State Department finds 22 classified emails in Hillary’s server, denies wrongdoing The US State Department is to release another 1,000 emails from the 55,000 found on Hillary Clinton’s private (and insecure) email server, saying that 22 contain material that is classified, but wasn’t at the time the messages were sent. "The documents are being upgraded at the request of the intelligence community because …
"Scary fact...
There hasn't been a Republican Presidency since 1928 that didn't have either a Bush or Nixon on either the Presidential ticket or Vice Presidential ticket."
This sounded sorta disturbing in a vague, ill-defined way, but not as scary as you described it. So let's review.
In 1953 Eisenhower/Nixon entered office for 8 years, and it definitely happened 'since' 1928. So far so good.
Then in 1968 Nixon won outright. Yup, starting to get sinister all right.
In 1974, Gerald Ford assumed the presidency, and sure enough, his VP was Bush! No wait, it was Nelson Rockefeller. Huh. I guess the incorrectness of your basic statement detracts just a bit from the pucker factor, but let it go.
Then in 1981, Reagan/Bush assumed office. Ahh, that's better, our first Bush, and only 53 years after the start of the scary period. Good enough I guess.
After Reagan, that same Bush won outright. Uncanny!
Then after 8 years of Clinton, Another Bush! It's a dynasty! I'm getting scared.
Finally we come to now, when Jeb Bush (another one!) is about to begin his sweep to office. Wait, last I heard he was in the loo and going down for the third time.
End of a dynasty I guess. And whatever happened to those Nixons? What's that you say? There was only ever one of them? I was sure there was a whole swarm...
Thanks, but I prefer not to besmirch my eyeballs with the spoutings of that washed-up propagandist, Michael 'Gobbels' Moore. You are aware that he is guilty of editing video of his enemies to make them appear to say damaging things? But hey, it's the sort of stuff YOU like to hear, right?
Please Big John, I know and you know the "Gobbels" part is just ridiculous.
"Where to invade next" is a film made by an American for Americas, not for me. I have been to each and every country (except Italy) and about 30 more (including the USA, with found memories). I have studied and worked in several of those countries he visited. There is nothing that I did not know in advance. That film is for you Americans to wake up, and I would (not his words) add to become as "selfish" as the ones who piss you in the face. You can do better, you should do better, you have to do better and there is nobody, at least not in Europe, who does not agree. Just get it.
The trouble is that Michael Moore, like Bill Ayers and Obama, HATE THE USA, JUST LIKE YOU DO!
They need to go somewhere else. That "film" is just further evidence that they are traitors to this country and belong over there where they can join you in Britistan under sharia law.
"HATE THE USA, JUST LIKE YOU DO!". What a dumb thing to say, we all need, regardless of country, people who will not stick their head up their arse and feel comfortable. Moore is a true American, aware, intelligent and informed. Just take Flint. We all need more people like him.
saying that 22 contain material that is classified, but wasn’t at the time the messages were sent.
This is stupid, that's like saying I'm bad for selling 22 mars bars that were poisonous even though I didn't know at the time I was selling them.
Kirby declined to comment on whether the 22 emails were written by Clinton, or merely viewed by her.
So they don't even know if it was Clinton making the error by sending from her mail server or someone else's for sending them outside the government network.
Since first providing her emails to the State Department more than one year ago.
It's took them a year to come up with this, I mean really, if you're running for president are you going to supply information that can be used to discredit you.
I initially found this whole Clinton email saga quite funny but now it's turned into some ridiculous attempt to discredit while trying to treat the public as complete morons.
Whether the information in the withheld emails was classified when sent has not been reported as yet. If it was not, the particulars may only indicate incompetence;. If it was, and copied without the applicable classification marks it becomes a criminal matter implicating whoever prepared the email and possibly others, including the recipient. In the end, it does not matter whether Secretary Clinton sent or received them, since she was responsible for deployment and operation of the probably illegal and certainly insecure server where they were stored. As head of the Department of State she also had the responsibility to ensure that the department and its employees, including herself and her close advisers, complied with the law and with federal and department regulations.
This is not "funny" and never was. While her supporters may claim otherwise, it is perfectly reasonable to consider Secretary Clinton's conduct as Secretary of State in evaluating her fitness for nomination for any other office of public trust, especially including the presidency. OPM director Katherine Archuleta was forced from office, and OPM CIO Donna Seymour is being pressured to resign, for less. As bad as OPM's failures were, the evidence does not suggest that OPM management flouted the law and regulations as appears to be true of the State Department.
Seymour was warned multiple (at least 3) times of attempted hacks, yet she completely ignored them. Her main background is HR, not IT. She is not only technically incompetent, but has blatantly disregarded the Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR) on numerous occasions, thus prompting OPM's Inspector General to cite multiple violations (see http://www.federaltimes.com/story/government/acquisition/policy/2015/12/10/ig-opm-winvale-contract/77093158/). She somehow believes she has carte blanche because she's "acting in the interest of national security." Do you people believe that Seymour's incompetence and negligence should be excused simply because OPM's previous CIO ALSO did not implement protective measures against a data breach? She was hired by the totally incompetent Archuleta, remember? And the people hired by Seymour are also totally incompetent. She is incapable of knowing who'd have the appropriate IT security expertise, even if a competent person applied she would only hire cronies and sycophants--i.e., those who wouldn't question her stupid decisions. I heard she hired a petite (little Napoleon) former Marine lance-corporal (who did data-entry in the Marines) with a degree in criminal justice from a barely-accredited mid-west school to be her right-hand man. Instead of being fired along with Archuleta, this woman still has her job, is still building her incompetent crony kingdom, and is still squandering taxpayer dollars and still violating the FAR. And federal workers must forever look over their shoulders for fear of having their identities stolen. How could you--or anyone--possibly defend this woman?
Does it matter these are from different departments? Are we supposed to take it on trust that there hasn't been (requested or possibly unprompted, someone after brownie-points or a job after the next election) some rather arbitrary reclassification?
There's lots of reasons why someone would want to keep their lucrative contract, or stay on the good side of someone with so much money and power, some would kill for a round of mini-golf in the company of the right ear to bend (etc) and I am sure it is all for love of the job and nothing to do with power and money.
Maybe the whole thing is completely above board, but it just reeks of a "oh crap, they might read that embarrassing email I sent when I inhaled that time, quick, change the password"...
Here's a very honest and serious question.
The article notes that some of the e-mails won't be released, even redacted, because they're part of Special Access Programs, basically "deny it even exists" clearance even above "top secret".
Here's the question. Given the nature of security, is it even possible for unclassified data to be reclassified, especially to SAP level, after it was previously disseminated in an unclassified level? It's sort of like a "genie out of the bottle" situation in that you can declassify something to a lower level but you can't classify something from a lower level to a higher level. The material has to originate at the higher level from the beginning. I know a bit about it because I had family in the military who had to deal with classification levels, and I've personally seen military media carrying things like green "Unclassified" designations.
Then what you're saying is that she didn't have a clue of what she considered to be unclassified would become SAP, or Top Secret, and that it would take other agencies to re-classify that info? That falls under the category not of unclassied but "I don't care" attitude (worse than negligence) for convinience sake (having her own server and control of what would be left if stuff hit the fan)
You see, she had the server "wiped" but didn't count on the fact that data was recovered by a third party That is proof that so important material was not kept under a secured environment and ended in a private business with no secuirty clearance at all, therefore breaking the law. There is a motto in the military "practice good opsec". Kind of sad to see rules only applies to certain people.
Does lack of judgement excuse someone in her level to be sending "unkwon at the time, above top secret or top secret information via an insecure communication device?" Do you really think someone in her position would not know how to handle or consider that type of information as Top Secret? Seems like the answer is yes for her.
I hope she gets better advisors, or the IT guys in the government area make something really easy to use for her, but secure, if she gets elected.
Classified emails? What anyone outside the United SillyStates of Amurkiness fails to understand: anything and everything under the US Gov't Classification System is "Classified" in one category or another, ranging from "Confidential" to "Destroy Before Reading!"
... including Thursday's lunch menu.
Indeed so. Everything of any significance has at least the status of "For Official Use Only." As I remember, however, nothing with a classification above Confidential may be stored on or accessed using an internet-accessible computer, and I think that includes remote VPN access using computers provided and maintained by the government.
Transferring material classified Secret or higher requires sneakernet use. If that happened in this case, it involved more than forwarding or careful copy-and-paste operations. Moreover, we are justified in expecting those officials who engage in email correspondence with the Secretary of State and her immediate staff to have the wit and will to recognize classification issues and refrain from sending sensitive material into environments where it cannot legally exist even if it is not (yet?) formally classified.
"Were the e-mails in question classified BEFORE or AFTER they ended up on the server?"
It really does not matter. The server was less fit than gmail, yahoo, or the local ISP's POP or IMAP serverfor storing ANY official documents. Moreover, we ought to be able to think government department or agency heads to take the initiative to prevent compromise of organization data rather than encourage or simply allow it to happen.
I also would fault the State Department CIO for inadequate oversight of an IT operation in which this was not found out, reported, taken up with the Secretary, and failing correction, with the Inspector General and Department of Justice.
I would think it DOES matter since if they were classified AFTER they were received, then ex post facto kicks in and no one can be at fault for handling stuff that was only classified after the fact. Unless the material was classified in some way BEFORE it was put on a non-classified machine, there's no standing.
I could have stated the point more clearly and succinctly.
It does not matter whether the email messages were marked classified before they arrived on the (almost certainly) illegal server or were recognized and classified during review preliminary to public release. No official records, classified or not, ever should have been on that server, which is known from various sources to have been configured and operated without much regard for security over much of its service life.
The fine print. As others have pointed out, anyone who removed classification markings from material before putting it in any of the emails committed a crime. Anyone who transferred material from a classified network or directed removal of classification markings from material before putting it into an email also committed a crime. Anyone who knowingly put sensitive but not yet classified material into one of the email messages certainly committed a serious error and violation of federal and State Department regulations, and may have committed a crime; if the inclusion was inadvertent or accidental, the only real difference is that the act might not be treated as criminal.
I do not know of instances in which publicly available material was classified upward and attempts made to retrieve it but would be extremely surprised if it had not happened; the number of activities and people generating properly classified data over the last 75 years is large enough that some accidental disclosure is almost certain.
The root cause, of course, was the server deployment and operation, along with the disrespect for law, regulations, and good management practice that accompanied it. As another poster noted but stated a bit differently, in intelligence matters it is important to know what your adversary knows, and dumping official correspondence to an insecure and apparently relatively unprotected environment certainly was a gift, whether or not any of them recognized it.
WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE? I'll tell you....
The people that were reviewing these emails had to be read in to the program because their TOP SECRET CLEARANCE wasn't high enough to be allowed read these emails. These emails were edited by Huma Abedin to REMOVE "CLASSIFIED" HEADERS so she could email them to Hillary on her illegal, insecure private email server and then she lied to congress about it.
Hillary scoffs at any law because she and Bill feel they are above the laws of this country.
Nothing to do with clinton running for Prez, I suppose?
"The US State Department is to release .. emails .. found on Hillary Clinton’s private .. email server .. Clinton, currently campaigning in Iowa ahead of the first state presidential nominee elections"
Anyone paying attention know that question is irrelevant to the question at hand. There is in fact NO WAY TO MAINTAIN A PRIVATE SERVER WITH ONE EMAIL ACCOUNT AND OBEY ALL THE LAWS REGARDING USE OF EMAIL ACCOUNTS FOR GOVERNMENT PURPOSES. The very act of setting up such a server meant she was intentionally setting it up to break the law.
The most basic conflict is between the requirement to maintain all emails which are records, and never using a government account for partisan campaign fund raising. EVERY elected politician in the capital maintains at least TWO accounts and most maintain at least THREE:
1) Email account for official government business.
2) Email account for campaign fund raising.
3) Private email account for use with family and friends (this is the one the troglodytes who use phone and snail mail get to skip).
I feel that anyone - male, female, transgender, genderless, liberal, conservative, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, whatever - that is under Federal investigation should NOT be permitted to run for President (or any other political office, really) until such time as the investigation has been concluded. Admittedly, this means that Hillary wouldn't be running, but given the choice of candidates right now, I think the best one might just be Vermin Supreme.
Helicopter because obvious
While I emote the same way, when I pause to allow my brain to interject it rejects the idea.
That gives the executive branch of government effective veto power over any and all candidates. Indeed even without it, all too frequently in the last decade politicians have been brought down on thinly sourced allegations that have ultimately been found to be without basis and undertaken for purely partisan purposes.
You Brits are not understanding the seriousness of this offense. It is the equivalent of storing classified files at home and breaching the Official Secrets Act.
This [b]is[b] a serious issue. Don't believe me? Look at how many times Petreaus has been raked through the coals the past couple years.
The only reason she is not in jail is because she is a Clinton.
Clearly you Yanks don't understand.
No-one is should be above the law. If she's not in jail, it's your problem; either your legal system is utter rubbish (smirk), or she hasn't done anything beyond 'reasonable doubt'.
This is a stupid situation and I personally reckon she should be slapped hard with a wet fish. However I would have thought that without the convenient excuse. (That is a joke, I actually wouldn't have though that, as I had thought she would quietly divorce Mr Lover-Lover and sell some books)
"The only reason she is not in jail is because she is a Clinton"
Or they don't have sufficient evidence to bring charges yet, or they want to avoid bringing multiple cases and instead want to have a single case with all the charges they can bring (more chance of one sticking), or just possibly she hasn't actually committed a crime (doesn't mean it wasn't a colossal screw up, but not necessarily criminal)
Or maybe it's because she didn't actually do anything illegal?
What's with the USA and these weird paranoid conspiracies? I would love to sell blood pressure medication in the States, because if you get this het up about an email that probably says something like 'Has anyone seen my mug with the rude picture of Jeb Bush?' - god knows what you do about really big conspiracies like the UN black helicopters spraying gun melting aerosols that turn people gay.
@AC Perhaps if the government wasn't bending the rules so frequently then lying to cover it up then it wouldn't breed so many conspiracies. Remember all those who said that the NSA were spying on everyone was only touted by so called conspiracy theorists?
I mean it's not like the U.S. Public Health Service ever intentionally infected people with syphilis for forty years. Oh wait. Well at least they didn't oversee gun running walking operations into Mexico or sell arms to Iran to fund Nicaraguan rebels.
Try to remember that most of the things we now call scandals were once dismissed as conspiracy theories.
Those emails may not have any top secret intel of national security, but just highly inflammable intel on the mess Hillary and the State dept., made of the Arab Spring and Benghazi.
They have to cover their backsides for her to become another lying president.
I have a mail server. If someone sends me a beyond top secret copy of Thursday's lunch menu (to paraphrase an earlier poster) is it my fault? Theoretically, my entire server then becomes beyond top secret, including everything already on it, and thus has to be destroyed in a controlled thermonuclear detonation.
The key questions are:
a) was she *sending* classified emails from it?
b) was she aware that she'd received classified emails on her server, in which case, why didn't she do something about it?
c) WhyTF was she doing "work stuff" on her own server?
Either way, the full weight of American justice should be brought to bear, and she should spend the next 10 years on death row, at least.
It's not illegal to receive a classified e-mail. It's illegal to send one to an unclassifed user. Sending them to a classified person using an insecure server is also illegal. But not all e-mails for work are classified.
The key answers are (since I worked with classified documents before):
a) Don't know, but that would get her in trouble. Receiving them won't get her in trouble. Allowing a third-party company to back them up could get her into trouble if they were classified at the time.
b) You're not required to do anything except immediately delete them. And maybe yell at whoever sent it to you. But remember they may not have been classified at the time she first received them.
c) She didn't want to carry around two smart phones, two PCs, etc.
And yes, the U.S. is dumb enough to retroactively classify e-mails. That's the problem here. I think Hillary simply didn't know that or knew it but didn't realize it happens more than it should. Having the private server is not illegal per se. But you can get into trouble pretty easily if somebody else screws up.
Correct on all except probably the last sentence but one. Operating a private server certainly is not illegal; quite a few people do that. However, the Federal Information Security Management Act was enacted in 2002 and directed NIST to provide implementing standards and instructions. NIST did that about 2005 or 2006, although many agencies started work to bring their systems and practices into conformity with the act well before that. Government use of non-compliant systems for official business is not and was not legal, and that is true irrespective of system ownership. Nothing obvious in the law forbids using a private system for official government business, including, as far as I know, classified materials, as long as the information assurance requirements are satisfied. It would not be at all surprising if major defense contractors like Lockheed Martin or Boeing operated such systems.
FISMA compliance is not especially easy to attain or maintain, and it is reasonably well documented that the server for clintonemail.com was rather badly non-compliant, so was operated illegally.
You start from a false premise. You start from the premise $Hrillary had no knowledge about what is and is not secret and its various gradations. In order to be read into the programs she had to be trained and sign legally binding agreements to protect such information REGARDLESS OF MARKINGS. As such, she had a POSITIVE duty to report violations of secret information when she saw them. If the email was sent to her it was sent to be read by her. She is therefore culpable for the message regardless of whether she read them or not.
a) Irrelevant. Even if as she claimed she only read them, she caused them to be sent to the server by circumventing normal Dept of State processes in the first place. As I've outlined repeatedly above, there is no way this server could EVER comply with ALL relevant federal law. That why you use Dept resources when you work for the government. It gives you actual plausible deniability when something goes wrong.
b) Again actually irrelevant. If she knew she broke the law. If she didn't know she broke the law because she was legally obligated to know as a result of being read into the programs authorizing her to see the intelligence information when she used the proper devices.
c) Because she regards herself as above the law. See item a) about the possibility of complying with all federal laws using one server/account.
Oh, and yes, if you through no cause of your own receive a classified email, and the government traces that email to your server, that server now BELONGS to the government (at least in the US, YMMV depending on international treaties if you aren't in the US). So long as no nefarious intent is determined you will be reimbursed for the cost of the hardware. Eventually. You know how long it sometimes takes them to process those payments. You might or might not get your data back. Yes, they will also take all backups which may contain the classified data. Also, you WILL be responsible for providing details about anyone else to whom you may have forwarded the email. If you fail to provide full details, when the forensic check on your mail server is completed, charges may be filed against you for failure to comply. If you forwarded the message, any recipients will likewise be subjected to the same process.
Yes, this is scary shit and hangs over the head of ANYONE handling classified materials at any level.
I'm usually impressed with the calibre of discussion on El Reg but this comment section is just crass!
Please can we rise above the name calling and wilful ignorance to fully address the other sides criticisms and then maybe we can gain some intelligent insight. As it stands most of the comments on this thread break down into childish partisan name calling.
You do know calling your president "Obamy" makes you sound 5 years old, right?
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
