Rip wrote:
The important thing is it established as fact that she(they) were in fact careless and likely compromised national secrets. Not to mention mishandled and improperly destroyed records that should have been kept.
This only matters to those that already hate her, and is not nearly enough to sway anyone on the fence between her and Drumpf. Of course partisan news sources will absolutely spin this to be far more significant than it is, but that's to be expected.
As for myself, I understood from the beginning that this was improper and shouldn't have been done. I'm still waiting to hear what "national secrets" were compromised, because after wikileaks and snowden, it has become evident that large amount of documents have been inappropriately designated classified. If I can't trust people to classify correctly, I certainly can't trust those who tell me that violating policy on those documents is tantamount to treason.
I look forward to Rips frustrated and angry proclamations that this is one huge conspiracy.
Meh, I never expected them to prosecute.
She actually could shoot someone and get a pass.
The important thing is it established as fact that she(they) were in fact careless and likely compromised national secrets. Not to mention mishandled and improperly destroyed records that should have been kept.
Didn't destroy her campaign in a single blow but yet another paper cut.
Actually, the important thing is to learn from this and not repeat the mistakes made by most recent Secretaries of State and government IT in general.
Unless of course, you prefer party over country, in which case, carry on.
Black Lives definitely Matter Lorini!
Also: There are three ways to not tell the truth: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Any reasonable person would have known they were taking risks and those risks have been realized.
Bull.
Most people in this country are of similar levels of ignorance when it comes to security on computers. In any honest assessment, most people will send email without the slightest hint of worry that it might be intercepted.
And I'll even go one step further. I bet if the FBI investigated Congress they would find multiple violations as bad or worse. If Republicans held themselves to the standard they hold Secretary Clinton, there would be a mass resignation.
Part of this is a complete ignorance of the way computers work.
A big part of it is the government classifying everything as "OMG WE CAN'T LET THE RUSSIANS FIND OUT THE PRESIDENT'S DOG HAS DIARRHEA" TOP SECRET.
Certainly it speaks poorly of Clinton that she didn't have anyone willing to step up and stand up to her. The idea that this is somehow a unique scandal we should all be horrified about is just plain bull.
I've got guys who work with utility companies asking me if they really need to change their passwords every 3 months, or complaining that they can't use their kids' names. And these are engineers.
Any reasonable person would have known they were taking risks and those risks have been realized.
Bull.
No.
I believe that when classified materials are on paper they may be restricted from leaving an area or a building. As secretary of state she should have been briefed on these kinds of procedures. She is a Yale educated lawyer who has been in and around government for many years and must have been briefed on security many times. I cannot fathom someone like her not understanding that by setting up email on an exterior server that she was unaware that there would be a risk of classified material crossing the threshold.
She knew the risks and took them, and should have paid the price.
Others have.
I forgot to call it "a box of pure malevolent evil, a purveyor of
insidious insanity, an eldritch manifestation that would make Bill
Gates let out a low whistle of admiration," but it's all those, too.
-- David Gerard, Re: [Mediawiki-l] Wikitext grammar, 2010.08.06
No reasonable person could possibly square what FBI Director James Comey said about Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal e-mail system during her time as Secretary of State with his final recommendation.
On Tuesday, Comey spent 15 minutes meticulously detailing every illegality of Clinton—including her negligent behavior and obstruction of the investigation. Many Americans have been prosecuted for far less. And yet, at the end of it all, he offered the absurdly counterintuitive position that no “reasonable prosecutor” would bring charges in such a case.
Everything the director said challenged his conclusion. At one point, for example, Comey claimed that any “reasonable person should have known this was not an appropriate venue for classified emails.” Only minutes before that, Comey also explained that “gross negligence” would suffice for prosecution. So is he accusing the presidential candidate of being too dumb to comprehend what a top secret document is or how an email account works? Because any other explanation makes no sense. According to the FBI, Clinton sent 110 emails containing clearly marked classified information. Thirty-six of them contained secret information. Eight of those email chains contained “top secret” information. Worse still, “We assess it is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton’s personal e-mail account,” Comey explained.
There are few, if any, scenarios I can conceive of that are more grossly negligent when it comes to classified documents than sending them through an unsecured email account in a place where hostile actors can access them. Perhaps Comey could offer us an example of what a person needs do to do to be prosecuted. What if Hillary accidentally left a folder marked “top secret” in front of the Chinese embassy? Would that do it?
Nishimura, deployed in Afghanistan in 2007 and 2008 as a regional engineer, admitted to downloading classified briefings and digital records onto his personal electronic devices. He carried the materials off base and brought them back to the U.S. when his deployment ended.
An FBI search of Nishimura's home turned up classified materials, but did not reveal evidence he intended to distribute them.
He was sentenced to two years of probation and a $7,500 fine, and was ordered to surrender his security clearance. He is barred from seeking a future security clearance.
I forgot to call it "a box of pure malevolent evil, a purveyor of
insidious insanity, an eldritch manifestation that would make Bill
Gates let out a low whistle of admiration," but it's all those, too.
-- David Gerard, Re: [Mediawiki-l] Wikitext grammar, 2010.08.06
Nishimura downloaded classified material onto a mobile device and then left the country. Hillary used an email server in her house. Do I think she was stupid? Hell yes. But as I said, I've seen people in power do even dumber things when it comes to data security. But Nishimura's punishment is 2 years of probation and a fairly small fine. To hear Republicans talk, Clinton should've been imprisoned for the rest of her life.
hepcat wrote:Nishimura downloaded classified material onto a mobile device and then left the country. Hillary used an email server in her house. Do I think she was stupid? Hell yes. But as I said, I've seen people in power do even dumber things when it comes to data security. But Nishimura's punishment is 2 years of probation and a fairly small fine. To hear Republicans talk, Clinton should've been imprisoned for the rest of her life.
Technically he brought them into the country, but the issue was that he crossed a threshold. Even without the factor of intent, he still had to face charges.
She is much bigger fish in terms of being a target of foreign intelligence, but she doesn't have to face the music. Why?
From today:
Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.
There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position, or in the position of those government employees with whom she was corresponding about these matters, should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation.
We do assess that hostile actors gained access to the private commercial e-mail accounts of people with whom Secretary Clinton was in regular contact from her personal account. We also assess that Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal e-mail domain was both known by a large number of people and readily apparent. She also used her personal e-mail extensively while outside the United States, including sending and receiving work-related e-mails in the territory of sophisticated adversaries.
Last edited by xwraith on Tue Jul 05, 2016 3:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.
I forgot to call it "a box of pure malevolent evil, a purveyor of
insidious insanity, an eldritch manifestation that would make Bill
Gates let out a low whistle of admiration," but it's all those, too.
-- David Gerard, Re: [Mediawiki-l] Wikitext grammar, 2010.08.06
I'd just like to point out that if the email server is enough to disqualify a senior, experienced politician from the candidacy for president, Drumpf has a long, long, looonnnggg list of dishonesty and morally repugnant behaviour that would more than disqualify him, especially when compared to Clinton's "sins".
This whole election cycle has turned into something out of parody.
xwraith wrote:including sending and receiving work-related e-mails in the territory of sophisticated adversaries.
Work related ≠ classified
And as has been pointed out by experts before, even stuff that became classified later may very well have started out unclassified. That apparently happens a lot with documents at that level.
Again, she was stupid about her email. That I don't contest. That she was selling state secrets to the highest bidder? No. And let's be honest, that's the narrative people like Rip are not so secretly trying to put out there.
Nimishura ultimately wasn't imprisoned, nor should Clinton be.
Last edited by hepcat on Tue Jul 05, 2016 3:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.
xwraith wrote:She is much bigger in terms of being a target of foreign intelligence, but she doesn't have to face the music. Why?
It is the standard of proof required. For the misdemeanor they needed intent. Impossible pretty much. For the felony they needed it to be mishandled or gross negligence. I listened to the Comey announcement live and it was fairly clear that there was no smoking gun. At one point there were discussions that they were moving data from the classified network to the unclassified network. That would have been a slam dunk case.
Instead what it looks like happened was they viewed classified material and then had discussions about the material on an unclassified network. Stupid. Very stupid - reckless even - but it wasn't the actual material so you can't go after them for mishandling it directly. So you'd need the gross negligence and that would be hard to prove considering the FBI themselves had to track down information owners and get classification decisions. It wasn't entirely obvious. If they were saying ridiculous things like, "Hey I just read that Jason Bourne is on the loose again. It was in that classified report." Well - there'd be a chance to go for gross negligence. Instead they were likely just talking about the issues and referencing classified information in "normal conversation". Therein lies the rub - it is a very technical issue. You'd have to convince a jury of that and that's a tough hurdle to cross. I think it was idiotic. I think it *should be* illegal outright but as the law stands it is a tough case.
FBI investigators have also read all of the approximately 30,000 e-mails provided by Secretary Clinton to the State Department in December 2014. Where an e-mail was assessed as possibly containing classified information, the FBI referred the e-mail to any U.S. government agency that was a likely “owner” of information in the e-mail, so that agency could make a determination as to whether the e-mail contained classified information at the time it was sent or received, or whether there was reason to classify the e-mail now, even if its content was not classified at the time it was sent (that is the process sometimes referred to as “up-classifying”).
From the group of 30,000 e-mails returned to the State Department, 110 e-mails in 52 e-mail chains have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received. Eight of those chains contained information that was Top Secret at the time they were sent; 36 chains contained Secret information at the time; and eight contained Confidential information, which is the lowest level of classification. Separate from those, about 2,000 additional e-mails were “up-classified” to make them Confidential; the information in those had not been classified at the time the e-mails were sent.
2000 were upclassified but 110 were classified when sent and of that 110, 8 were Top Secret.
Nishimura didn't even have a Top Secret clearance so we can assume all the stuff he was punished for were Secret or Classified at worst.
xwraith wrote:including sending and receiving work-related e-mails in the territory of sophisticated adversaries.
Work related ≠ classified
We are given no timeline as to when the known top secret and secret material was present on her system (or being exchanged via email) so we can't really make that assumption. Otherwise we could look up when she was in say, China, and determine if there was a chance of a direct breach. At any rate the network traffic would point right to her private email server which would probably get looked at pretty quickly by a sophisticated adversary.
It also doesn't excuse the fact that the system existed in the first place.
hepcat wrote:And as has been pointed out by experts before, even stuff that became classified later may very well have started out unclassified. That's pretty much the norm. .
Transcript wrote:Eight of those chains contained information that was Top Secret at the time they were sent; 36 chains contained Secret information at the time; and eight contained Confidential information, which is the lowest level of classification. Separate from those, about 2,000 additional e-mails were “up-classified” to make them Confidential; the information in those had not been classified at the time the e-mails were sent.
The eight Top Secret chains were not up-classified, nor were the 36 Secret email chains.
I forgot to call it "a box of pure malevolent evil, a purveyor of
insidious insanity, an eldritch manifestation that would make Bill
Gates let out a low whistle of admiration," but it's all those, too.
-- David Gerard, Re: [Mediawiki-l] Wikitext grammar, 2010.08.06
When I read this I think to myself its a little bit of ...
"It is not as bad as you think it is but probably worse then you realize."
I'm talking about the bending of rulez/policies for people in power. I read people's reactions and no one actually seems to care if she broke a law or not but are only interested in if she is punished. Where I work, we were find a security problem, we immediately address it even if it is a mistake or poor choice by an employee especially when there is no evidence any damage was done. I guess what I am trying to say it no one actually seems interested in getting things to work right or be safer but are just interested in meting out punishment.
Something like your neighbor parked in your space so instead of knocking on his door and politely point it out, I instead call the FBI and report he is acting suspicious and must be terrorist and then wonder why NO ONE IS DOING ANYTHING ABOUT THIS!!
xwraith wrote:
We are given no timeline as to when the known top secret and secret material was present on her system (or being exchanged via email) so we can't really make that assumption.
This is true for both sides of the discussion.
edit: I found this part of the FBI statement interesting in light of attempts to compare this to the Nishimura incident.
Ultimately, Comey said his recommendation against charges stems from the fact that there is no precedent for charging someone under similar circumstances, saying the FBI could not find a single case in which a person was charged with crimes for similar actions.
Last edited by hepcat on Tue Jul 05, 2016 4:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Scoop20906 wrote:When I read this I think to myself its a little bit of ...
"It is not as bad as you think it is but probably worse then you realize."
I'm talking about the bending of rulez/policies for people in power. I read people's reactions and no one actually seems to care if she broke a law or not but are only interested in if she is punished. Where I work, we were find a security problem, we immediately address it even if it is a mistake or poor choice by an employee especially when there is no evidence any damage was done. I guess what I am trying to say it no one actually seems interested in getting things to work right or be safer but are just interested in meting out punishment.
Something like your neighbor parked in your space so instead of knocking on his door and politely point it out, I instead call the FBI and report he is acting suspicious and must be terrorist and then wonder why NO ONE IS DOING ANYTHING ABOUT THIS!!
Why should they, from their view WAI.
If you play ball we got your back.
The powerful political aren't interested in policing each other.
They have racist, anti-semitic, homophobic, gun-toting, climate destroying Islamophobic boogeymen to protect us from.
Scoop20906 wrote:When I read this I think to myself its a little bit of ...
"It is not as bad as you think it is but probably worse then you realize."
I'm talking about the bending of rulez/policies for people in power. I read people's reactions and no one actually seems to care if she broke a law or not but are only interested in if she is punished. Where I work, we were find a security problem, we immediately address it even if it is a mistake or poor choice by an employee especially when there is no evidence any damage was done. I guess what I am trying to say it no one actually seems interested in getting things to work right or be safer but are just interested in meting out punishment.
True - but IMO it also comes down that people with power generally have excellent lawyers. You have to factor that in. A Nishimura is just some guy - his ability to defend himself generally depends on his ability to pay for it. Clinton has a vast political machine behind her and deep pockets. And that is always a huge factor. Especially in a case like this that is fairly technical both from an "IT" policy sense and legal issues.
Scoop20906 wrote:When I read this I think to myself its a little bit of ...
"It is not as bad as you think it is but probably worse then you realize."
I'm talking about the bending of rulez/policies for people in power. I read people's reactions and no one actually seems to care if she broke a law or not but are only interested in if she is punished. Where I work, we were find a security problem, we immediately address it even if it is a mistake or poor choice by an employee especially when there is no evidence any damage was done. I guess what I am trying to say it no one actually seems interested in getting things to work right or be safer but are just interested in meting out punishment.
True - but IMO it also comes down that people with power generally have excellent lawyers. You have to factor that in. A Nishimura is just some guy - his ability to defend himself generally depends on his ability to pay for it. Clinton has a vast political machine behind her and deep pockets. And that is always a huge factor. Especially in a case like this that is fairly technical both from an "IT" policy sense and legal issues.
Yes, this makes sense. Have money and influence and your options are much greater than a lowly civil servant clerk in the basement of the 18 F Street.
hepcat wrote:
edit: I found this part of the FBI statement interesting in light of attempts to compare this to the Nishimura incident.
Ultimately, Comey said his recommendation against charges stems from the fact that there is no precedent for charging someone under similar circumstances, saying the FBI could not find a single case in which a person was charged with crimes for similar actions.
Heh,
I'm sure it's technically true that nobody had ever dared to setup an external, unsecured email system to be a parallel method of communication with the secretary of one of the major federal departments that routinely handles classified information.
I forgot to call it "a box of pure malevolent evil, a purveyor of
insidious insanity, an eldritch manifestation that would make Bill
Gates let out a low whistle of admiration," but it's all those, too.
-- David Gerard, Re: [Mediawiki-l] Wikitext grammar, 2010.08.06
Isgrimnur wrote:How much jail time to General Petraeus serve again? How many stars did he lose?
Or Karl Rove and George Bush for using their GOP accounts for Gov't business and losing the backups? Dick Cheney for ordering Scooter Libby to out Valerie Plame as a CIA agent? Colin Powell for using an AOL account, DHS allowing an outside contrator to maintain a database of classified gov't personnel (which lead to the OPM hack last year).
Black Lives definitely Matter Lorini!
Also: There are three ways to not tell the truth: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
hepcat wrote:SSSHHHHH! Don't mention Cheney! You wanna get shot in the face?
I recently read an SF novel where Bush died and Cheney became President. It should have been marketed as a Horror novel... Rumsfeld became an unelected VP, and then President after a Cheney Heart attack. Scalia ended up as the Chief Justice...
Black Lives definitely Matter Lorini!
Also: There are three ways to not tell the truth: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Still had to plead guilty, two years of probation and a $100,000 fine.
I forgot to call it "a box of pure malevolent evil, a purveyor of
insidious insanity, an eldritch manifestation that would make Bill
Gates let out a low whistle of admiration," but it's all those, too.
-- David Gerard, Re: [Mediawiki-l] Wikitext grammar, 2010.08.06
xwraith wrote:Still had to plead guilty, two years of probation and a $100,000 fine.
Right, he had to plead guilty because he *intentionally leaked classified information to his mistress*.
Who did Clinton intentionally leak classified information to?
And in banks across the world
Christians, Moslems, Hindus, Jews
And every other race, creed, colour, tint or hue
Get down on their knees and pray
The raccoon and the groundhog neatly
Make up bags of change
But the monkey in the corner
Well he's slowly drifting out of range
xwraith wrote:Still had to plead guilty, two years of probation and a $100,000 fine.
Right, he had to plead guilty because he *intentionally leaked classified information to his mistress*.
Who did Clinton intentionally leak classified information to?
We discussed this somewhat upthread, but what about this guy? Who did he leak to?
I forgot to call it "a box of pure malevolent evil, a purveyor of
insidious insanity, an eldritch manifestation that would make Bill
Gates let out a low whistle of admiration," but it's all those, too.
-- David Gerard, Re: [Mediawiki-l] Wikitext grammar, 2010.08.06
He got two years probation just like Petraeus, a fine, and his security clearance permanently revoked.
He had to be held accountable, why shouldn't she?
I forgot to call it "a box of pure malevolent evil, a purveyor of
insidious insanity, an eldritch manifestation that would make Bill
Gates let out a low whistle of admiration," but it's all those, too.
-- David Gerard, Re: [Mediawiki-l] Wikitext grammar, 2010.08.06
