We are being played.

[pnwmom]

We're letting the media swallow the Rethug lies, hook, line, and sinker.

For example:

http://www.post-gazette.com/news/nation/2015/03/06/Clinton-s-email-built-for-privacy-though-not-security/stories/201503060245

Mr. Bush differed from Ms. Clinton, Ms. Campbell said, in that it was known that he was using a personal email, his aides had regular access to the server, and “his office consistently throughout his term complied with Florida’s public records laws.”


1. Anyone who got an email from Ms. Clinton knew that it was from her personal account. This was no secret and Gawker wrote a story about it two years ago.

2. Her aides had access to the server.

3. She complied with the relevant laws that were in effect AT THE TIME. The national Archivist confirmed this.

Hillary didn't do anything different than politicians had been doing since email came into existence, but you wouldn't know it from the way the media is reporting this.



http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-03-03/hillary-clinton-camp-pushes-back-on-email-story

While NARA’s preference is that officials not use an email alias, Archivist of the United States David Ferriero said in sworn testimony in 2013 that “nothing in the law that prohibits them.”

“We don’t care how many accounts you have as long as those on which you’re doing federal business are captured for the record,” he also said.


http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/06/us/politics/when-hillary-clinton-joined-obama-administration-friction-was-over-staff-not-email.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

By the time she was sworn in as secretary, her closest aides, who came with her to Foggy Bottom, knew that she communicated only through a private email address. The practice was not a secret, according to a person with direct knowledge of the inner workings of State Department under Mrs. Clinton, and no one thought it necessary that she switch to an official government address, which would have caused her email to be preserved under the 2009 rules and regulations from the National Archives and Records Administration. Neither career foreign service officers nor State Department lawyers suggested that Mrs. Clinton use a department email address, the person said.

But Mrs. Clinton’s use of a clintonemail.com address, which shielded those emails from public records requests, is now giving ammunition to critics eager to diminish her experience as a globe-trotting diplomat, which allies portray as her strongest credential in seeking the Democratic nomination for president.

Moreover, Mrs. Clinton’s relationship with the Obama White House, which she and her aides worked hard to improve and nurture, once again seems strained. Some of her allies have grumbled that the president’s aides could have done more to support her — perhaps, one said, by pointing out that the president himself and Mrs. Clinton’s successor, Secretary of State John Kerry, both use private accounts in addition to their government email addresses.

[OnyxCollie]

1. Gotta keep secret trade deals secret.

[NiceTryGuy]

2. The problem is that the law changed in 2009...

It doesn't matter what her predecessors did. The problem is that the law changed in 2009, and she opted not to follow the law.

The question is, do the rich people in this country have to follow the law like the poor people do?

The answer, of course, is no.

Which leads to a new question: what kind of nominee does the Democratic party want?

[BainsBane]

3. Not true. The law changed after she left office.

The primary will determine which nominee the Democratic Party wants. One thing is obvious: The GOP is desperate for it not to be Hillary Clinton.

[pnwmom]

5. In 2013, the National Archivist testified in sworn testimony to the Senate that she broke no law.

Not the 2009 law. Not any law.

That's part of why the law was overhauled months after she left office.

[ND-Dem]

23. The national archivist, in this case, has a masters in library science. he's not a law expert.

a Clinton/bush archivist was a dairy farmer.

[pnwmom]

25. He's the top expert on the rules he directed his staff to follow at the National Archives.

And none of the legal staff at the Archives advised Hillary not to use the personal email either.

And neither did Obama for that matter, and he was surely on her email list.

[ND-Dem]

26. He's not the "top expert;" he's not a lawyer. He's an administrator. and a librarian.

WALBERG: Is it fair to say that the IRS broke the Federal Records Act?

FERRIERO: Any agency is required to notify us when they realize they have a problem that could be destruction or unauthorized disposal...

WALBERG: Did they break the law?

FERRIERO: I’m not a lawyer.

WALBERG: But you administer the Federal Records Act?

FERRIERO: I do.

WALBERG: If they didn’t follow it, can we safely assume they broke the law?

FERRIERO: They did not follow the law.

http://freebeacon.com/issues/u-s-archivist-irs-did-not-follow-the-law-after-they-lost-lerner-emails/


the 'top experts' on laws are judges. not government appointed administrators.

[pnwmom]

30. He is the expert on what HE directed his staff to do.

He was in charge of following the rules and making sure that his staff did. That's why they had him testify at the hearing.

That was certainly a deceptive little snippet you just posted. The statement about "not following the law" had nothing to do with Hillary, or the law that was in effect when she was S.of.S. It was about the IRS and the law that's been in effect since 2013. And, no, the IRS may not have followed the law. (I don't know.)

But Hillary did, and he testified to that.


http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-03-03/hillary-clinton-camp-pushes-back-on-email-story

While NARA’s preference is that officials not use an email alias, Archivist of the United States David Ferriero said in sworn testimony in 2013 that “nothing in the law that prohibits them.”

“We don’t care how many accounts you have as long as those on which you’re doing federal business are captured for the record,” he also said.

[ND-Dem]

37. It was not a deceptive snippet; it was ferriero testifying that he was not a lawyer and so couldn't

speak to whether someone was breaking the law.

[pnwmom]

39. And yet in the very next exchange he said that the IRS HAD broken the law.

The fact that he isn't a lawyer doesn't preclude him from having an opinion, or from knowing how he directed his staff with regard to the administration of the law.

If his opinion was worthless as to legal matters, he wouldn't have been questioned in the first place.

[NYC_SKP]

4. "Hillary didn't do anything different than politicians had been doing since email"??? Oh?

???

Can you name even one cabinet member who ever, for the purpose of sending and receiving government related email, purchased a unique domain name and hosted that account in a private residence?

WWW.CLINTONEMAILCOM

Who else has done that?

[pnwmom]

7. I can name another Presidential candidate: Jeb Bush.

http://www.wcoapensacola.com/common/more.php?m=151&ts=1425604072&article=3700D070C39D11E4B51EFEFDADE6840A&mode=2


WASHINGTON (CNN) - Republicans who are lambasting Hillary Clinton's use of a personal email address on a private server have found themselves on a minefield, each facing questions about their own transparency.

The closest parallel among Clinton's likely 2016 challengers: Jeb Bush.

The former Florida governor was quick to criticize Clinton this week amid reports that she'd never used a government email during her four years as secretary of state.

Like Clinton, though, Bush had set up his own home server with a private address during his time in office. He still uses it, giving it out at events and asking supporters to email him comments and concerns. And, like Clinton, several of his top aides had email addresses connected Bush's server, too.

SNIP

Several other Republican hopefuls, including Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida, Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky, won't face legal questions over their use of email but won't have to turn anything over, either, because Congress exempts itself from open records laws.

SNIP

[BainsBane]

8. both my brother and sister have them

Lots of people do.

[ND-Dem]

24. and they're in the US cabinet?

[BainsBane]

38. Last thing you said to me

Last edited Fri Mar 6, 2015, 03:06 PM - Edit history (1)

Was that you weren't going to read my posts anymore.

[Major Hogwash]

9. It's okay. Her head advisor worked on the Geek Squad for 6 months back in the late 90's.

So, her computer server was totally, totally secure!!!
No ifs, ands, or buts about it.

[leftofcool]

32. Fucking predictable!

[HereSince1628]

35. It's different, I think that's true. But of itself different doesn't mean unlawful

Seems to me there are 2areas at issue, one is fulfillment of the requirements of the federal records act, the other is protecting the security of the private equipment holding government emails.

With regard to fulfilling the federal records act, I think there are some gray areas but they are arguable. Under the federal records act, federal records not submitted to the archive are supposed to be maintained by the agency. While some of her email certainly went to state department accounts and were technically maintained by the agency, there is a concern about emails that might meet federal records definition that went outside of state.

The question is would Clinton's personal maintenance of federal records AFTER leaving office constitute --agency-- maintenance of the federal records? I'd have to wait to hear a judge on that. Clinton -did- respond to requests and did turn over email in a timely way, so they were undoubtedly maintained. But that raises an ancillary question. Submission of documents considered to be federal records is supposed to be done according to practices determined by the agency. When Clinton's staff who by then would not be State Dept employees sorted through the documents and selected the 55k records did Clinton's staff follow agency practices? We just don't know. It's a narrow question that troubles some people because of fear,rather than evidence, of some sort of selective withholding.

On all the above points-- maintenance of records and identification for submission-- the answer the public was given is Clinton complied with 'the spirit' of the law. Such language coming from a lawyer/diplomat suggests that either no one knows if the letter of the law was met or that the letter of the law was not met. Would the difference between spirit and letter of the law be sufficient to say compliance to the law failed? Again, imo, a judge would have to decide. And different judges might judge differently.

With regard to the second issue, the security of the email system Clinton created, to my knowledge no one has identified what standards were required to be met while Clinton was secretary or after she left the office. It may be that those gov't standards are protected from disclosure. The original report by MSNBC was not about compliance with the archiving requirements, but security. Not having watched subsequent cable I can't say what has been said about that in that media

From the discussion and links embedded in discussion at DU, it seems no one here knows the standard that was required. There is discussion that her modern equipment and software were as good or better than government equipment that was available. But the issue is did/does the equipment meet government standards. I think the answer on this issue is as the first... it would depend on how a person placed to judge circumstance and behavior interprets the governing security documents as they apply to Clintons computer systems.

disclaimer: I am not supporting Sec Clinton in the Democratic primary.

[madamesilverspurs]

6. Indeed.

[betsuni]

10. Some say that because of this story they have fallen off the "Hillary bandwagon" and can't get up.

Should we be worried, call an ambulance or something?

[pnwmom]

11. I haven't seen anyone change their view of her because of this, but that's obviously

the goal of many of those pushing the story.

[betsuni]

13. They SAY that.

There was a thread about the "Hillary bandwagon" today, unless I imagined it. I've finally trained the members of an international group I'm a member of to never, ever trust media stories about Democrats unless I've researched it and given the okay.

[betsuni]

14. I didn't imagine it!

It was "I am off the Hillary bandwagon."

[Skittles]

29. do even have a clue how stupid and transparent they sound?

they're like the trolls talking with concern for "our party"

[WillyT]

12. In More Ways Than You Realize...

[world wide wally]

15. What Republicans are saying is "There must be a crime hidden in the emails. We have no idea what,

but maybe we can find something….. anything!"

[newthinking]

16. Even if it squeeked by technically. To me is screams of elitism and lack of respect

If a regular employee did this they would be fired in a minute.

[pnwmom]

18. Oh yeah? Why did no one in the Obama administration tell her she shouldn't do this?

She was openly sending emails from this account and no one had a problem with it.

Maybe, as this writer says, she was doing it because she didn't trust the shoddy government email system (that was hacked during Wikileaks and hacked again last fall.)

This is by Clay Johnson, the former director of the Sunlight Labs of the Sunlight Foundation, a non-profit advocating transparency in government.

(ON EDIT: I don't know why the link doesn't work -- but the address will work if you copy and paste.)


https://medium.com/@cjoh/hillary-s-email-858ccfc48277

Are you serious? Let’s be clear, that personal email was probably far more secure than her state.gov email account. The State Department’s email system has been compromised for months. It’s highly likely that it’s been compromised since forever: remember, during her tenure, Wikileaks released the State Department’s classified communications.

A better question is: why would she use the State Department’s email system to conduct official business? In fact, if it’s demonstrably insecure, does she not have a responsibility not to use it? It’s probably the case that if Hillary Clinton was focusing solely on security, using her personal email with 2 Factor Authentication was probably way *more* secure than using the honeypot mess of IT that is the State Department’s email servers.

Of the things that are speculative in this document, there is only one thing that I am absolutely certain of. After years of being on trial, of being investigated, and having every bit of her personal and public life pulled appart by People Magazine and vast conspiracies of all wings: Hillary Clinton knows that, too. She knows that the simplest way to keep something out of the public record isn’t to run an email server in her basement, it’s to use the telephone.

SNIP

One final thought: I’d imagine Secretary Clinton at some point emailed the White House. I made the mistake of emailing the White House from my personal account once (!) during my term, and managed to get back a nastygram from Counsel about it. How or why didn’t the White House tell Hillary to use her official .gov email account?

It could be that they knew the entire classified and unclassified email system was compromised and decided that the smartest thing to do was for her to use her personal email instead.

[newthinking]

20. I don't go for the "shoddy email" thing. Executives in government get attention swiftly

from IT managers and all she would have had to do is complain and surely she could have had her own private **government** hosted server if she had wanted it.

At the very least someone should have pushed her toward that option, rather than risking fallout. To me this looks like a stubbornly bad choice.

I do agree that she should have gotten some resistance. But I also know that when upper management does not want to listen they usually get their way.

[pnwmom]

22. Then how come no one told her to use a government account instead? She wasn't hiding this. n/t

[KamaAina]

40. The link doesn't work because DU software gags on the @ sign

and a number of other special characters. Usually it's the URLs of pictures that have these, rendering them useless.

[pnwmom]

41. Sorry. But the address can be copied and pasted in. n/t

[G_j]

17. on a concern scale of one to ten,

this issue gets a one from me. If I am going to fret about Clinton, I will fret about things like her views on foriegn policy.

[anotojefiremnesuka]

27. +1 the email BS is a distraction to keep people from paying attention

[Scuba]

33. + another

[Hekate]

19. Yep. Kick and Rec.

[stonecutter357]

21. K&R!

[Skittles]

28. no, like Fox News fans, these are lies idiots WANT TO HEAR

they're easily "played" BECAUSE THEY ARE IDIOTS

[KansDem]

31. Yet, mention the 28 redacted pages of the 911 Commission report...

...and its *crickets* from the Repubs and their flunkies in the media.

[B Calm]

34. Benghazi!

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

36. There's a new line of attack.

Morning Joe just quoted a 2012 Inspector General report in which HRC's state department slammed an ambassador (and he got fired) for using non-Dept email servers and getting a non-Dept wifi spot so he could work on his private laptop.

So the new attack is that they obviously knew it was wrong to do because they themselves attacked another employee for doing it while she was in office.

[catnhatnh]

42. Answering your own question...

"Hillary didn't do anything different than politicians had been doing since email came into existence"




Just so.....

[rhett o rick]

43. In the scope of things like the IWar vote, this is nothing. However, I am not

buying the excuses. Government employees are not allowed to use private emails from work, especially for business. Even if the private email was more secure, which I fail to believe, it doesn't make a difference. The rule is the rule and an average government employee would get fired in a minute especially if they had access to classified data. We don't know that people that knew about it didn't tell her. But again that doesn't matter. It's her responsibility to follow the rules.

Again, I don't think this is a big deal.

[Major Hogwash]

44. It could turn out to be something way more devastating than some here are even willing to consider.

There could be security lapses involved, not only with her personal server, but also with the protocol that she used with her e-mails.
She was out of the country several dozen times over the 4 years she was in the position as Secretary of the State.
There are also questions concerning if her e-mails dealt with raising funds for the Clinton Foundation while she was the SOS.

In any case, this is not just some minor oversight that can be tossed to the side with a casual "pish posh, so what" attitude.
This issue has ramifications that could wind up affecting the Obama administration, which is why they are taking it very seriously and aren't simply dismissing it out of hand.
That is why today the White House is currently distancing themselves from this issue.

[rhett o rick]

46. I understand and will change my concern if something serious pans out. nm

[DeSwiss]

45. ''We are being played.''

- I Know! That's what I've been sayin' all along!!!

[rhett o rick]

47. Of course we are. The Powers That Be have helped the Republicon Party go off the

cliff which drove a lot of Conservatives into the Democratic Party. The Powers That Be financially support those and other Conservatives in the Democratic Party. Now our choices are a Conservative or a Whacko. And some are so tickled that they have that choice. To some freedom is getting to put their vote into the vote machine. Doesn't matter that the choices are Corporatist Puppets and it doesn't matter if the machine accurately records the vote.

[meow2u3]

48. It's called the GOP Double Standard

It's OK for rethug officials to use their personal email accounts for the sake of privacy, but when a Democratic official, especially a woman, does the same thing, right away it's a crime in the eyes of the repukes.