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IG: Some Emails on Clinton's Server Were Beyond Top Secret

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PokerGuy said:
That is not a reasonable expectation, at all. In her role as SoS, any reasonable person would know you could expect to get email from foreign counterparts, which automatically would become classified, not to mention any number of other emails that could have sensitive information that could become classified. She ignored the risks because she wanted to avoid oversight and retention requirements. Stupid, reckless and irresponsible seem entirely appropriate.
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If we accept your premise, it doesn't change the fact that this would cause the exact same concerns if her email was on the State Department's office email servers. They are not secured for classified information either (and we know they've been hacked).

Based on what we've learned about Clinton's email, it seems to me Uncle Sam needs to catch up with the 21st century. Email is a fact of life, and like it or not, government officials around the world will use it. It's also a fact of life that the press will publish all sorts of things that the intelligence community wants to keep secret. If the government can't devise a global, mobile solution to accommodate these facts of life, they need to come up with a more realistic standard of classification.


The "they did it too!" excuse does not absolve her from responsibility. I think what was done during the Bush admin with the RNC servers was equally reckless, stupid and irresponsible. Trying to avoid public scrutiny shows that these politicians need to be more closely watched.
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That's fair. If you apply the same "reckless, stupid and irresponsible" standard to her predecessors and the Bush administration, you are at least consistent in your views. As I stated before, I find that to be a bit over the top. We can agree to disagree.


Actually, it does, because when they own the server they have personal complete control over what happens with that server and the information on it. If they use hotmail, gmail etc, they can't control what is backed up and for how long etc, so there's at least some distance. Similarly, with the RNC, the organization had control over the servers, but no one individual (Powell, Rice etc) had the control to do whatever they wanted.
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I'm don't see a material difference between the Clinton's having control of their server vs. the RNC having control of the Bush servers. Using a public mail service would certainly undercut that control a bit, although it would also increase its vulnerability to outside exposure. I think all of these approaches are equally inappropriate. Government officials should conduct their business on government systems. Period.


Discussions about her motivation for doing things is speculation, but based on the information already provided, it is perfectly fine to state as a fact that what she did was wrong. ...
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Well no, it's not a fact that what she did is wrong. That is an opinion. It's an opinion I share, but it is just an opinion.
 
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PokerGuy said:
That's funny, that idiot Cummings is really going all out on the "they did it too!" excuse. What a moron, but I'm sure he's looking at the potential of a big reward for his loyal service if hildabeast ever gets in the white house.
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It serves to point out the blatant hypocrisy of many Republicans, and exposes their true motive. They were either silent or supportive when the Bush administration did it, but they're suddenly outraged and "concerned about national security" when (formidable candidate) Clinton did the same thing. I agree two wrongs don't make a right, but let's not kid ourselves about why Republicans actually care about this story.
 
ivwshane said:
Google is amazing isn't it? It's what I use to debunk your lying all the time.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/03/10/hillary-clinton-emails-blackberry/24725993/



http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/e...rypted-blackberry-for-clinton/article/2582067

Humm....who to trust? Dishonestpossum or reporters?

It's a tough one folks!
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Um, that might work IF there had been such a "superencrypted" Blackberry AND Mrs. Clinton had used the State Department for everything. Instead Mrs. Clinton used her own server, without such super encryption. That was easily done long before she took office. Here's a link from 2008.
http://supportforums.blackberry.com/t5/BlackBerry-Curve/Set-up-2-email-accounts/td-p/10563

Both email accounts would appear on the Blackberry, properly separated, and both would enjoy the same security as every government Blackberry.

Bowfinger said:
It doesn't matter how many times you assert a falsehood, it will not magically become true. Perhaps you've never worked with executives (or been an executive), but their world is much different than yours. They don't do things themselves. They tell others to do them. For Clinton it was as convenient as telling one of her staff to "Make it so." Bingo! Done. Whatever happened behind the scenes to fulfill that order was irrelevant to Clinton's convenience.

I'm not telling you to ignore it; you have too much rage towards Clinton to do that. I'm just telling you to stop lying about it. Quit pretending your speculation and innuendo are facts. They aren't.
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There are always decisions that have to be made when maintaining a server. We all know that. Using her own system, Mrs. Clinton had to make those decisions. She can tell her staff to "make it so", but first she has to decide what "so" shall be. Using the State Department servers, they would be made automatically, without need for bothering her, by professionals.

For the record, I have no rage toward Mrs. Clinton. I simply think that she represents the very worst in politicians. Politicians lie; Mrs. Clinton lies more than most. Politicians tend to grow wealthy from their "service"; Mrs. Clinton has been more blatant than most, taking millions for her foundation and in speaking fees from the very corporations and foreign governments with whom she is supposedly negotiating on our behalf. The Bushies maintained a separate political server, so that they could duck into something not subject to FOIA requests for sensitive subjects; Mrs. Clinton made the entire SecState her own private bailiwick. It's merely a matter of degree. But granting that politicians at the federal level tend to be slimy, why grant ultimate power to the very slimiest?
 
werepossum said:
Um, that might work IF there had been such a "superencrypted" Blackberry AND Mrs. Clinton had used the State Department for everything. Instead Mrs. Clinton used her own server, without such super encryption. That was easily done long before she took office. Here's a link from 2008.
http://supportforums.blackberry.com/t5/BlackBerry-Curve/Set-up-2-email-accounts/td-p/10563

Both email accounts would appear on the Blackberry, properly separated, and both would enjoy the same security as every government Blackberry.
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The issue isn't whether the Blackberry device can support two email accounts. The issue is whether the employer supports two accounts on their devices. I carried a corporate Blackberry for several years. We could not use them to connect to personal email because we (IT) didn't support it. Once we started supporting iPhones, I switched in part to get around that limitation. The USA Today link that you ignored suggests that State didn't support it either. Clinton's two options were carry two devices or use a personal email account.


There are always decisions that have to be made when maintaining a server. We all know that. Using her own system, Mrs. Clinton had to make those decisions. She can tell her staff to "make it so", but first she has to decide what "so" shall be. Using the State Department servers, they would be made automatically, without need for bothering her, by professionals. ...
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You just don't get it. She didn't have to decide a single thing beyond, "Set it up so all my mail come to my Blackberry." Her staff would handle ALL of the details without bothering her. I assume you've never worked around corporate executives. They don't care about such trivialities. "Here's what I want. Take care of it."
 
Bowfinger said:
The issue isn't whether the Blackberry device can support two email accounts. The issue is whether the employer supports two accounts on their devices. I carried a corporate Blackberry for several years. We could not use them to connect to personal email because we (IT) didn't support it. Once we started supporting iPhones, I switched in part to get around that limitation. The USA Today link that you ignored suggests that State didn't support it either. Clinton's two options were carry two devices or use a personal email account.



You just don't get it. She didn't have to decide a single thing beyond, "Set it up so all my mail come to my Blackberry." Her staff would handle ALL of the details without bothering her. I assume you've never worked around corporate executives. They don't care about such trivialities. "Here's what I want. Take care of it."
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I can only do so much. I can't force people to read the facts that are a direct contradiction to their claims. I guess I could create meme like pictures to help them get the point but somehow I don't think even that would help.
 
werepossum said:
There are always decisions that have to be made when maintaining a server. We all know that. Using her own system, Mrs. Clinton had to make those decisions. She can tell her staff to "make it so", but first she has to decide what "so" shall be. Using the State Department servers, they would be made automatically, without need for bothering her, by professionals.
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Which obviously doesn't mean that anybody would be pawing thru the Secretary's email looking for information to classify after the fact, I'm sure. It's presumptuously stupid to think that anybody has that authorization prior to a FOIA request & review by the Secretary's staff.
 
Here is an article from today's New York Times. It gives a more detailed look at the story of Powell and Rice's staff having email retroactively classified:
Classified Data Found in Personal Email of Colin Powell and Aides to Condoleezza Rice

WASHINGTON — The State Department has discovered a dozen emails containing classified information that were sent to the personal email accounts of Colin L. Powell and close aides of Condoleezza Rice during their tenures as secretaries of state for President George W. Bush.

Two emails were sent to Mr. Powell’s personal account, and 10 to personal accounts of Ms. Rice’s senior aides. Those emails have now been classified as “confidential” or “secret” as part of a review process that has resulted in similar “upgrades” of information sent through the personal email server that Hillary Clinton used
[ ... ]
Mr. Powell, in a telephone interview, disputed the department’s designation, saying he had reviewed the two emails with the inspector general’s office and responded incredulously, “What are you talking about?” The emails, he said, were sent by two career ambassadors and forwarded to him by his executive assistant, something he encouraged for important matters. One involved a kidnapping in the Philippines, the other general views on the situation in the Middle East. Both, he said, were now considered “confidential.”

“That is an absurdity,” he said. If two seasoned diplomats could not discuss their views with the secretary in unclassified emails, he said, “we might as well shut the department down.”
[ ... ]
The controversy over Mrs. Clinton’s use of a personal email server — which she has said was a mistake — has broadened into a review of all the secretaries in the age of widespread electronic communication. Mr. Powell said the advent of email, which he helped usher in at the department, had transformed the work of the nation’s diplomats, speeding communications with one another and Washington. ...
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Good read, IMO. It provides more context for some of the issues involved.
 
 
If they violated the law concerning classified data they should all go to jail for a term as defined by the levels that were violated.

All of them.
 
nickqt said:
This just in y'all!

More classified emails found on the private server.

HILDABEAST™ is goin' down!!!1! TREASON!!11!

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/pol...info-personam-emails-report-article-1.2520282

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/po...classified-data-in-personal-emails-2016-02-05

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box...ezza-rice-staff-received-classified-emails-on

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-clinton-emails-idUSKCN0VD2EQ

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wire...fied-email-found-powell-rice-tenures-36716638

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...o-got-classified-info-personal-emails-n511181

http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/04/polit...fied-colin-powell-condoleezza-rice/index.html

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/rice-aides-powell-also-got-classified-info-personal-emails
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I get it bro. Someone else also did it. Prosecute the lot of them!
 
compuwiz1 said:
I get it bro. Someone else also did it. Prosecute the lot of them!
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No, clearly you don't get it. Those stories reinforce the point that our current classification system is out of control. It's ridiculous to retroactively classify innocuous conversations and news stories.
 
Bowfinger said:
Those stories reinforce the point that our current classification system is out of control. It's ridiculous to retroactively classify innocuous conversations and news stories.
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Be that as it may (based on my limited knowledge of the classification process I would agree), it doesn't change anything with regard to avoiding retention requirements and FOIA requests by using a private server instead of the govt ones. That aspect of this mess to me is equally important, it provides excellent insight into the motivation of the scummy politicians. Obviously that happened long before hildabeast, and it was just as scummy then too.

In fact, I know some of you might gasp at my saying this, but I think it was scummier when the RNC was doing it, because it was a concerted group effort to shield a bunch of communications for everyone in power in the administration from oversight and retention (as opposed to hildabeast doing it for herself and her closest cronies).

The fact that it was done previously does not absolve or excuse hildabeast, and it should make everyone think about whether you want someone with that mentality in the most powerful office in the world....
 
PokerGuy said:
Be that as it may (based on my limited knowledge of the classification process I would agree), it doesn't change anything with regard to avoiding retention requirements and FOIA requests by using a private server instead of the govt ones. That aspect of this mess to me is equally important, it provides excellent insight into the motivation of the scummy politicians. Obviously that happened long before hildabeast, and it was just as scummy then too.

In fact, I know some of you might gasp at my saying this, but I think it was scummier when the RNC was doing it, because it was a concerted group effort to shield a bunch of communications for everyone in power in the administration from oversight and retention (as opposed to hildabeast doing it for herself and her closest cronies).

The fact that it was done previously does not absolve or excuse hildabeast, and it should make everyone think about whether you want someone with that mentality in the most powerful office in the world....
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I can largely agree. I'm not so concerned there was an intent to circumvent records retention, but I agree they probably intended to limit oversight.

Also, I'm not letting Clinton off the hook for possibly violating legitimate classification regulations. While I think some of the classification rules are ridiculous, we don't yet know what all was in Clinton's email. It's still possible there's something significant there, beyond "innocuous conversations and news stories". That's why I want to see what the FBI determines.
 
PokerGuy said:
The fact that it was done previously does not absolve or excuse hildabeast, and it should make everyone think about whether you want someone with that mentality in the most powerful office in the world....
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Serious question, if she wins are we going to get 4-8 years of "Hildabeast"? Because 8 years of "Obummer" was pretty annoying.
 
Bowfinger said:
The issue isn't whether the Blackberry device can support two email accounts. The issue is whether the employer supports two accounts on their devices. I carried a corporate Blackberry for several years. We could not use them to connect to personal email because we (IT) didn't support it. Once we started supporting iPhones, I switched in part to get around that limitation. The USA Today link that you ignored suggests that State didn't support it either. Clinton's two options were carry two devices or use a personal email account.

You just don't get it. She didn't have to decide a single thing beyond, "Set it up so all my mail come to my Blackberry." Her staff would handle ALL of the details without bothering her. I assume you've never worked around corporate executives. They don't care about such trivialities. "Here's what I want. Take care of it."
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Read the Washington Examiner story. Not only was she warned against it, but the Blackberry in question was her own, NOT the State Department's. Whatever the State Department's IT people support is irrelevant because the email would have been sent to a personal device, out of their hands. They would have no knowledge of whether there were multiple accounts on HER Blackberry. The only way this would be relevant would be if she was required to use a State Department Blackberry. Do you really want to argue that Mrs. Clinton would be allowed to host her own server for personal and work both but not allowed to add a personal email account?

dainthomas said:
Serious question, if she wins are we going to get 4-8 years of "Hildabeast"? Because 8 years of "Obummer" was pretty annoying.
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lol Yes. Yes, you are.
 
dainthomas said:
Serious question, if she wins are we going to get 4-8 years of "Hildabeast"? Because 8 years of "Obummer" was pretty annoying.
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Considering that Republicans are unable to believe that a Democratic president is ever legitimate, they will continue to dehumanize them with whatever term their handlers shit into their skulls over the radio daily.
 
werepossum said:
Read the Washington Examiner story. Not only was she warned against it, but the Blackberry in question was her own, NOT the State Department's.
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Yes, this is common knowledge.


Whatever the State Department's IT people support is irrelevant because the email would have been sent to a personal device, out of their hands. They would have no knowledge of whether there were multiple accounts on HER Blackberry. The only way this would be relevant would be if she was required to use a State Department Blackberry. Do you really want to argue that Mrs. Clinton would be allowed to host her own server for personal and work both but not allowed to add a personal email account?
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/facepalm

You just cant't quit. Even when the answer is rubbed in your face, you're too consumed to see it.

We don't know exactly what State IT told Clinton. All either of us can do is speculate. What we do know, however, is that Clinton wanted to use her Blackberry, that she wanted to carry only a single device, and that she was told she would have to carry two devices if she used the State Dept. email system. Those are the facts as reported.


If you want to understand why that was the case, I'll have to speculate. At my employer I mentioned earlier, we had no way at that time to provide secure Blackberry access to our internal email and also allow access to an external email account on the same device. Therefore, we only allowed access to internal email on company-owned Blackberries, and we did not allow secondary connections. We also did not allow personal Blackberries to connect to our email system. We had no option whatsoever for our employees to access two email accounts from a single Blackberry.

I imagine the State Department was the same, except they allowed a loophole we did not. They allowed employees -- or at least special employees -- to use personal email to conduct official business. Clinton (meaning her staff) took advantage of this loophole, bought her own Blackberry, and had all email directed to her outside email address. That was the only option available for getting both work and personal email on her single device.

Was that a good solution? No, as I've already said many times. But it was convenient for her, notwithstanding your continued assertions and ever-changing rationalizations about how it was not. You're simply wrong.
 
Bowfinger said:
Yes, this is common knowledge.

/facepalm

You just cant't quit. Even when the answer is rubbed in your face, you're too consumed to see it.

We don't know exactly what State IT told Clinton. All either of us can do is speculate. What we do know, however, is that Clinton wanted to use her Blackberry, that she wanted to carry only a single device, and that she was told she would have to carry two devices if she used the State Dept. email system. Those are the facts as reported.

If you want to understand why that was the case, I'll have to speculate. At my employer I mentioned earlier, we had no way at that time to provide secure Blackberry access to our internal email and also allow access to an external email account on the same device. Therefore, we only allowed access to internal email on company-owned Blackberries, and we did not allow secondary connections. We also did not allow personal Blackberries to connect to our email system. We had no option whatsoever for our employees to access two email accounts from a single Blackberry.

I imagine the State Department was the same, except they allowed a loophole we did not. They allowed employees -- or at least special employees -- to use personal email to conduct official business. Clinton (meaning her staff) took advantage of this loophole, bought her own Blackberry, and had all email directed to her outside email address. That was the only option available for getting both work and personal email on her single device.

Was that a good solution? No, as I've already said many times. But it was convenient for her, notwithstanding your continued assertions and ever-changing rationalizations about how it was not. You're simply wrong.
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lol You have a, um, vivid imagination. Have you yet imagined a reason why Hillary hasn't simply pointed out this loophole? And is it perhaps similar to the loophole that allowed her to take furniture from the White House when she left? That one too was probably convenient, having a new mansion to furnish and all, but also turned out to be, what was your term? Inappropriate.
 
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