back to article Computer forensics defuses FBI's Clinton email 'bombshell'

Since igniting a political firestorm and triggering major changes in US presidential voting intentions by revealing some emails passing through Hillary Clinton's private email server had been found in an unrelated criminal investigation, the FBI has gone to ground. The US criminal investigation bureau has repeatedly refused to …

  1. Suricou Raven

    I sense political meddling.

    Someone has been promised a budget increase if Trump wins.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I sense political meddling.

      Oh meddling all right.

      The level to which USA has been destabilized internally has exceeded Volod'ka's wildest expectations. I definitely sense some medals being handed out in the grand hall of the Kremlin next month.

    2. Preston Munchensonton

      Re: I sense political meddling.

      Actually, you should be sensing the US system of justice at work. The reason for the lengthy delay to examine the contents is that PRISM could not apply, as the warrants involved only covered Mr. Weiner's emails. It's the subsequent warrants that only covered the emails of Mr. Weiner's estranged wife.

      For me, the fishy part is this: they claim that they had to build special software to only index and examine his emails. I understand if the existing PRISM system didn't have these types of filters available during inputs, but it's not clear what's so special about instituting an input filter that it required a separate program. I would actually expect that they spent the time adding input filters as a new PRISM feature, but who knows really.

      1. h4rm0ny

        Re: I sense political meddling.

        >>"For me, the fishy part is this: they claim that they had to build special software to only index and examine his emails"

        Public: How did you search the emails?

        FBI tech: I did a Bash script with some regular expressions.

        Public: Regular what?

        FBI tech: It takes like 30 seconds, it's scripting.

        Public: Scripting?

        FBI tech: You just have to adjust a few parameters because we want to make sure we get all the aliases covered and this email server used a new header format too and...

        Public: What????

        FBI tech: Fine, I "wrote a program that reads emails"

        Preston: "Why would they need to write special software to examine the emails?"

        This is answerable by translating tech into public speak and then back into tech, imo. Public speak really only has two ways of understanding any technical process: {Wrote a Program | Didn't Write a Program}.

      2. ronspencer314

        Re: I sense political meddling.

        You don't need PRISM to filter one set of emails by whether they were sent to or from clintonemail.com and whether they are not in a list of emails you already know of from clintonemail.com.

        That can be coded from scratch and tested in minutes, given nothing but a directory of email files, in a variety of computer languages. It's probably about five lines of PERL, or maybe 15 lines of python that you spent some time formatting to make it look nice.

        Given the Weiner email batch, which is electronic and easily scanned, just generate the list of emails to and from clintonemail.com (by To:, Cc:, Bcc:, From: and Sent-From: headers). Then save the list of Message-Id: headers, and compare that list with the Message-Id: headers you already know of from the batch you have spent a year already looking at, and spit out the messages without a Message-Id: match. It is literally as easy as I am describing.

        I would be surprised if the list it spits out was more than a few thousand. I wouldn't be surprised if the list was empty.

        The idea that the FBI doesn't have any tools other than PRISM to do this is entirely laughable.

        Yes, they would have had to wait until the court gave them the go-ahead. They had the go-ahead by last Monday. They should have been able to reach initial conclusions by late Monday afternoon.

      3. Anonymous Coward
        FAIL

        Re: I sense political meddling.

        they claim that they had to build special software to only index and examine his emails...

        Not so fishy if you've ever attempted to use Outlook's search function to find an email you've misfiled. Outlook is so bad at indexing and searching, it even manages to make the execrable Yahoo! seem like a searing beam of precision.

    3. Howard Hanek
      Headmaster

      Re: I sense political meddling.

      Ever since the banning of DDT infestations have been cropping (popping?) in the most unlikely places. I suspect liberal journalists who crawl around in those pestilential infested sewers beneath every community.

    4. Ian Michael Gumby
      Flame

      Re: I sense political meddling.

      Meddling?

      How about inaccurate reporting from El Reg?

      Over 2,000 messages from the initial batch turned over contained classified material.

      Then there's the issue of the deleted emails.

      Its possible that the 650K emails is a complete dump of Huma's emails and there is definitely a lot of new emails. Also unlike the printed pages dumped, the FBI actually has the entire email, including headers which can add more to the previous investigation.

      What fails is that the author is definitely trying to defend Clinton and that's sad.

      Forget Trump and focus on the criminal acts of Clinton and the entire DNC who rigged the election process as well as the DoJ investigation. The level of corruption is mind boggling .

      1. Kiwi
        Mushroom

        Re: I sense political meddling.

        Over 2,000 messages from the initial batch turned over contained classified material.

        Whoope-de-friggen-do. No matter what the number, the FBI has already stated that there's no case to answer.

        Chump sexually assaults women.

        What fails is that the author is definitely trying to defend Clinton and that's sad.

        And you're defending a guy who said he'd do his own daughter if he got half the chance. Plus lots of clear evidence that he has committed sexual assault.

        Which is worse, using your private email address to handle stuff with trusted people in an innocent-but-maybe-not-technically-legal manner, or sexually assaulting dozens of women and publicly stating you want to have sex with your daughter? (For the naysayers... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWxkauh6lyA and for something more disturbing, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tf-Q5yRa2V4 - just a quick couple of many).

        Forget Trump and focus on the criminal acts of Clinton

        Seriously? She deletes a few emails or uses her private server which maybe she shouldn't have done, and gets checked out but found not to have committed an offence by the fbi of all people, who probably are about as left-hating as you can get. Chump sexually assaults quite a number of people, boasts about getting away with it, practically publicly states that he wants sex with his daughter (and looking at many of the pictures of them together, probably is screwing her - not that I blame him!), and you want to let him off?

        Some people really are fucked in the head. Will be easy to spot them in the US in a few days time, they'll be voting chump.

        He really is a sick piece of shit. Shillary may've done things wrong, but nothing criminal in the way she's handled her emails. chump on the other hand is just sick.

        Though I do suspect he's really a tool in the Clinton campaign, only they didn't take into account the idiocy of many yanks. (Sorry, while those two still live your whole nation deserves derision and abuse!)

        1. Mark 65

          Re: I sense political meddling.

          @Kiwi: FFS, don't be a muppet. We all know Trump is a cnut, put it to one side and consider the actions of Clinton on their merits. She seriously did some wrong and didn't give a fuck for the consequences. The Clintons are pure poison. Billy boy flogging influence left right and centre. Hillary soliciting donations from foreign Government officials. It stinks to high heaven. Don't let the orange fraggle distract you from what is staring you in the face.

          1. Kiwi

            Re: I sense political meddling.

            @Kiwi: FFS, don't be a muppet. We all know Trump is a cnut, put it to one side and consider the actions of Clinton on their merits. She seriously did some wrong and didn't give a fuck for the consequences. The Clintons are pure poison. Billy boy flogging influence left right and centre. Hillary soliciting donations from foreign Government officials. It stinks to high heaven. Don't let the orange fraggle distract you from what is staring you in the face.

            Aye, she's a rabid bitch that should probably be put down, with the slavering mongrel known as her husband. And what they've done stinks. Morally, I find a lot of the Cliton's actions to be rather repugnant.

            But...

            I doubt that any of it is illegal. Certanly, with all the investigations they've experienced, that's been the outcome - nothing illegal. Mishandled, stupid mistakes that someone with their supposed intelligence or experience should not make - tons. But illegal? No.

            Chump? Certainly "mis--handled" many women, many things suggest he could be an incestuous child-molester including statements he's made publicly and often, lots of business dealings that, well, make what Shill and Hilarity have done look positively wonderful and totally innocent. They're far from saints, and certainly are people I would not want living near me (and I have opened my home to convicts in the past), and I honestly would not support them if my life depended on it. But compared to dump...

            1. tom dial Silver badge

              Re: I sense political meddling.

              The servers she used were not certified and accredited as data systems for processing the type of material for which they were used. That was not legal, as I believe the State Department inspector general stated in his report about the emails.

              This is not about Trump, who certainly is ill qualified for the presidency and probably is unfit. It is about Clinton, who probably is qualified for the job, but certainly has given us plenty of reason to consider her unfit. In either case, we can be pretty sure of one thing: the people's business will be secondary to the incumbent's.

            2. Ian Michael Gumby
              Boffin

              @Kiwi ... Re: I sense political meddling.

              "I doubt that any of it is illegal."

              FFS! You are truly clueless...

              1) Private server in order to violate the FOIA is a misdemeanor (Meaning its illegal, but no jail time or felony conviction on record)

              2) Violations of the Official Records Act. (emails are part of her official records and are the property of the US Government. ) This includes private emails that contain work related material are to be turned over within 20 days of transmission.

              3) Obstruction. The deletion of emails. This is actually a felony criminal action.

              4) Perjury. Hillary lied to Congress.

              5) Lying to the FBI. This came out from her emails, The 302s and the Podesta leaks. Clinton, Mills, Huma, have all been shown to have lied during their 'interviews'.

              6) 'Pay to Play' / Corruption. This is still under investigation however there's enough evidence in the public eye to show a pattern of corruption. The documents uncovered by the FBI in the Weiner investigation seem to include more emails. ... time will tell

              7) Gross Negligence under the Espionage Act. This is where Comey bent over backwards trying to not indict Clinton. There is no requirement for intent. In fact the point of gross negligence is that the action doesn't require intent. Yet we have her intent to violate the FOIA and to hide her pay to play corruption scheme.

              And that's just the highlights.

          2. Rusty 1

            Re: I sense political meddling.

            Mark 65, well said.

            This is a vote between a failed business man and a political whore.

            It is so sad that next week the result will be that either an utter cnut or a real cnut wins. Either way, everyone else loses.

            1. 080

              Re: I sense political meddling.

              Someone once say something like "Every four years the great American people are asked to choose between a fool and a crook, the smart money votes for the crook"

              So who do they vote for this time?

              Can't find any reference to the quote on Google

              1. harmjschoonhoven

                Re: I sense political meddling.

                @080 http://www.talkingaboutpolitics.com/crooks-and-fools/

                Sitting in a century old steakhouse staring out at the Brooklyn Bridge thirty years ago Hank Greenburg (the pollster not the baseball player) explained an election that could only happen in the grubby circus of New York politics: Given a choice between a Crook and a Fool, he said, voters take the Crook. His theory was simple: You can predict what a Crook will do but you never know what a Fool may do.

              2. katrinab Silver badge

                Re: I sense political meddling.

                Drumph is a fool and a crook, Clinton is merely a crook.

            2. Halfmad

              Re: I sense political meddling.

              Pretty much, as a Brit I've no horse in this race but it seems the choice is between a school yard bully who's repeatedly had his businesses file for bankrupcy to avoid repaying debts, putting people out of work, who has dubious business practices elsewhere (Trump University anyone?) and who does everything for personal gain or personal status.

              Against someone who is mired in corruption, who doesn't understand security as a basic concept when it applies to her and who, frankly would do anything to get into office despite never having any real-world experience of working, just another career politician like many before her.

              Given the choice, and it is a shitty choice I'd pick Clinton, if only to avoid a warmongering sociopath. It's a bit like choosing between a kick in the balls and a kick in the face though.

        2. Matt Bryant Silver badge
          FAIL

          Re: Kiwi Re: I sense political meddling.

          And there's the Winner of the Weekly Completely Irrelevant Whataboutism Award! Whatever Trumpet did or didn't do doesn't excuse Clinton's acts.

          /C'mon, Reg, where's the "Whatabout" icon?

        3. L05ER

          the problem is...

          All those things you're so dismissive about ( so what if she destroyed some evidence she was told to retain, who cares?) Would land a normal person in jal for a long time, and we all know it.

        4. Ian Michael Gumby
          Boffin

          @Kiwi ... .Re: I sense political meddling.

          Perhaps you weren't paying attention when it came out that the DoJ tanked the investigation by not allowing a Grand Jury to be paneled. No search warrants and Mills a co-conspirator was allowed to claim privilege when she wasn't acting as Clinton's lawyer.

          Not to mention the Podesta email "Heads up" from the Asst. AG...

          Then there's Obama's meddling.

          Do you need me to continue?

          The point is that there was more than enough evidence in the public eye of illegal acts.

          You seem to not understand the significance of the private server, the deletion of emails which is Obstruction, and the perjury. The gross negligence on her handling of Classified material? Her house maid who held no security clearance routinely handled classified material on behalf of Clinton.

          And I haven't gotten in to the 'pay for play' corruption. Haiti? UBS? Uranium Deal?

          FFS! Get a clue.

          1. veti Silver badge

            Re: @Kiwi ... .I sense political meddling.

            the DoJ tanked the investigation by not allowing a Grand Jury to be paneled.

            Or to put it another way, "did its job". The DoJ denies FBI requests for grand juries every day. That's its job.

            Hilary Clinton has spent the past 30 years being investigated for everyfuckingthing, by some of the most brutally partisan and highly motivated lawyers on the planet. And they've never yet managed to pin an indictment on her. Of course they're pissed, of course there's an ocean of mud to sling and no shortage of useful idiots to sling it. And plenty of things that sound somewhere between "bad" and "unbelievable" when you just reference them, as you do, with no context.

            Is she a crook? I assume so, yes. In the same way as every American politician since Washington has been a crook. But Trump? Trump doesn't even pretend to be honest.

      2. Matt Bryant Silver badge
        Go

        Re: IMG Re: I sense political meddling.

        ".....What fails is that the author is definitely trying to defend Clinton and that's sad....." Very true. Let's start with the (frankly) either idiotic or deliberately obtuse suggestion for filtering the emails given in the article:

        "....will have been forensically trivial, as all will contain the unique string "clintonemail."...."

        Seriously?!? That filter would not catch an email where classified material had been forwarded by Abedin from a Clinton email but the email headers had been deleted to hide the origin. Remember, part of the investigation is not only looking for evidence of classified material, but also cases where the sender (Abedin) knew what she was doing and attempted to hide the origin of the material. In such cases, you would need to catch both emails - the one from Clinton to her aid, and then the forwarded one with the "clintonemail" removed - to show intentional transfer of classified material and the attempt to hide its origin. We already know Clinton and Abedin had a cosy relationship with some pet journos, so it would not be surprising to find Abedin leaking classified material to them with its origin deleted.

        Also, if this second investigation turns up just one email with classified content that Clinton's lawyers did not forward as "relevant" in the original investigation, then they are guilty of obstruction and - if they deleted the original - spoliation of evidence. No, this second investigation is not the triviality suggested by Campbell's obvious bias. I expect the FBI are treading extremely carefully so as to leave no possibility of legal challenges to whatever is discovered.

      3. netminder

        Re: I sense political meddling.

        The FBI has already looked into the classified info question. Only 2 emails contained classified information and both had been improperly labeled before they were given. The rest were not classified at the time they were emailed but became so later. The only thing rigged is the news sources you are believing to have ignored the actual evidence in favor of a story you WANT to believe.

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I sense political meddling.

      Yawn. Another 3rd rate article by someone without a clue.

      1. defiler

        Re: I sense political meddling.

        "Yawn"

        Yup. I got a far as cryptographic hashing before I wondered why normal hashing would be inadequate and then decided to get more drunk.

        Listening to dive Charlatans, Stone Roses and Beta Band. Better than this nonsense.

    6. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I sense political meddling.

      Someone has been promised a budget increase if the Clitorall Hinny wins.

      TFTFY

      1. Ian Michael Gumby

        @AC Re: I sense political meddling.

        That is what is known as 'Quid Pro Quo' .

        The bribe was putting more FBI in the foreign offices if they reclassified emails.

        Luckily it didn't fly.

        Yet more stank from Hillary and her corruption.

    7. Gigabob

      gigabob@comcast.net

      Really? You may think your spidey senses are working overtime, but you are crossing the street naked and the noise you hear is from the horn on the car that nearly hit you.

  2. bombastic bob Silver badge
    Megaphone

    What's truly important here...

    what's TRULY important here isn't the volume of relevant e-mails, but rather the potential proof that OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE was happening from the Clint-stones, just like what happened in Watergate when Nixon tried to cover up the Watergate hotel break-in [regardless of how justifiable it was; McGovern was a closet COMMUNIST, and I bet Nixon wanted PROOF].

    It was the COVERUP that took down Nixon.

    COVERUP is nothing new to Mrs. Clinton. The shredding of 'White Water' documents back in the 90's - documents from the Rose Law firm that somehow ended up in the White House - in addition to her handling of the 'Bimbo Eruptions' [THEIR name for it], and a few other things I can't remember the details on at the moment. There has even been SOME evidence to suggest that evidence was DELIBERATELY TAMPERED WITH in Mrs. Clinton's first major law case, as 'Hillary Rodham', defending the rapist of a 12 year old girl, and getting him off with 'time served', because the rape evidence had become "lost" [while in HER custody].

    It might not even require 32k e-mails (i.e. "the 5 percent") to make a difference here. All you need is just a handful that clearly demonstrate either Obstruction of Justice, or outright mishandling or illegal disclosure of classified information, to be enough for a conviction.

    But yeah, 95% of the 650,000 is just about right. Investigators have been talking about the 30,000 or so "missing" e-mails for a while. Why _WERE_ they 'missing' ? Inquiring minds want to know!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: What's truly important here...

      Why was evidence in a criminal court case in someones custody in the first place? Is it something you can borrow for the weekend?

    2. Uffish

      Re: What's truly important here...

      What's truly important here is ... how the information got out - who is leaking what. I predict a "gotcha" moment in a private ceremony in the White House in the not too distant future.

      Of course, like all my predictions this one is worthless.

      1. Just An Engineer

        Re: What's truly important here...

        Actually I see an independent investigation into the leaks from the FBI, and many career officers being shown the door with extreme prejudice.

        1. Voland's right hand Silver badge

          Re: What's truly important here...

          Actually I see an independent investigation into the leaks from the FBI, and many career officers being shown the door with extreme prejudice.

          Not if Trump wins.

          1. td97402

            Re: What's truly important here...

            Oh, if Trump wins it will only be a few years more before the American public wakes up to the anti-democratic garbage that is the modern Republican (Tea) Party and conservative "movement" in general.

            Whether we'll still be allowed to turn the rascals out at that point remains to be seen.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: What's truly important here...

              Oh, if Trump wins it will only be a few years more before the American public wakes up to the anti-democratic garbage that is the modern Republican (Tea) Party and conservative "movement" in general.

              Really? Tony Blair was re-elected twice despite being very clearly in the process of stuffing his pockets with tax money and the nation's assets, and that was visible to anyone who cared to investigate, so I'm not holding out high hopes there.

              The problem is that Trump is so clueless he doesn't need to mix in extra echo in his mike feed, which makes him a toy to his advisers. They know that as long he's turning a profit he won't care what goes one - he'll do the public bullshit because that's his speciality, and he won't care about what happens to the country. Add to that that wars are the best mechanism to turn tax money in private equity without too many questions and that they have pushed most of the population into poverty to keep them incapable of challenging of what goes in Washington, and I predict that NOT a good time will be had by all and the world if the orange idiot gets in.

              Think Bush, but even less restrained.

              1. itzman

                Re: What's truly important here...

                Is to have an orange idiot, not a mafia godmother.

                On balance idiots do less damage.

                1. Anonymous Coward
                  Anonymous Coward

                  Re: What's truly important here...

                  On balance idiots do less damage.

                  Only powerless idiots. Evidence: George W Bush, Tony Blair, Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson..

          2. Ian Michael Gumby
            Boffin

            Re: What's truly important here...

            Hardly.

            The FBI is in revolt because Comey and the DoJ tanked the investigation.

            The Assistant AG gave Podesta a heads up and there was a clear conflict of interest here.

            If Trump wins and Obama doesn't pardon Clinton and her crew... there will be a revamp of the investigation in to Clinton and the Foundation. Lynch and the Assistant AG will be on the hot seat along with others.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: What's truly important here...

      Personally, I think what's important is that an appointed bureaucrat knowingly and deliberately tried to mislead the American people during the final week of the presidential election. Further, said bureaucrat did it in a way that precludes reasonable response and defence by the affected party. All this in a bid to drive votes to the flagging campaign of the rival candidate. A series of actions which are, in fact, illegal themselves.

      Of course, that's just me. Your's makes sense too.

    4. Stevie

      Re: What's truly important here...

      Bob. BOB!

      Take. Your. Meds.

      No-one else cars if McGovern wanted to share his Wardrobe with everyone.

      Anyone interested in actually looking into the real facts of that rape case can usefully start with Snopes. That will trim 95% of "everyone knows" from the evidence trail they'll need to chase.

      And I'm pretty sure that is the FBI could make a case for Obstruction of Justice they'd have already done so, if only because that's what they do for a living.

      I believe the article is saying that the writer thinks the prevarication is because there is nothing there and the FBI knows it, but is hiding behind the lie that it cannot possibly figure out 650 000 emails using just a computer for heaven's sake. I mean, it's not like they can just write a simple regex cascade to sift through them for key phrases.

    5. Alan_Peery

      Governmental emails had already been provided

      Skip to #5 for the part of this response related directly to the article, or read on for US politics rebuttal.

      Since you appear to bringing your politics into this, rather than sticking to the technical details of this well-written article, here is some relevant politics back at you:

      1) It's pretty easy to explain Hillary's old time reporting spreadsheets from her time as an employee of Rose being in the White House. You move out of one house in Arkansas, you move into another -- random documents come with you unless you're particularly good about purging files.

      2) Trump shredded documents that had been actually requested in a governmental investigation of racially biased leasing policies: http://europe.newsweek.com/donald-trump-companies-destroyed-emails-documents-515120?rm=eu Failing to note this given that we're in the final week before an election where Trump is the other candidate would be bias by exclusion.

      3) How are the accusations against Bill Clinton around sexual misbhaviour relevant to email retention?

      4) You should really provide a link to this supposed "lost evidence" as this summary http://www.snopes.com/hillary-clinton-freed-child-rapist-laughed-about-it/ doesn't mention it, depsite being apparently pretty complete.

      5) The admin for Clinton's personal email sent in the emails matching matching a reasonable "government business" filter, and months later deleted the other email (eg personal) on the system after significant time for the other side to check that the data delivery had been fine. There was no requirement that Clinton maintain backups of personal email into the indefinite future AS THE GOVERNMENTAL EMAIL HAD ALREADY BEEN DELIVERED. For a well-written summary of the steps carried out, see this post: https://plus.google.com/+AmandaBlain/posts/6ugnBQCdL9S

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Governmental emails had already been provided

        5) Thereby someone paid by Clintons decided what was significant/governmental and what not? That's not how an investigation is usually performed - at least when it happens to those animals who are not more equal than others...

        1. Alan_Peery

          Re: Governmental emails had already been provided

          So you're blaming Clinton that the FBI failed to follow good process and show up with a warrant and get a copy of the full email server? Or show up with a warrant and oversee the extraction process?

          Government related emails were requested, and provided. If the FBI failed to follow sensible process, leaving the individual involved with a reasonable understanding that requirements had been complied with, how is that the fault of the individual? Or must we all keep a copy of all our documents in case the relevant government agency decides to broaden their initial request years down the line?

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Governmental emails had already been provided

            Well, after Enron companies are compelled to keep copies of everything. And in any sensible company you can't make business using your own server, it's usually enough to be fired on the spot.

            If she wasn't an animal much more equal than others, FBI would have not been so sloppy, after all it's the same FBI that wants mails stored in Ireland without asking Irish authorities, isn't it? But of course kindly asking Clintons' employees is OK.

            How could you be sure *all* relevant emails were provided? Why FBI didn't get a warrant and got the server for a full forensic investigation, including analysis of deleted files?

            Ms. Clinton is very much alike Mr. Nixon, obsessed with the idea of becoming president (trying over and over), same despise for rules, and obsessed also with the idea she need total control because someone else could spy on her otherwise (just as she would do). The worst possible candidate, but Trump...

      2. bombastic bob Silver badge
        Megaphone

        Re: Governmental emails had already been provided

        "3) How are the accusations against Bill Clinton around sexual misbhaviour relevant to email retention?"

        it's the COVERUP part that's important. Mrs. Clinton has a history of coverups. It seems to extend throughout her entire career.

        "4) You should really provide a link to this supposed 'lost evidence' "

        http://www.hannity.com/articles/election-493995/listen-rape-victim-speaks-out-about-15196170/

        "Clinton’s defense team requested its own testing of the underwear, but it ended up being 'accidentally destroyed' by the 'independent' lab."

        what's NOT told, in snopes, the ABC article I found, and a few other places, is WHEN the evidence was lost. They all admit it was lost. That's the basis of Mrs. Clinton's (then Miss Rodham) argument for getting the defendent off with an extremely light sentence. THAT and the polygraph, which anyone properly trained can defeat. examples, put thumbtacks in your shoes, and give yourself a dose of pain for EVERY true answer, and every lie that you want called "truth".

        /me comments I don't need drugs. I'm just fine the way I am, howler monkeys and amateur shrinks notwithstanding.

        1. Captain Badmouth
          WTF?

          Re: Governmental emails had already been provided

          So Hillary owned the independent lab, then?

          1. Alan_Peery

            Re: Governmental emails had already been provided

            The prosecution side (aka crime lab), didn't do the test well and destroyed the evidence -- it wasn't there any longer to be lost by Clinton or the independent lab. That's all a right-wing distortion of facts. See my other comments in this chain for details and links.

        2. Alan_Peery

          The *government crime lab* (prosecution) destroyed the evidence

          re 3) So you're now alleging that *Hillary* covered something up in the sexual misbehavior of Bill, rather than being an uninformed spouse defending her husband?

          re 5) Above you said 'because the rape evidence had become "lost" [while in HER custody]', implying per personal possession. Now you admit that your sources don't say when it was lost, or by who. It could have been lost by the police. It could have been lost by the independent lab. It's pretty unlikely that it was lost by the defense attorney, as they are not allowed to hold evidence for very good reasons. For Hillary to be blamed for this, it would have to proven that she turned either the police or the lab to illegal behavior.

          But turns out the story is completely different than that. The police lab cut the evidence (a bloodstain) from the defendant's underwear, and after blood testing (not DNA, this is 1975) ended up tossing out the bit of material. So when the defense (Clinton) asked for the underwear to test (as required by her duties as public defender), there was nothing to test. The government lab had destroyed the evidence, collecting only a blood type, and it was their incompentence that let the defendant plead guilty and get a lighter sentence. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2f13f2awK4&feature=youtu.be, Hillary Clinton being interviewed about the case.)

          Then you go onto the notion of defeating a polygraph test, but again offer no proof that Clinton coached the defendant to do so.

        3. Steve Knox

          Re: Governmental emails had already been provided

          "3) How are the accusations against Bill Clinton around sexual misbhaviour relevant to email retention?"

          it's the COVERUP part that's important. Mrs. Clinton has a history of coverups. It seems to extend throughout her entire career.

          Oh, of course. If there's not enough evidence, there must be a cover-up (that's how you write it, by the way.) It can't be that the evidence simply doesn't exist because your batshit insane conspiracy theory isn't true...

          "4) You should really provide a link to this supposed 'lost evidence' "

          http://www.hannity.com...

          Really? You link to Sean Hannity's website as your source for truth? I rest my case.

        4. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Governmental emails had already been provided

          /me comments I don't need drugs.

          In that you are at least correct. I think you're well past that..

        5. Alien Doctor 1.1

          Re: Governmental emails had already been provided

          Bob, you just lost all credibility citing hannity as a source of anything truthful, he makes the bible look believable.

          1. Alien Doctor 1.1

            Re: Governmental emails had already been provided

            No offence intended to any people of faith; great offence intended to those who claim to be Christian with no idea of what it should mean (footballers crossing themselves and pointing skywards, politicians trying to get votes from the religious, americans that seem to think Christianity is based in old testament revenge teaching rather than, hmmm, what Christ said...)

    6. Captain Badmouth
      Holmes

      Re: What's truly important here...

      "There has even been SOME evidence to suggest that evidence was DELIBERATELY TAMPERED WITH in Mrs. Clinton's first major law case, as 'Hillary Rodham', defending the rapist of a 12 year old girl, and getting him off with 'time served', because the rape evidence had become "lost" [while in HER custody]."

      How strange, over here defence counsel does not get to keep prosecution material.

      1. Captain Badmouth
        Coat

        Re: What's truly important here...

        How strange to be down-voted for pointing out an obvious flaw in an argument.

        Must be one of these conspiracy theorists.

        Is that you Donald?*

        *Shades of :

        " Hello my name's Joules, this is my friend, Sandy"

        or

        "Ron" - " Is that you Eth?"

        Oh, hello Mr. Horn (aka Trump)

        The current Republican farce doesn't live up to the standards of the old BBC one, and the BBC weren't being serious.

        Mines the one with the 1959 copy of the Radio Times in the pocket, thanks.

    7. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: What's truly important here...

      what's TRULY important here isn't the volume of relevant e-mails, but rather the potential proof that OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE was happening from the Clint-stones

      Actually, no. What is truly relevant is the fact that processes that should be entirely neutral are not used hardcore to foist an orange idiot on the world that the world really doesn't need right now.

      Clinton's email case has had NINE consecutive Congressional investigations (the 8 followups were because Republicans were clearly desperate to find something that wasn't there - so that's 8x abuse of process for political purposes, with the associated waste of time, money and resources - you know, the stuff tax payers have to pay for).

      We then get a sideways investigation that is

      a - revealed whereas established FBI policy is NOT to talk about anything in progress (a fact they seem to have remembered)

      b - making assumptions known before there are facts (which is not on in any circumstance), and that EXCLUSIVELY to one party and not both

      c - going public with anything in the most sensitive time in politics despite clearly established guidelines that there should not be such a thing during elections for the exact reasons that it would be abused.

      It doesn't matter how "wonderful" Comey was before - if he is not thrown out of the FBI in a nice arc, the US might as well stop pretending there's such a thing as law and order. Not that that is clear already, but this election has hit lows I didn't think possible. It seems to suggest the Republicans are so utterly desperate to win this election that they were willing to even let someone like Trump be president to putt it off - a man whose experience in government is about as small as his hands, and whose level of compassion and activities for others is as high as the amount of tax he paid over the last 2 decades. This man makes UK's Boris Johnson look competent.

      It all reminds me of a comment Frankie Boyle made recently:

      "Remember the time when we thought George Bush was rock bottom?"

    8. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: What's truly important here...

      Inquiring minds want to know!

      No, inquiring minds do NOT want to know, because every time they get facts that don't agree with their petty world views they reject them and ask (again) for a new investigation.

      Kindly stop pretending you want facts, you want fiction.

    9. Ian Michael Gumby
      Boffin

      Re: What's truly important here...

      Its sad that the OP is getting down voted for focusing on the relevant issue.

      I guess its because most here are too young to understand Watergate or all of the Clinton scandals over the years.

      As an IT professional who has to get drug tested, have background checks (credit)... where corporations place their trust, I have to maintain a high level of professional ethics. To see our government leaders lie cheat, steal and line their pockets at our expense is sickening. We are trained to solve problems... and our officials are now a problem. We need to clean house.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: What's truly important here...

        I guess its because most here are too young to understand Watergate or all of the Clinton scandals over the years.

        Ah, but it appears nobody has spotted the clever trick the Trump camp is using.

        As a government official, Clinton's life, for all the occasional secrets, is still pretty much an open book. You can look up what she's done, where she's been and if you cannot, you have the legal right to file an FOI request and do battle with anyone keeping you from that information. Such is the price of a life working for government, and I think that is important to keep up this openness where it doesn't concern private life (or stop pretending there are still some democratic principles to be adhered to).

        Trump, on the other hand, can operate under the cloak of business confidentiality where nothing has to be disclosed unless there is the suspicion of a crime (which is, for a start, a chicken and egg issue when someone has enough money to bury whatever is happening). You don't even know who he's been dealing with because his repeatedly promised tax returns have not been released.

        In other words, all you have are 3rd party records which can be ridiculed as soon as they're disclosed, and you can see from Trump's reaction when all these women came forward that he's well used to suppressing information that he doesn't like - and there is no FOI process to get at actual data. There's only the risk of getting sued by Trump who has a lawyer on speed dial for that.

        Personally, I am far less worried about Clinton because there isn't that much to hide - information always leaks, and she has no legal means to prevent disclosure, it comes with the job. Trump, howeverm, has been dealing with all sorts of shady outfits (including, apparently, a Russian bank) and nobody will ever know because his life pre-politics is a closed book.

        The risks? Well, let's take a small example. Deutsche Bank is at present on the hook for a $14B fine for having the tenacity of joining Wall Street banks in misselling mortgage-backed securities (the same scandal that hasn't seen that many /Wall Street/ banks fined, but I digress). Trump has apparently outstanding loans there - do you really think he's not going to use his position as president to influence the fine in exchange for having his loans annulled? That's the same as taking a bribe to that amount, and you are NOT going to tell me that Trump won't do this - after all, he'll call that being "smart".

        I'm intrigued that nobody has noticed that play. It leaves the Clinton camp with one hand tied behind the back - unless they start asking "when have you stopped beating your wife" style questions, which (given the rumours about his business dealings) could be well worth it as it can show that Trump isn't really going to give the downtrodden hope - that has never been his business style anyway, and THAT is documented. If you're a woman, Trump can sack you for having a bad hair day...

        It's a clever ploy - so clever that it has been totally missed by the Democrats..

    10. Kiwi
      WTF?

      Re: What's truly important here...

      There has even been SOME evidence to suggest that evidence was DELIBERATELY TAMPERED WITH in Mrs. Clinton's first major law case, as 'Hillary Rodham', defending the rapist of a 12 year old girl, and getting him off with 'time served', because the rape evidence had become "lost" [while in HER custody].

      If you actually believe that, who does your typing for you? You cannot possibly have the brains to believe she is responsible for the DEFENCE having the only copy of critical prosecution evidence in a case (ANY case), and then her client being released because the DEFENCE destroyed ("lost" is basically the same thing legally) said evidence?

      Surely you must have some more sense than that.

      But... The prosecution only release COPIES of the evidence, or the findings about the evidence. Defence will never get their hands on the only/original while the case is in progress without some serious incompetence at the hands of the prosecution. It just does not happen. I won't bother to look it up, but I have no doubt this is something made up by some conspiracy nut.

      Does she also have all the proof that global warming more storms less but more severe stomrs whatever the fuck they call it today is real, and is also causing more earthquakes, and also all done by UFO's (except the nice ones who eat chemtrails for us)? Or did she delete those emails too???

      Oh yeah, she helped defend a guy accused of raping a 12yo. Chump wants to rape his own kid. Probably has.

      1. Kiwi
        Facepalm

        Re: What's truly important here...

        You cannot possibly have the brains to believe she is responsible

        "Always proofread carefully to make sure you didn't any words out..."

        What I meant to say was "You cannot possibly have the brains to do your typing yourself if you believe she is responsible..."

  3. Ken Moorhouse Silver badge

    There was a case a while ago...

    ...where a senior security adviser in, I think, USA resigned over storing draft messages on a gmail account he shared with a woman. He was "corresponding" with her, not by sending/receiving any messages to/from her, but by leaving communications in draft which were subsequently read by the other party. If this method of communication is suspected (it requires a certain ingenuity and knowledge of the mechanism by which email systems work in order to pull off) then the messages will not necessarily have any domain or recipient information on them. The fact that the two accounts were on the same email system means that sharing of communications through IMAP access of a folder that is nominated as shared is a distinct possibility. Any folder can be configured as such, and taking the principle further, any shared address book could also be pressed into use as a covert message store, The question that arises as a consequence is: if these types of communication are present on the system, are they considered to be "messages" in the legal sense of the word? Judging by the former case mentioned at the top of this post, I think the answer is yes. (This is a purely impartial point I'm raising here).

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Wrong headline?

    How about:

    FBI finds another 30,000 State Department emails, many of which include classified material, intentionally mishandled by the former Secretary of State in contravention of her duties of office.

    FBI finds that a federal employee illegally took home and stored classified material from the US State Department, arrest pending.

    This is in no way a problem for the FBI, or an issue created by the FBI. Hillary intentionally and knowingly set up, operated, and used an unsecure email system instead of the government email which she was provided. She did this for her entire term. She used it for classified material. She did so during sensitive negotiations with foreign powers. She mixed private fund raising with her official duties on this system (i.e. she took bribes). All of these things are not only illegal, but very obviously illegal.

    The DOJ official in charge of the decision to prosecute or not (Loretta Lynch) held a private and unrecorded meeting with Hillary's husband shortly before making the decision not to prosecute. Hillary made a public promise to keep Loretta Lynch on in her role after the election. These things are improper and very possibly illegal as well.

    That the FBI somehow managed to pretend this was not a problem earlier this year is the scandal, not that they suddenly found some spine. Pretending otherwise is pure fantasy. I expect to see it in the New York Times but not in el Reg.

    1. Stevie

      Re: Wrong headline?

      Do you have even the slightest suggestion of proof of the things you are alleging, Mr/Ms Coward?

      Because if you *do* there is a bunch of interested congressmen and senators who would *really* like to see what you have.

      Because, after all the shouting, posturing and taxpayer dollars wasted on this nonsense, they have *nothing*. Just like after the Whitewater Hearings.

      1. Blank Reg

        Re: Wrong headline?

        When it comes to republicans, allegations are proof in and of themselves, if such allegations are aimed at the Clintons. Of course any allegations aimed at Trump are just nonsense.

        When it comes to republicans, hypocrisy has no limits.

        1. Voland's right hand Silver badge

          Re: Wrong headline?

          When it comes to republicans, hypocrisy has no limits.

          Let's fix it for you: When it comes to politicians, hypocrisy has no limits.

          1. Blank Reg

            Re: Wrong headline?

            I agree, but until the last few years, it was just an untested hypothesis, now the republicans have set out to prove it.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Wrong headline?

      Thank you for the list of debunked Republican talking points.

      Did you have a point?

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Wrong headline?

      Well done, the article was the worst I've seen on the Reg. Just stupid assumptions, the main one that only clintonemail.com email could be relevant - this was her closest aide's laptop - any email on it could be significant.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Wrong headline?

      Weirdly, NOTHING of this is relevant. Nothing at all.

      There is a simple issue at hand here, Comey has not been following protocol AND has acted against explicit advice to do so.

      1 - nobody at the FBI talks about even the EXISTENCE of an investigation in progress

      2 - nobody should EVER go public with assumptions - CERTAINLY not the FBI, and especially not the guy who is supposed to run it and thus set an example

      3 - no communication is permitted in the 60 day span leading up to an election, for the exact reasons Comey has now demonstrated by sending this information only to Republicans.

      This is not just breaking the law, interfering with a lawful election could even be construed as a treasonous act.

      Now for the fun part: I now REALLY hope that Hillary wins, because then she can say that Trump couldn't even win with illegal help from Russia, Wikileaks and a compromised FBI. That ought to stop him from trying again.

      Furthermore, whatever happens, the Republican party is pretty much a goner for the next coming years unless they split. There is no excuse: it was their collective decision to choose and back someone they knew full well to be bad news. It is the equivalent of Labour putting Peter Mandelson up as PM, with the difference that Mandelson has at least the brains to be thoroughly evil.

      1. bombastic bob Silver badge
        Devil

        Re: Wrong headline?

        "by sending this information only to Republicans."

        that actually did NOT happen. All members of Con-Grab got "the memo".

        interesting spin, though. The rumor mill has apparently altered a few facts in order to portray a political motive.

        (like the downvote ratio I've been receiving for anything anti-Clinton or pro-Trump)

        Didn't BREXIT get similar downvote ratios here? It's a good sign! Yeah, I thought BREXIT was a pretty good idea, said so a few times, gave some references to 'El Reg' articles that showed how the Brussels "overseers" had been slowly tightening the screws on UK, made some references to the US revolution in 1776, etc. and got plenty of "howler monkey" downvotes because of it.

        [and the Cubs won the world series, too! imagine that!]

        it's all 'signs of the times'. We'll see what happens on Tuesday. I am pretty optimistic.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Wrong headline?

          Yeah, I thought BREXIT was a pretty good idea

          QED..

  5. Stevie

    Bah!

    I just noticed that FBI is an anagram of FIB.

    This Means Something.

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Man I hate

    Misleading figures.

    "95% are not relevant".

    To the untrained eye the response there would be "well sheeiit, thats almost all of them".

    To someone that can do maths, that means around 35k emails are still possibly incriminating.

    Thats still a shit load of email.

    Just like knocking up a woman, it only takes one slip to be a serious situation.

    1. Alan_Peery

      Large numbers of emails have already been inspected, no smoking guns...

      Just because there is a large number of something doesn't imply anything will be found. Given that the FBI took a quite thorough look at a rather large pile of email and found no smoking guns makes it pretty likely that nothing will be found in the 35k emails very broadly estimated in this article.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Large numbers of emails have already been inspected, no smoking guns...

        Given that the FBI took a quite thorough look at a rather large pile of email and found no smoking guns makes it pretty likely that nothing will be found in the 35k emails very broadly estimated in this article.

        Previously, the only emails the FBI had to look through were essentially those chosen by Hillary's personal staff. It seems to me then, that this estimated batch of ~35K new emails were things that Hillary specifically did not want to disclose.

        I would expect the chances of there being something incriminating to be far higher among things someone doesn't want you to see, than among things they didn't mind you seeing.

        1. Flocke Kroes Silver badge

          Re: Hillary did not delete _ANY_ emails

          She used her private email address for work. This created a mixture of private and work related emails. When she was asked for her work related emails, she hired an independent law firm to classify all emails and send only the work related ones. This is extremely legal, and can you imagine for one second that the Republican witch hunters would not have sent every personal email straight to the press?

          If anything, the Republican's focus on this non-story is proof that they have not even one legitimate complaint against her.

    2. mevets

      Re: Man I hate

      The irrelevance of the 95% is that the FBI are using them for cover. 35 000 emails could be checked in a few days by a hundred people, which shouldn’t be too daunting a task considering the stakes involved. Twenty times the effort offers the appearance of an excuse; but really isn’t.

      This doesn’t take any real insight, and that, I think, is the point of the article. This isn’t about justice or security, this is a war. An unconventional war, where rather than soldiers fighting to the death, you have bureaucrats turning traitor to influence an outcome.

      This election may realize Kissenger's dream of an war where everyone loses.

    3. anoco

      Re: Man I hate

      What I hate is people with poor comprehension skills. The point of the 95%, and the whole article, is to show that it should not take the FIB 40 nights to find out if it's raining heavy or not.

    4. Stevie

      Re: Man I hate

      "Just like knocking up a woman"

      Trumpeter rhetoric always gravitates* toward the offensive, no matter the point. It never seems to dawn on these people that gratuitously aiming for the gutter before they've gotten to the point devalues whatever point they are trying to make.

      No doubt the 5% are the 33K emails Trumpeters believe contain the information that will prove she is Satan Walking The World.

      * at Neutron Star levels of gravity. Of course, Trumpeters probably deny the existence of Neutron Stars on the grounds that they are Only A Theory.

  7. Forget It
    Coffee/keyboard

    Just let Obama continue while they sort this out

    if it goes on for years

    all the better

    1. Mark 65

      Re: Just let Obama continue while they sort this out

      It is an interesting point that Obama can pardon whomever he wants and that pardon cannot be challenged by any court. He could also pardon pre-emptively i.e. pardon Clinton for any crimes she may have committed. This also cannot be challenged. It is also worth noting that a president can also pardon themselves from anything but impeachment.

      1. bombastic bob Silver badge
        Devil

        Re: Just let Obama continue while they sort this out

        Obaka probably WILL pardon Mrs. Clinton, regardless of the election's outcome, for the same reasons that Ford pardoned Nixon.

      2. tom dial Silver badge

        Re: Just let Obama continue while they sort this out

        President Obama can pardon Clinton (or anyone else) for a federal crime for which they have been convicted or charged. He cannot pardon anyone convicted or charged by a state government, and more significantly in this case probably cannot give a pardon for any crime not (yet) charged. I stand ready to be corrected by anyone offering proper citations to statutory or case law.

  8. DrXym

    It's incredible how this has become a "scandal"

    Virtually all of Clinton's emails that are known of were very curt short sentences and very circumspect. She might have been silly to use an internal email server but she was also security conscious. Therefore the likelihood that she somehow spilled the beans to some aide seems ridiculous.

    Aside from that the Democratic party leaks showed that 99% of the emails were mostly people forwarding media links between each other. If there were really 650,000 emails then chances are that all but 650 are meaningless party political noise.

    Despite the bullshit hype and "lock her up" brain damage there has been no smoking gun. Just some silly woman using her own email server, presumably for the far more mundane reasons of not wanting stuff to be on the public record and not liking the government email system.

    The super stupid bit is her opponent is currently facing RICO charges, a child rape court case, hasn't disclosed his taxes, has conducted illegal business in Cuba and covered it up, has been accused of sexual assault by various women, is parroting Russian policy and nobody in his camp seems to find this even faintly worrying.

    1. Alan_Peery

      Re: It's incredible how this has become a "scandal"

      A very nice summary of open issues on candidate Trump in that last paragraph -- well done.

      1. Blank Reg

        Re: It's incredible how this has become a "scandal"

        You left one very important one out, he doesn't plan to put his companies in a blind trust if he wins. He thinks having his kids take over is equivalent to a blind trust.

        There is just no end to the things he doesn't understand

    2. ecofeco Silver badge

      Re: It's incredible how this has become a "scandal"

      The super stupid bit is her opponent is currently facing RICO charges, a child rape court case, hasn't disclosed his taxes, has conducted illegal business in Cuba and covered it up, has been accused of sexual assault by various women, is parroting Russian policy and nobody in his camp seems to find this even faintly worrying.

      This plus the rest of your post nails it. Not enough upvotes for you.

    3. Uffish

      Re: RICO charges

      I had to look it up, my best guess based on newspaper column inches, was Ridiculously Intricate Comb Over.

      He may, or may not, be innocent of consorting with crooks but he's guilty as hell on the hair.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: RICO charges

        I had to look it up, my best guess based on newspaper column inches, was Ridiculously Intricate Comb Over.

        Oh, it's that too :).

    4. anoco

      Re: It's incredible how this has become a "scandal"

      It's a scandal because the Republican marketing machine is leagues ahead of the Democrat one.

      They have to, because it's not easy to convince 95% of the people to vote against their own self interests.

  9. PNGuinn
    Facepalm

    hdr22@clintonemail.com

    You mean there are at least 21 more of them?

    EUGCHHH!

  10. Eddy Ito
    Meh

    Nothing new here. We were already aware of Sturgeon's law.

  11. ecofeco Silver badge

    So like the ACA

    (ACA is also known as "ObamaCare")

    So like the 52 tries to dismantle ACA, the GOP are will double down on stupid until... forever.

    Because nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!!

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Nowhere to hide from the info-war

    It's almost as if operatives are conducting an information war, sowing doubt, spin and outright misinformation (potentially on both sides) on here, as on all the other forums, or something.

  13. DerekCurrie
    FAIL

    It's Time To Fire FBI Director Comey

    I know it would appear at this time to be a revenge firing. But FBI Director Comey has put the cherry on the cake of his long term profound incompetence at his job. It's hard to assess whether this latest of bungles was politically motivated. Comey is a 'conservative' Republican. But it doesn't actually matter. He can't do his job properly, has no interest in learning how to do his job better, and consistently makes a hash of whatever he touches out in public.

    Get Rid Of FBI Director Comey.

    I'm no Clinton fan, but if Comey's act of incompetence gets loudmouth lout Trump into the White House, where HE will ruin my country, I wouldn't mind seeing Director Comey roasted on a pit and served to the dogs. (Just kidding, but enjoying the image).

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: It's Time To Fire FBI Director Comey

      Typical 'progressive': Always imagining committing violence against your political opponents (when not actually doing so). It really is a mental disorder.

      1. Steve Knox

        Re: It's Time To Fire FBI Director Comey

        @Big John,

        Are you complaining about the imagined violence or the lack of real violence?

        PS This is not limited to progressives. Even conservative candidates are indulging in this. If you think DerekCurrie has a mental disorder, you must believe Trump is batshit insane, given the frequency with which he expresses the desire for violence against Hillary, other women, men, etc. ad nauseam.

      2. Kiwi
        FAIL

        Re: It's Time To Fire FBI Director Comey

        It really is a mental disorder.

        So is supporting chump.

        Don't forget, btw, the number of times chimp advocated violence towards protesters at his nutfestsraiiles, often saying something like "I'd like to punch him in the face" or somesuch.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: It's Time To Fire FBI Director Comey

          And yet we now know (thanks to Russian hackers, apparently) that it was Mrs. Clinton who was arranging violent provocations at Trump events. And don't forget history, where the really big body counts are always at the feet of the major Leftists: Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, Hitler, etc...

          PS - I know there's a theory out there that Hitler was right wing. Note that his party's name had the word "Socialist" in it, and his bitterest enemies were the German Communists, a rival leftist group.

          1. Kiwi

            Re: It's Time To Fire FBI Director Comey

            And yet we now know (thanks to Russian hackers, apparently) that it was Mrs. Clinton who was arranging violent provocations at Trump events

            Are you sure about that? Because our TV media over here showed this odd-looking thing that apepared to be an oversized and rather deformed karp with a bad toupee spouting off about how it would like to hit people, and how it wanted others to attack them. ISTR it even said it would pay for the legal fees of anyone charged with assault in such an event as well, although I could be confusing him with someone else. Now, unless you're saying that chump really is a puppet of that other thing.....

            As to your so-called "body counts", one has to wonder.. The policies of many in the right-wing (such as NZ's National party) lead to some nasty levels of poverty, hardship and desperation among the poor. This has a tendency to cause increased child mortality rates, increases in suicide, and increases in deaths from otherwise-preventable disease1. And just how much can be laid at the feet of shrub? They claim to be Christian, yet follow few (if any) of the teachings of Christ...

            I wonder how, if all things were taken into account, the counts would stack up?

            1 That said, last year one of my best long-term friends died in the US. From an illness that shouldn't normally kill people but since he'd had to stop working he couldn't pay for his medical bills. The details I received say he lived on $US a few hundred a month in some housing estate that'd make the worst slum lords wet with ecstasy.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Comey was trapped either way.

    After sidelining the Clinton email investigation this summer, he publicly promised Congress that he would notify them if any more/any of the missing emails were found. He did so, but rather than wait for one of the Republican members of the oversight committee or their staffs to leak the letter about emails (which surely would have happened), he chose to do it via the FBI.

    1) Given that he had publicly made the promise to Congress and that the new potential evidence was within the scope of the investigation, he was bound to notify Congress.

    2) It was better for the FBI, Congress and the government in general that the FBI released the letter, given that Congress would have leaked it anyway and the you would REALLY have conspiracy buffs on the left and right baying for blood.

    3) Obviously not all 650,000 emails/messages involve Hillary Clinton, much less those that involve Hillary and were part of the 30K emails that Clinton had deleted.

    4) 95% of 650,000 is still a big-ass number, when you are potentially talking about classified email.

    5) What if Comey had not leaked the emails, and something relevant had been found after the election? The FBI and Department of Justice would have credibly been accused of hiding damaging information to save Hillary Clinton's presidential chances. This was a no-win either way.

    I dislike Trump too, but you don't do the cause of good government or freedom in general any help by blindly enabling bad behavior from Hillary Clinton. Remember, the fault that any of this is even a newstory is ENTIRELY on Hillary Clinton. Especially given that she used to be a top-flight lawyer and that she knew she wanted to run for President, she should have been smart enough to realize that running a private email server for public business that sometimes involved classified info and then giving instructions that resulted in the deletion of 30,000 messages off that server might not be a very smart thing to do.

    I can take issue with aspects of a lot of famous investigations and prosecutions, but that doesn't excuse stupid, antisocial and sometimes illegal decisions on the part of the people being investigated.

    1. Vincent Ballard
      Stop

      Re: Comey was trapped either way.

      On your point 4 you have the numbers the wrong way round. It's 5% of 650,000 which is the upper bound on how many e-mails could possibly be relevant.

      1. tom dial Silver badge

        Re: Comey was trapped either way.

        Is there a reliable source for the 650,000 number? In a moderate amount of web searching, I have not found it. And in view of that, is not the 5% simply a made up number derived from the quotient of ~30,000 by 650,000?

        If there are, indeed, 650,000 State Departmente emails on Weiner's laptop, the relevant number can be found by eliminating duplicates and matches to already known email messages from Clinton's illegal server. The first, as the article states, can be done partly by use of hash comparisons, but that still may leave semantic duplicates that give different hash values as a result of forwarding or inclusion in forwarded messages. The notion that hash comparison with emails that Clinton turned over is rubbish, since those were printed and if available in hashable form almost will give a different hash value than their original form. The "expert" opinions reported seem to have been based on assumptions that are known to be incorrect, and can be discounted heavily.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Comey was trapped either way.

      "5) What if Comey had not leaked the emails, and something relevant had been found after the election? The FBI and Department of Justice would have credibly been accused of hiding damaging information to save Hillary Clinton's presidential chances."

      Just like Obama and Mrs. Clinton's treasonous actions involving Benghazi were covered up by vicious lies about a video for the purpose of getting Obama elected again. It worked that time, but now the stench is too great, and too many people are smelling it for them to pull it off again.

  15. William 3 Bronze badge

    I didn't realise the crime was about quantity.

    I thought what matters is the CONTENT of said emails.

    You can't use the argument criminality doesn't matter because it only occured in a few emails out of hundreds of thousands.

    Logically any criminal could use this nonsense argument.

    Well, I don't think I should be sent down for robbing those 3 houses and molesting those 5 people your honour.

    Oh, and why is that?

    Because there was a thousand houses and 2,300 people living on that street. So I didn't rob 99.95% of houses, and I didn't molest 99.995% of the people on it.

    Oh well, if you put it like that.

    What a stupid article.

  16. Fruit and Nutcase Silver badge
    Happy

    Lookalike

    That picture of Clinton

    https://regmedia.co.uk/2016/11/04/hillary_clinton_photo_by_evan_el-amin_via_shutterstock.jpg

    reminds me of

    https://regmedia.co.uk/2016/06/02/geeks_guide_bt_tower_photo_the_register.jpg

    How about a Geek's Guide to the US?

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/06/02/geeks_guide_to_britain_book/

  17. csmac3144

    Quality vs Quantity

    Depending on which laws she broke (from obstruction of justice to violations of the Espionage Act) it only takes one email for her to draw a sentence of up to 40 years in federal prison.

  18. sean.fr

    Adoing FOI is the crime, defense secrets is a red herring

    Government emails are recorded and archived, and are subject to Freedom Of Information requests. Later, historians can pick over them. The national security arguement is to miss the point. She probably did not leak anything that "the enemy" did not know or care about. Her crime was keeping stuff out of the reach of Americains using FOI. She does not dispute the facts.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Adoing FOI is the crime, defense secrets is a red herring

      Yes she did do it to maintain a curtain of secrecy around her pay-to-play State Dept. operation, but she also enabled outside actors to grab a lot of state secrets while she was protecting her crime spree. Probably some people are now dead because of her, besides the ones she let die in Benghazi.

  19. Amos1

    Here's the math that does not add up

    There is no way in heck that Hillary's primary State Dept. "clintonemail.com" Inbox and Outbox only contained 62,000 emails. ZIp, nada, none.

    What it sounds like is that someone set up that laptop with an automatic sync to clintonemail.com and while Huma may not have used it personally very much, all the time it was running it silently synced EVERYTHING to it.And now the FBI has every email that Huma had access to.

    1. Bob Rocket

      Re: Here's the math that does not add up

      If just one classified document from the Clinton server is on that laptop Hillary will be impeached.

      https://medium.com/deepconnections/prevailing-gray-swans-8-october-28-2016-b7b36da91309#.e76yj07yp

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Here's the math that does not add up

        For clarity: "Impeached" means she would be tried by the Senate. They would have to convict to have her removed.

        The really interesting question, which could kick an attempt like this to the Supreme Court, is can a President be impeached for things that took place before election?

        The language is not at all clear, and the Supremes might decide that Congress can't reach back before the election; as "the people have spoken".

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Here's the math that does not add up

          The point is moot; Mrs. Clinton is not getting elected to anything. Except for the media-controlled polling, all other signs point to her getting buried come election day.

          1. Geoffrey W

            Re: Here's the math that does not add up

            What other signs? Seaweed on a string? Entrails? I Ching? Your friends, who are legion?

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Here's the math that does not add up

          for further clarity (same anonymous coward here replying to my own post)...

          To be a crime they have to prove BOTH mishandling AND intent. Comey has admitted they cannot prove intent. What on earth could possibly be in additional emails that would alter that calculation??

          I understand that political pressure can alter that calculation, but why would anything in the new cache change things? Even if there was a tippy-top secret document? That just confirms the mishandling.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Here's the math that does not add up

            You are incorrect about intent. The statue in question (the Espionage Act) specifically states that intent is not to be allowed as a defense. Yet it was allowed by Comey, apparently by personal fiat. That is why so many people feel Hillary was allowed to skate. The statute was basically rewritten by Comey on the fly to shield Hillary from her misdeeds.

            Now Comey has withdrawn his protection, for whatever reason. Hillary is exposed as the criminal she is, and she will never be president.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Here's the math that does not add up

              "The statue in question (the Espionage Act) specifically states that intent is not to be allowed as a defense".

              I'd like to see that wording. Here's some wording I have found:

              (a) Whoever, for the purpose of obtaining information respecting the national defense with intent or reason to believe that the information is to be used to the injury of the United States...

              (b) Whoever, for the purpose aforesaid, and with like intent or reason to believe...

              (c)...having reason to believe, at the time he receives or obtains, or agrees or attempts to receive or obtain it, that it has been or will be obtained, taken, made, or disposed of by any person contrary to the provisions of this chapter..

              (d)... transmit or cause to be communicated, delivered or transmitted the same to any person not entitled to receive it,

              (e) Whoever having unauthorized possession of...

              (f) Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense, (1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust..

              f is probably the most interesting one, but it requires proof someone accessed documents (hacked) due to gross negligence. Maybe it happened, but somebody has to prove it. The other sections don't apply to any of her alleged actions or require proving intent.

              A different section says this:

              (a) Whoever knowingly and willfully communicates, furnishes, transmits, or otherwise makes available to an unauthorized person, or publishes, or uses in any manner prejudicial to the safety or interest of the United States or for the benefit of any foreign government to the detriment of the United States any classified information—

              Here you have to prove 'knowingly' (she knew it was going to be hacked) and 'willfully' did it anyway. Good luck proving that.

              These statutes CLEARLY speak to intent, so which broadcast on Faux News told you otherwise (or please quote the applicable statute)?

              1. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                Re: Here's the math that does not add up

                In this case the only written requirement for prosecution is "gross negligence." Comey chose to convert that to "intent," obviously to get the Democrat candidate off the hook. Or are you now going to claim there wasn't any gross negligence? Or that she is so thick that she was unaware of what she was doing, namely hiding her criminal enterprise (influence peddling) via an illegal home email server?

                Then there were all the lies, remember? Mrs. Clinton stated there were NO classified emails on that server. Why? Because she knew it was a crime to have them there. But now we know there were thousands. And now the test for criminality has magically shifted much higher. Lucky for Hillary! She could not be president under the old standard, eh?

                1. Kiwi

                  Re: Here's the math that does not add up

                  In this case the only written requirement for prosecution is "gross negligence."

                  Which was?

                  Comey chose to convert that to "intent," obviously to get the Democrat candidate off the hook.

                  Why would he need to do this, when it was clearly evident that she had not committed any crime in this matter?

                  Or that she is so thick that she was unaware of what she was doing, namely hiding her criminal enterprise (influence peddling) via an illegal home email server?

                  How is her alleged "influence peddling" illegal? How was her having her own email server "illegal" (or has the US really fallen that far that private servers are illegal?)

                  Actual answers would be appreciated. With relevant citations where they're not otherwise easily locatable.

                  1. tom dial Silver badge

                    Re: Here's the math that does not add up

                    Having a private server is perfectly legal. Using one to conduct federal business generally is not. The exception would be systems that are certified and accredited by the appropriate federal official who, in the case of the State Department, was the CIO. Lest anyone raise the question, that has been the law since 2002 or before. According to the DoS Inspector General's report earlier this year, the CIO stated he was unaware of Clinton's use of the private server (which seems depressingly like he was on what we used to call "indoor annual leave") and that he had not and would not have approved it if he knew. Relevant citation: FISMA (2002_ - 44 U.S.C. § 3551, et seq. along with Chapter 35 generally.

                    Influence peddling may or may not be illegal. Done by an official in exchange for cash or objects of more than nominal value, it generally is illegal. For the federal civil service, the usual limit was set at $10 - anything of greater value might be considered a bribe. Jimmy Dimora, former Cuyahoga County (OH) commissioner, is working on a 28 year sentence at the Beckley federal prison in Beaver, WV. In many cases, Clinton's probably included, the normal favor granting activities, such as arranging for access, are legal, but those who exceed limits, or who come to be seen as deplorable human beings, as Dimora did, can be prosecuted. As in most such things, prosecutors have a lot of discretion.

                2. tom dial Silver badge

                  Re: Here's the math that does not add up

                  Lying to the US population in a political context isn't criminal, and because of the first amendment it would be impossible to make it so. Lying to the FBI, which Ms. Clinton apparently avoided, would be criminal.

              2. bombastic bob Silver badge

                Re: Here's the math that does not add up

                "Whoever knowingly and willfully communicates"

                using an insecure server to communicate this information, in violation of the law (which Mrs. Clinton DID do), would be sufficient. State Department employees were REQUIRED to use a government server for all of their communications, primarily because of the 'Freedom of Information' act, and also because of the classified nature of many of their communications.

                For several high profile people (like General Petraeus), this was sufficient. But Mrs. Clinton is "above the law" in the eyes of the Obaka administration's justice department, and THAT is why it's 'at issue' right now.

                https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Petraeus#Criminal_charges_and_probation

                in short, UNAUTHORIZED REMOVAL AND RETENTION of classified material was what he plead guilty to. That _could_ be a) Mrs. Clinton's e-mail server, OR b) Huma's husband's laptop

                either would be sufficient to qualify as 'removal and retention', and since it was NOT 'authorized', it becomes a punishable CRIME.

                Petraeus essentially got a public 'noodle whipping' but that was about it. Probation and a big fat fine. Could have been a LOT worse.

                Mrs. Clinton, on the other hand, gets lots of HOWLER MONKEY NOISE in her favor, and the willing media fanbois trying to OBFUSCATE it all, and make her President, in spite of it.

                because, the CLINTONS are ABOVE the LAW. [and THIS is why they should be prosecuted to the FULLEST EXTENT, because they've been so ARROGANT about it for SO long!]

                let's see if this is too far down the list of replies to get the dozens of howler-monkey downvotes...

                1. Anonymous Coward
                  Thumb Up

                  Re: Here's the math that does not add up

                  "Howler monkey noise" about describes it. :)

      2. Amos1

        Re: Here's the math that does not add up

        And if she does get elected, she and Bill will have His n' Hers matching impeachment documents to laugh at.

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Search?

    Takes minutes to sort through a 100K of emails. It's not a big number so all of this is just noise and distraction. Heck, each of my two main inboxes has 10K of unread email alone.

  21. Danny 2

    General Petraeus, by then Director of the CIA. It's not in the Wikipedia page but seemingly the investigators faced fewer legal hurdles due to the fact the communication was in a shared folder rather than emailed communications.

  22. c1ue

    Poorly background checked article

    It is quite clear the author of this article spoke to only 1 or 2 individuals with poor hands on experience in actual analysis.

    Yes, there are all manner of e-discovery tools that can "access" masses of data, but they do this primarily via keyword searching.

    Secondly, Hashes are in no way a guarantee because the storage medium (Outlook?, OST?, PST?, Web mail?, something else?) will affect the message storage parameters and thus affect the hash.

    If you're actually trying to understand context, you have to actually read a lot of the content.

    Lastly, if the FBI is actually trying to find all possible leaked classified data, they have to read all the content. Merely searching for "secret" isn't going to cut it.

    Comparing a journalist looking for scoops vs. a professional investigation betrays ignorance of the highest degree.

  23. Bounty

    For the sake of argument lets say that there are 40 classified email that Clinton wanted to hide, but have now been found on that laptop. Would the FBI just walk out and announce they are going to charge her with a crime? What if they are low level classified, what if they may lead to other possible charges, but are not in and of themselves super interesting. There are a ton of reasons why the FBI would not publicly announce anything yet. Also, they may be scrubbing the HDD for deleted email files as well, which would take time. Imagine the things Anthony Weiner has deleted from that laptop.. *SHUDDERS*

  24. zen1

    I fully expect down votes on this...

    Well, as far as I'm concerned, one classified (or more sensitive) email is 1 too many. How many joint operations could she have compromised? She may be the smartest woman in the world, but as someone who spends 10-12 hours a day looking around for crap like this for my my employer, she's pretty damn dumb and the fact that the FBI opted not to charge her with anything in July, is proof to me that she gets a lot of political favor. I'm sorry, but nobody is above the law and in my opinion, people in lofty positions like that should and must be held to a much higher standard.

    Furthermore, I'm still not convinced that Russia is involved in this, because those who conduct cyber espionage at the state level usually don't use a whole lot of IP's from their own country... Don't get me wrong, I'm certainly not saying that they couldn't have been involved, but given the nauseating understanding I've been given of how my government works, I don't trust a damn thing that comes out of the FBI, Justice Department, Congress, State Department or the executive branch.

    1. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Megaphone

      Re: I fully expect down votes on this...

      " one classified (or more sensitive) email is 1 too many."

      I agree, and shall expand:

      "For official use only" - can compromise military readiness or policies that take away advantage or put the country at a disadvantage in any kind of war or conflict. Example, the press shows up at a beach landing of U.S. marines, and gets in the way. Yes, this has happened.

      "Confidential" - is likely to compromise military readiness, or take away advantages, etc. example, significant improvements in foreign anti-submarine warfare and submarine technology suddenly "happening" due to the activities of 'the Walkers' back in the 80's...

      "Secret" - is likely to comprise agents or soldiers in the field, possibly getting them killed. No example, though I can think of a few. Best not to go there.

      "Top Secret" - serious harm to defense, lots of people killed, and so forth. A 'top secret' thing might be a device that allows a ship, plane, or platoon of soldiers to be undetectable, or a new type of weapon that could easily end (or prevent) a war. Even knowledge of its existence would be a serious problem. The manhattan project is probably the best example of this.

      (when referring to such a secret, in a conversation to those to whom such a secret has been disclosed, it is not uncommon to use a generic term, like "the device" or "the gadget" or similar, NOT even using the real name that both parties are fully aware of, to avoid disclosure)

      Mrs. Clinton was authorized for Top Secret (and possibly 'eyes only') information. And when I was in the military, you didn't get this, even if you had clearance, unless you had "need to know". It's treated VERY seriously, for obvious reasons. If ANY of that information went onto her non-government insecure e-mail server, which she OBVIOUSLY kept for DISHONORABLE purposes (i.e. HIDING things from 'freedom of information'), it was a CRIME.

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Outlook's Search function works reasonably quickly...

    Once the PST file is indexed, which can take an hour or several, Outlook's search feature is nearly instantaneous. It's not a smart search, like Google. It's very literal. But it would be easy to sort the wheat from the chaff based on simple strings.

    If the FBI needs my help to learn how to use Outlook, well, they know where to find me.

  26. Gravis Ultrasound

    truth

    Straw man up...straw man kicked down...good for you reg hack.

  27. Jim Oase

    One classified document unprotected is one too many... to keep clearance

    Benedict Arnold only had one classified document. Didn't go well for him. Should that be the standards for anyone handling classified material?

  28. Richard 12 Silver badge

    So Comey must be arrested.

    He has revealed the identity of a minor who was a victim of a sexual attack, causing them considerable further distress due to an extremely large amount of media attention that was instantly predictable.

    On that fact alone, he must be fired for gross misconduct, arrested and held criminally liable.

    On top of that he has directly interfered with the election process. If done intentionally, this is illegal and so he must be prosecuted to determine the facts.

    If done by accident, he is incompetent and must be fired for gross negligence.

    Why is he still in post? He should be preparing his legal defence against these two charges while in jail or on bail.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: So Comey must be arrested.

      But comrade, surely he could be rehabilitated? Perhaps some 're-education?'

      1. Richard 12 Silver badge

        Re: So Comey must be arrested.

        He broke the law.

        Here's a thought experiment:

        Someone sexually harrasses your daughter.

        She reports it to the local police, who say they will investigate it.

        The local police chief then publishes her name, the name of the alleged perpetrator and the name of a local mayoral candidate who happened to have employed a partner of the alleged perpetrator on the local news - without your permission or knowledge.

        You would not accept this, and it would be illegal.

        That's what Comey did, except on an international rather than local scale. He must be prosecuted, and given the opportunity to defend his actions in court.

        He's either deliberately broken the law (prison time) or he's an idiot, so he is clearly not fit to serve in his current role.

    2. tom dial Silver badge

      Re: So Comey must be arrested.

      Please cite a source to confirm that Comey (or any FBI agent) revealed the name of the victim in Weiner's alleged crime. Please note that on September 21 the Daily Mail published a lengthy article, with numerous redacted text messages between Weiner and the girl, based on an interview with the girl and her father. The article, however, did not reveal the Mail's sources.

  29. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Isn't there a wider FBI context?

    With the allegations of the brown envelope $650k bungs from friends of the ex-sec.state to the wife of the FBI deputy director. [Like many on el'Reg, happy at not having to vote to choose 'dum or 'dee, but enjoying the spectacle; it will eventually make a great opera, especially the aria about the accidental .pst backup]

  30. Dieter Haussmann

    It was NYPD who did a proper investigation and uncovered the emails, disgusting 'spirit cooking' images and videos of the worst kind imaginable.

    It was the DoJ who ordered the NYPD to stand down on Friday and to cancel the press conference but there is mutiny going on within rank and file and it is coming out but not in the mainstream media.

  31. JJKing
    Holmes

    Big John is Totally Correct for once.

    @Big John

    Always imagining committing violence against your political opponents (when not actually doing so). It really is a mental disorder.

    Totally correct BJ. Are you called BJ because that is what you are always doing to other guys?

    No different to someone saying they could shoot a person dead in Times Square and not lose voters.

    Same as suggesting the Second Amendment people (who have some, not all, just some seriously disturbed gun owners) could act against Hillary Clinton.

    Not to different saying if you grab them by the pussy you can do anything.

    Are these the violent images that you are reefing to Big John? I assume you call yourself Big John because your hands and other wishfully thinking appendages are Drumpf sized.

    Seeing how you think these violent images are really a mental disorder then you should grab your intellectual capacity equal, idol Donald J Drumpf, and both pop down to Bellevue to ask for a room each. Don't be surprised if the other "residents" look down on you both since they are in 95% of the cases shall be tour intellectual and physical superiors.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Big John is Totally Correct for once.

      Am I meant to get all angry and out of sorts now?

      Tut tut.

  32. Anthony Hulse

    Guilty until proven innocent

    The GOP machine decided long ago that Hillary was guilty. They've spent the past 20 years or so trying to find a crime in order to justify the label, but in their eyes she's guilty anyway. Always was, always will be.

    That isn't rational behaviour, but hey, their own candidate is possibly a child molesting serial con artist who also dodges his taxes. Rational people would spot which candidate should be "locked up" within seconds.

    (Hint for the utterly blinkered - it isn't Hillary)

  33. Captain Badmouth

    Is this in any way relevant to this discussion....?

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-rape-case_us_581a31a5e4b0c43e6c1d9834?

    Just asking.....

  34. Anonymous Coward
    IT Angle

    About that server...

    Since this is El Reg, someone must know the answer. What exactly was this email server? I have visions of a FreeBSD box sitting under Bill's desk at the Clinton residence, connected through his wifi and with a bit of port forwarding on the house broadband router. Is that remotely accurate? Or was it a box in a bit barn somewhere? Office 365?

    I'm not getting into the politics of this...I'm just genuinely curious about what the rig was.

    1. An nonymous Cowerd
      Flame

      Re: About that server...

      If I recall correctly , there was a thread or two on Reddit about the actual server, including a hilarious request from the PFY mail server technician who allegedly asked the Reddit community 'how to permanently delete emails for a very important person'

      I think the server was kept in a bathroom, but I might be completely wrong , if I get 27 down votes from agency robots then I'll presume I was right!

      According to the Daily Mail it was a hosted server, really stored in a bathroom closet

      http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3201367/Hillary-s-email-firm-run-loft-apartment-servers-BATHROOM-raising-new-questions-security-sensitive-messages-held.html

      and Reddit mostly helped the PFY to use 'bleachbit' according tho this

      http://dailycaller.com/2016/09/21/house-committee-orders-reddit-to-preserve-hillary-email-technicians-posts/

  35. Kiwi

    @bombasticbob, Big John etc.

    Quick question guys...

    When Colin Powell was Secretary of State, and a republican, would you have had the same issues with him using his own email address for work related stuff, much like Shillary?

    Just reading the article at http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/4/13500018/clinton-email-scandal-bullshit which indicates he did (NOTE I am unfamiliar with this news source and am making no claim about it's reliability)

    1. tom dial Silver badge

      Re: @bombasticbob, Big John etc.

      The two cases are considerably different. Colin Powell used a personal email account maintained by a commercial service provider. He did so at a time (2001 - 2005) when email was much less widely used than during Clinton's tenure (2009 - 2013). During at least part of that time, too, it was not possible to send or receive email between the State Department non-classified network and other government agencies or the public. General Powell expended significant effort to improving that situation, unlike Hillary Clinton, who chose to not use the upgraded State Department system, which by then was connected to the public internet and usable for all purposes. She chose instead to use, not a commercial service, but an insecure personally owned* system located in her New York residence.

      * Or possibly owned by or with her husband.

    2. tom dial Silver badge

      Re: @bombasticbob, Big John etc.

      The article cited,

      http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/4/13500018/clinton-email-scandal-bullshit,

      is a combination of bullshit and whitwash.

    3. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Devil

      Re: @bombasticbob, Big John etc.

      crimes are crimes. NOBODY is above the law. A local congress-dude, Randy Cunningham, war hero and conservative Republican, was taking bribes in various forms, and went to jail for it. No sympathy. Even though he was a good guy MOST of the time, he broke the damn law, and deserved the punishment. Sad, though. I'd say the same for Powell (if he's guilty of something) or anyone else that gets convicted of things LIKE mishandling classified information, for having a separate e-mail address in violation of national security laws (etc.).

      The question on Powell is whether or not classified information was involved. He might be fined and given probation for a simple "oh crap" violation, particularly if it was negligent. If classified info was put at risk [as was apparently the case for Mrs. Clinton], and ESPECIALLY if people died because of it (like in the Ben Ghazi incident, where classified details of that situation may have been in e-mails on Mrs. Clinton's server, and may also have been downloaded by foreign enemies, and investigation SHOULD be done to determine whether or not this is the case), in such a situation where people may DIE because of leaked classified information, Mrs. Clinton most DEFINITELY deserves JAIL TIME.

  36. c1ue

    Sweet irony

    What's really amusing about all this is a similar series of actions occurred when Slick Willy was going up against Bush Senior.

    Literally days before the election, a special prosecutor indicted Casper Weinberger ostensibly for Iran Contra related wrongdoing. Hubbie Clinton accused Bush Senior of lying. Weinberger's indictment was later thrown out.

  37. c0mey

    Ex-pat living in the US.

    Let's get this out of the way, yes Trump should never hold office, he shouldn't have even got to the primaries. The establishment only have themselves to blame.

    But EVERY SINGLE THING Clinton has said about her private email server has turned out to be patently false. No Classified information? There was, TS, SCIF stuff. She handed over all her emails? She didn't. Her lawyers manually reviewed each email. They didn't.

    If this had been any member of the UK cabinet and this was made public the press would have had a field day. If this had been the UK you can be assured the head GCHQ would have popped round had a discrete chat and in no uncertain terms told them to knock it off.

    Come on people this server had RDP exposed to the WAN, how many of us wold have been bollocked if that was on our pentest review? Now think that security orientated mindset was used to set-up and secure a server funnel wholesale amount government records through.

    /*But the FBI did not point out that of the 650,000 emails mentioned to the US media, 95 per cent could not possibly be relevant.*/

    Could be 99,90,80,70,60%... for all they know. Until they know why throw around unsubstantiated figured. There is a cache of emails, on a device that should have been handed over. But has subsequently came up in a case of an adult sexting a minor. Why should they speculate as to the contents. They gave material facts, some emails have cropped up.

    /*could not officially look at or report on the emails without obtaining a specific new warrant. The letter implicitly acknowledged that the agency already had copies of all the mails on its computer systems */

    Well they had copies of the 30k turned over, and the 15k they recovered. But they can't compare this dataset to what is on the email because they were sans warrant.

    /*To find out how many emails on the laptop were relevant would have taken "seconds"*/

    After they had a warrant...

    /*As only 110 of 30,490 official emails previously examined by the FBI were found to contain classified government information....*/

    What some partial figures there. From all omniscient wikipedia

    The FBI investigation found that 110 messages contained information that was classified at the time it was sent. Sixty-five of those emails were found to contain information classified as "Secret", more than 20 contained "Top-Secret" information... According to the State Department, there were 2,093 email chains on the server that were retroactively marked as classified by the State Department at the "Confidential" confidential level. Of the 2,100 emails that contained classified information, Clinton personally wrote 104 and her aides wrote hundreds more.

    But hey, whats a couple of TS documents laying about on a web facing server...

  38. Slx

    What it looks like to me is the fundamental stumbling block here was the State Department itself. It should have a very, very clear and rock solid internet security policy and apply it to everyone from the Secretary of State to the President as a matter of national security policy.

    I would expect all of the key cabinet members to be issued with ultra secure phones and laptops that are deeply encrypted, using the very best technology available. To me, it looks like at the time this scandal was going on, that certainly was not happening.

    To me, this whole fiasco strikes me as a politicians' office probably staffed largely by political science / legal types and PR / marketing people and probably not the most IT savvy group in the world implemented a solution that was aimed at convenience and mobility.

    A lot of people are grossly over-estimating the IT skills of a political office. They're usually full of very enthusiastic, often very academically qualified people but I wouldn't really rate them for their natural ability to implement complex security to fend off hackers.

    I would suspect that you'll probably find tons of people using personal email accounts for business or public office email. A lot of people simply aren't aware of the risks involved and a lot of the actual infrastructure in some of these public offices can be horrifically dated or not particularly secure itself.

    I know I've seen public sector email systems that were still running on ancient versions of Lotus Notes and Exchange.

    To me this scandal is about a systems administration / security policy failure that has turned into a political witch hunt. The whole thing is absolutely nuts.

    At the very worst, Clinton and her office did not appreciate the risks involved. That to me sounds like a massive lack of IT support from the department itself.

  39. cambsukguy

    If I didn't know from personal experience that the US has loads of rabid Clinton haters

    I would think that the (anti-Hillary) stuff here is all trolling.

    Sadly, I know the truth.

    People banging on about "All that money they earn", suggesting it comes from Haitian funds etc.

    Nasty sites where I see "Look at the evidence fool" followed by no evidence whatsoever, often with an amazingly tolerant rebuttal by someone determined in the face of ad hominem attacks and whatnot to place links to thought-out pieces and proper evidence, only to be told (with more ad hom attacks) that they are drinking the Kool-Aid.

    These are people convinced that the Clintons have murdered people, not as a President bombing places but (presumably) ordering the killing of people.

    They have to be the most scrutinised people on the planet and by some of the richest people on the Planet.

    It brings to mind the sad case of Al-Fyed, determined to prove, using unlimited sums of money, that the SAS blinded a drunk driver with a laser in order to crash a car at high speed and kill a princess because an old man married to the Queen didn't really like her much, or because he was a Muslim.

    I am far, far from being a Royalist but I am pretty damn sure that shit did not go down like that.

    Even when they see the (huge) amount of money the Clintons earn from legal things like book sales and speeches etc.

    They even go on about how they earn the money "Talking to their friends in Wall Street" and then lie about how the money was earned on the next sentence.

    I would say that America deserves its fate if Drumpf was elected but approx. half of them wouldn't

    And we certainly don't need the horror that would be a Drumpf Presidency.

    PS. We (you) DID land men on the Moon, you dumb fucks!

    PPS. In an hysterical and timely fashion the BBC (A commie website run by Limey bastards for you trolling morons) says that "No criminality in Clinton emails - FBI", obviously lies and more lies

  40. tom dial Silver badge

    There certainly is blame to be shared with the permanent civil and diplomatic service people at the State Department who were, to put it gently, a bit slack. However Secretary Clinton brought in her own personal staff, including Brian Pagliano. Pagliano was hired in as a Schedule C political appointee for IT special projects, did part time work for the Clintons as administrator for clintonemail.com, and probably found RDP access from the public internet quite useful for that. The State Department IG report issued earlier this year described one such use in connection with attempts by unknown individuals, unsuccessful at the time, to gain access to the system, leading to temporary shutdowns.

    It is not clear that even a reasonably alert IT staff would necessarily have detected that, but there probably were quite a few people at State who knew that Secretary Clinton had a non-government email address, and those who didn't sleep through their annual Information Assurance training would have known this was out of order and should have reported it to the CIO chain. Maybe some of them did, as some of the IT staff raised the question and were told to back off and not speak of it again (Also in the IG report). Arguably, they were remiss in not reporting the matter then to the government's whistleblower phone number that most federal offices posted on physical bulletin boards and printed on earning statements several times a year.

    The notion that this came up out of ignorance or naiveté is rubbish. Any employee cleared for access to classified material has training, and signs documents that attest to that and to agreement to the rules governing classified material handling.

    Secretary Clinton, in addition to being the President's principal foreign policy advisor and representative (and fourth in line for the presidency), was responsible for legal and orderly operation of the State Department. She could, and presumably did, delegate the details, and the permanent diplomatic service staff would perform many of the duties, she remained responsible to the President for it, and failed in that responsibility. She also failed in the implicit responsibility to not put the department employees in the bind she did, where to carry out their duties they had to violate established department instructions and the law.

  41. anoco

    Time to change the caption

    The top photo caption should be updated to "100 per cent of the 650,000 messages not relevant".

  42. Version 1.0 Silver badge
    Coat

    Witch hunt

    Given that email containing classified information have headers to this effect, I find it odd that the government appears to have been unable to simply examine their own mail-server logs to determine what was sent, and who sent it.

    It's all stupid anyway - her mail-server was probably more secure than the government server that was sending the messages. We're all doomed when the presidential election comes down to running a mail-server on one side versus grabbing women by the pussy on the other side.

    Just checking my coat for a Canadian passport.

  43. Earth Resident

    Curious

    I'm sure this is not a smoking gun but 5% of 650,000 is 32,500. The number of "private" emails deleted from Secretary Clinton's email server was approximately 33,000. Coincizenza?

    Probably not significant. Simply curious. Wouldn't it be interesting if all those lost emails were found just a day or so before the election? That might clear up a lot. I know I do a backup before I do a mass deletion. What better way than to send it to the email account of a trusted aide.

  44. Hargrove

    Analysis????

    What flipping analysis.

    5% of 650,000 emails is 32,500 potentially relevant emails. .

    One serious compromise would earn the average federal employee a reprimand or suspension. Three would almost certainly mean that they would never again be cleared for a position of trust with the federal government.

    All good. If nothing else this campaign has conclusively demonstrated that the People no longer view the President as qualifying as a "position of trust."

  45. Bistro

    And then there is reality, not Drumpf's best suit.

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