even articles that described how the State Department and the intelligence community constantly bicker over what should be classified were very harsh. But it was often difficult to tell whether the articles understood that Comey said only three emails had any explicit indication of their confidentiality level, rather than the other interpretation too many articles seemed to make. Anyway, I don't think Hillary got a free ride from the liberal press on this issue. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22507 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4 |
I forgot that I wanted to make a couple comments about the FBI investigation. I wanted to look at the FBI report, but I could only find it in low quality non-searchable PDF at the FBI website: FBI Report on Clinton Emails. This would be too long and too painful to scan through, so if someone has a better source please post a link.
In the meantime I can only go by my impressions of the FBI investigation from Comey's press conference: it seemed superficial and unnuanced. I didn't see any recognition of the bickering between government departments about what's confidential. Nor was there any recognition that the State Department has both classified and unclassified networks and that Hillary would have used unclassified networks for most of her emails had she had a State Department email address, resulting in the same security vulnerability. Nor was there any acknowledgment of emails that discussed how to share some specific confidential information given that email was inappropriate for it. Nor was there any hint of the general nature of emails touching on confidential, secret or top secret information - for example, did the emails contain actual top secret information, or were they only discussions in some way referencing a top secret subject, in a manner similar to the confidential Banda email about the time of a phone call. On the plus side, it was nice to see him say that no criminal intent was involved. I tried to find Benghazi emails at the WSJ Clinton Email Search Site, but no luck: "No matching records found" --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22507 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4 |
dwise1 writes: Who classifies information? Government agencies do. Do they classify that information before that information comes into existence? No, they classify it afterwards. So then during the original transmissions, what was their classification? Er, none? The government's position is that classified information shouldn't exist on unclassified systems, but where did Hillary's received emails come from, and where did the sent emails go? Looking at just a few of Hillary's emails (WSJ Clinton Email Search), many were being received from and sent to email addresses at the domain state.gov, which is an unclassified network. All indications are that the State Department uses this network for most email communication, and this practice did not suddenly begin when Clinton became Secretary of State but must also have been the practice under Condoleezza Rice, who was not herself an email user But with Clinton began exchanges of email containing classified information with an outside server. Regardless how secure Clinton's server, it represented a security hole outside State Department control. True, the State Department's unclassified network has its own security problems, but it's under State Department control. Even had Clinton used a state.gov email address, she would still have been guilty of sending and receiving classified information on an unclassified network. Rice avoided the problem by not using email, but undoubtedly during her time the State Department must have used the state.gov domain for classified information, for how else were they to communicate? So Clinton continued a practice that was already in place when she took office. Her unique fault was not that she used unclassified networks for classified information, for that practice was ongoing and probably continues to this day, but that she used her own email server, thereby exposing the State Department to potential security breaches they were unaware of. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22507 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4 |
This thread is about the Clinton email controversy. Maybe you could repost this over at The 2016 United States Presidential Election.
--Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22507 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4 |
CNN (and the NYT and Reuters and everyone else) reports that the FBI is reviewing new emails in Clinton classified information probe. The FBI provided this information:
--Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22507 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4 |
RAZD writes: The emails are not from Clinton. ... But they are about how the Clinton machine shook down donors to the foundation for the enrichment of the Clintons (Bill Inc). They are about skirting the laws and not following the intent of the agreement with Obama. Just to be clear, you cannot be referring to the emails that were the subject of FBI Director James Comey's Friday letter to Congress. It isn't yet known what is in those emails, or even why they're relevant. I don't think we can say we know the emails were not from Hillary. This is the text of Comey's letter, and it doesn't say anything about who the emails are from or to, nor anything about their content. It only says that the emails "appear to be pertinent to the investigation":
quote: The information that the emails were not from Hillary comes from a news report described here in this Slate article:
quote: There's a video in the article where Williams says these things, I wasn't able to embed it in this message. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22507 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4
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We know a little more today, this information is from the CNN article FBI discovered Clinton-related emails weeks ago:
Does anyone in Washington just go about their lives and work activities without getting involved in intrigue? --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22507 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4
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Has the FBI been politicized? FBI Director Comey's 10/28 letter raised strong suspicions, but today's announcement removes a great deal of doubt. According to the NYT:
quote: Is this to be the FBI's position on the Clinton emails, that from now until the end of time the discovery of any Clinton emails on any device is grounds for public announcements that the investigation is being reopened so that a decision can be made anew about whether to charge her? This is absurd, inflammatory, defamatory and absurd. Pleh! --Percy
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