The Hillary Clinton thread

[Isgrimnur]

So this was a partisan pre-emptive strike by you for future arguments? Good to know.

Oh, and should we tar and feather Colin Powell for setting a bad example?

[GreenGoo]

What do you think trusted certificates are?

[Rip]

So this was a partisan pre-emptive strike by you for future arguments? Good to know.

Oh, and should we tar and feather Colin Powell for setting a bad example?

They were all unclassified and mostly of a housekeeping nature.

Different animal for sure. Telling someone to be sure and submit TPS reports is a far cry from discussing an active terror attack and the response to it.

[hepcat]

If it was Cheney with the secret e-mail account it would be decried here as evidence of a vast right wing conspiracy.

And since it was Hillary with the secret e-mail account it was decried here as evidence of a vast left wing conspiracy. What's your point?

[GreenGoo]

I don't know anything about your specific setup gbasden. What percentage of your email leave your servers? I.e. how much is internal email (even though geographically remote)?

Nothing I'm saying is new or shocking. Your statements are the ones that have me scratching my head. Here's just one of about a quadrillion articles on the vulnerabilities of email. And even if you are using encrypted email, and the destination server is accepting encrypted email, the second there is a hiccup in the handshake, everything drops to clear text. So you can NEVER be guaranteed that your encrypted email stays encrypted. Unless you use end to end encryption, which is encrypting the data THEN sending it, rather than encrypting the email itself. I elaborated on end to end for others reading along,

Unfortunately, those are the exceptions. Facebook, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, and AOL Mail do not accept incoming e-mail in SMTP-TLS encrypted form, meaning hundreds of millions of users' private communications are vulnerable to monitoring. Both the sending and receiving servers must have encryption turned on for a secure connection to happen.

ver the last decade or so, Web mail providers began to turn on encryption to armor the connections between users' computers and Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail and other services. That form of protection against surveillance, which typically appears in a Web browser as an "https" connection accompanied by a padlock image, is viewed as generally secure and is used by banks as well. Google has offered it since 2004, and Yahoo finally followed suit this year.

But during the next step, when those e-mail messages are transferred from one company's servers to another's, they're rarely encrypted. An e-mail message that a Facebook user addresses to a Yahoo Mail user, for instance, will be delivered in an unencrypted form through a server-to-server connection that provides no protection against surveillance.

[GreenGoo]

Super cool email testing site:

http://www.checktls.com/

For those following along, if you're using gmail, you're protected until you send to someone who has an email server that does not accept TLS, or just doesn't like google.

I assume a libertarian like Rip has it maxed out on his servers.

Things ARE better. But they aren't all that great. And they certainly aren't guaranteed. Bottom line, if you want your stuff to stay private, end to end encryption.

We can take the conversation into EBG if we want to continue it.

[Defiant]

Maybe Clinton wanted to avoid this

[Rip]

If it was Cheney with the secret e-mail account it would be decried here as evidence of a vast right wing conspiracy.

And since it was Hillary with the secret e-mail account it was decried here as evidence of a vast left wing conspiracy. What's your point?

There is none other than there are a few (3 or 4?) here decrying it as such. When it is a Cheney for instance there will only be a few who don't. In fact I do think there are a lot of right wing conspiracies, just not the ones you guys would point to. In fact I would bet money that the Republicans not fighting Obama's amnesty push are almost certainly involved in a conspiracy with big money donors and large corps. The people who want the cheap labor. While it is opposed by a substantial majority of those who elected them.



Note that Walker is trying to pedal that back now because he realized how unpopular of a position it is.

[hepcat]

So in short, it's okay for you to do it, but it's not okay when others do it.

[Rip]

It would seem. To their credit even MSNBC sees it. From "The last word"

After Granholm argued that politicians on both sides have used private e-mails, O’Donnell turned to New York Times Correspondent Josh Barro and said “what I just heard, is what I don’t believe Governor Granholm would be saying — Josh Barro, if this were a Republican administration. And it is not what I heard any Democrat say when they discovered that [New Jersey Governor] Chris Christie’s (R) team was using private e-mail when convenient to them when they were trying to get around the use of official e-mail. This strikes me, when I hear responses like that of already the reaction to it is purely partisan. If you support Hillary Clinton’s candidacy, you’re going to say there’s nothing wrong here. We turn the tables and just put a Republican name beside this story, totally different response.”

Barro agreed, adding that e-mail story is “helping us to learn who will defend anything Hillary Clinton does, no matter how indefensible.”

[hepcat]

Congratulations on discovering one of the most basic truths about mankind.

[Isgrimnur]

And vice versa.

[Jaymann]

And vice versa.

Mankind has discovered a basic rip in the truth.

[gbasden]

I didn't make it about the party.

So you have no recollection of typing the following words in the past that started this tangent?

Which in the liberal world is a positive.

Apparently it is at least here. All I see is people defending it and trying to spin it as fuss over nothing. I am simply doing the polar opposite of what you guys (and Hillary as noted by the video) do. If it was Cheney with the secret e-mail account it would be decried here as evidence of a vast right wing conspiracy.

Is Jeb a liberal, then?

This is an incredibly stupid argument to make partisan. It's dumb and wrong and should be called out when a liberal does it, and it's dumb and wrong and should be called out when a conservative does it. It's not ideological, it's corrupt.

[gbasden]

What do you think trusted certificates are?

Unnecessary for opportunistic TLS, that's what they are. Any certificate, even self signed, can be used for it.

[Rip]

I didn't make it about the party.

So you have no recollection of typing the following words in the past that started this tangent?

Which in the liberal world is a positive.

Apparently it is at least here. All I see is people defending it and trying to spin it as fuss over nothing. I am simply doing the polar opposite of what you guys (and Hillary as noted by the video) do. If it was Cheney with the secret e-mail account it would be decried here as evidence of a vast right wing conspiracy.

Is Jeb a liberal, then?

This is an incredibly stupid argument to make partisan. It's dumb and wrong and should be called out when a liberal does it, and it's dumb and wrong and should be called out when a conservative does it. It's not ideological, it's corrupt.

As governor of a state the rules are different, not to mention all the e-mails have been made public. That being said it was still a bad idea. You won't have a problem convincing me of conspiracies around him however. I don't like or trust the guy. I would vote for Warren over him in a heartbeat and probably several other Dems. Not Hillary though. No way no how.

[gbasden]

I don't know anything about your specific setup gbasden. What percentage of your email leave your servers? I.e. how much is internal email (even though geographically remote)?

Nothing I'm saying is new or shocking. Your statements are the ones that have me scratching my head. Here's just one of about a quadrillion articles on the vulnerabilities of email. And even if you are using encrypted email, and the destination server is accepting encrypted email, the second there is a hiccup in the handshake, everything drops to clear text. So you can NEVER be guaranteed that your encrypted email stays encrypted. Unless you use end to end encryption, which is encrypting the data THEN sending it, rather than encrypting the email itself. I elaborated on end to end for others reading along,

Unfortunately, those are the exceptions. Facebook, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, and AOL Mail do not accept incoming e-mail in SMTP-TLS encrypted form, meaning hundreds of millions of users' private communications are vulnerable to monitoring. Both the sending and receiving servers must have encryption turned on for a secure connection to happen.

ver the last decade or so, Web mail providers began to turn on encryption to armor the connections between users' computers and Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail and other services. That form of protection against surveillance, which typically appears in a Web browser as an "https" connection accompanied by a padlock image, is viewed as generally secure and is used by banks as well. Google has offered it since 2004, and Yahoo finally followed suit this year.

But during the next step, when those e-mail messages are transferred from one company's servers to another's, they're rarely encrypted. An e-mail message that a Facebook user addresses to a Yahoo Mail user, for instance, will be delivered in an unencrypted form through a server-to-server connection that provides no protection against surveillance.

As of 2014, both Gmail and Yahoo advertise 250-STARTTLS when connecting and thus will support opportunistic TLS. I'm not arguing with you that email is insecure, that it can be hacked, that many domains don't support TLS, etc. I think I specified that at the start. The more consumer oriented the mail service, the less secure it is probably going to be. I just took exception to your statement that all email is clear text. I also still think she is incredibly dumb not to have used hardened servers with demand TLS and trusted certificates that not only encrypt but validate identity. I also agree that end to end encryption is the only real way to protect messages and never argued otherwise. I do think it's inarguable that the increasing use of opportunistic TLS makes casual in transit snooping much harder.

[Rip]

Funny you mention that. I have a customer who use google to host their corp e-mail Just last week the CFO was questioning me regarding the fact that he has e-mailed with people about certain things and magically starts getting google ads focusing on the subject. An amount that made it impossible to suggest it was a coincidence.

He brought it up to acknowledge I was right when I warned him his e-mails were unlikely to be "private" when hosting them there.

[gbasden]

Funny you mention that. I have a customer who use google to host their corp e-mail Just last week the CFO was questioning me regarding the fact that he has e-mailed with people about certain things and magically starts getting google ads focusing on the subject. An amount that made it impossible to suggest it was a coincidence.

He brought it up to acknowledge I was right when I warned him his e-mails were unlikely to be "private" when hosting them there.

Gmail simply supports the protocol to encrypt SMTP in flight. That doesn't encrypt data at rest, of course, and datamining email at rest is how Google monetizes Gmail.

[Rip]

Funny you mention that. I have a customer who use google to host their corp e-mail Just last week the CFO was questioning me regarding the fact that he has e-mailed with people about certain things and magically starts getting google ads focusing on the subject. An amount that made it impossible to suggest it was a coincidence.

He brought it up to acknowledge I was right when I warned him his e-mails were unlikely to be "private" when hosting them there.

Gmail simply supports the protocol to encrypt SMTP in flight. That doesn't encrypt data at rest, of course, and datamining email at rest is how Google monetizes Gmail.

Which is just awesome. Your e-mail is private and secure unless information in it can make us money. Sounds like just who I want to trust my e-mail to.

[gbasden]

Funny you mention that. I have a customer who use google to host their corp e-mail Just last week the CFO was questioning me regarding the fact that he has e-mailed with people about certain things and magically starts getting google ads focusing on the subject. An amount that made it impossible to suggest it was a coincidence.

He brought it up to acknowledge I was right when I warned him his e-mails were unlikely to be "private" when hosting them there.

Gmail simply supports the protocol to encrypt SMTP in flight. That doesn't encrypt data at rest, of course, and datamining email at rest is how Google monetizes Gmail.

Which is just awesome. Your e-mail is private and secure unless information in it can make us money. Sounds like just who I want to trust my e-mail to.

No arguments from me.

[Rip]

But it only works if it's configured correctly. CNN found that Clinton's computer server wasn't using trusted Web certificates -- something that's frowned upon by computer security experts.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/05/politics/ ... index.html

[Rip]

A Fortinet appliance it seems.

Using those addresses, McGeorge discovered that the certificate appearing on the site Tuesday appeared to be the factory default for the security appliance, made by Fortinet Inc., running the service.
Those defaults would normally be replaced by a unique certificate purchased for a few hundred dollars. By not taking that step, the system was vulnerable to hacking.
It’s unclear whether the site’s settings were the same before news of the private e-mail account emerged this week.
Fortinet issued a statement saying it wasn’t aware the company’s technologies were used by Clinton.
“If they were, our recommendation is to replace provided self-signed certificates with valid digital certificates for the protected domains,” said Andrea Cousens, a Fortinet spokeswoman.
“It may have fallen in the realm of acceptable risk,” Devost said. “They wanted to make sure that when she was in Egypt all of the traffic from her phone to the mail server was encrypted and that was their priority.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/ ... t-security

[Zarathud]

This is what happens when you let Al Gore run your web server....

Hillary should have left her email on government servers so they could have crashed and become unrecoverable.

[Moliere]

SNL's cold open with Hillary Clinton

[Moliere]

Chelsea Clinton’s Second Fake Job: Saving the World

In the close of her interview with Fortune, Clinton implies that the goal of “No Ceilings” is no less than making sure no woman will ever have to make a hard choice ever again. This would seem to involve somehow skirting the reality of life on earth, but Clinton, unabashed, gives a timeline of 20 years for this goal. One could offer a modest counter-suggestion: How about picking one or two causes, actually learning all about them, and working with localities from the bottom up, rather than trying to restructure the entire world with one broad and rather clueless brush? That way, you might actually help people and get something done.

I'm sure most would consider this a "hit piece", but I still find it an interesting review of what it's like to be the daughter of a famous political couple.

[geezer]

Chelsea Clinton’s Second Fake Job: Saving the World

In the close of her interview with Fortune, Clinton implies that the goal of “No Ceilings” is no less than making sure no woman will ever have to make a hard choice ever again. This would seem to involve somehow skirting the reality of life on earth, but Clinton, unabashed, gives a timeline of 20 years for this goal. One could offer a modest counter-suggestion: How about picking one or two causes, actually learning all about them, and working with localities from the bottom up, rather than trying to restructure the entire world with one broad and rather clueless brush? That way, you might actually help people and get something done.

I'm sure most would consider this a "hit piece", but I still find it an interesting review of what it's like to be the daughter of a famous political couple.

I guess. It's pretty much just a rant IMHO.

[Defiant]

Hillary Clinton spoke out against secret email accounts back in 2007

[Anonymous Bosch]

Here's an interesting write-up from Ron Fournier writing for the National Journal.

Emails May Be a Key to Addressing 'Pay-to-Play' Whispers at Clinton Foundation:

...Hillary Clinton's secret communications cache is a bombshell deserving of full disclosure because of her assault on government transparency and electronic security. But its greatest relevancy is what the emails might reveal about any nexus between Clinton's work at State and donations to the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation from U.S. corporations and foreign nations.

Under fire, Bill Clinton said his namesake charity has "done a lot more good than harm"—hardly a ringing endorsement. One of his longest-serving advisers, a person who had worked directly for the foundation, told me the "longtime whispers of pay-to-play are going to become shouts."

This person, a Clinton loyalist and credible source, has no evidence of wrongdoing but said the media's suspicions are warranted. "The emails are a related but secondary scandal," the source said. "Follow the foundation money."

Is the foundation clean? Is it corrupt? Or is the truth in the muddy middle, where we so often find the Clintons? Due to the fact that Hillary Clinton chose to skirt federal regulations and house her State Department emails on an off-the-books server, even the most loyal Democrat can't honestly answer those questions without an independent vetting of her electronic correspondence.

Without those emails, we may never be able to follow the money. Could that be why she hasn't coughed up the server?

Disclosure: I've known and respected the Clintons since the 1980s, when I covered state politics for the Arkansas Democrat (now the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette) and the Associated Press. Over the years, they've been kind to my family, and my career obviously benefited from their rise. Of all the public servants I've covered since moving to Washington in 1993, none approach the Clintons in terms of both strengths and weaknesses. While I've never called them corrupt (the Whitewater land deal was legitimate), I can tell you almost 30 years of stories about their entitlement, outsized victimization, and an aggravating belief in the ends justifying the means.

Which is why I wasn't surprised when veteran Clinton chronicler Todd S. Purdum of Politco compared Hillary Clinton to Richard Nixon.

Not even Clinton's harshest critics could claim that Servergate (or Chappaquadata, or whatever it may come to be called) constitutes a high crime or misdemeanor. But it does connote a reflexive wariness about her enemies—a wariness that sometimes seems to border on paranoia—that has long dogged Clinton, and that struck at least a few old Nixon hands as familiar …

"There is, of course," Purdum continued, "a bitter paradox in the fact that Clinton, as a young staffer on the House Judiciary Committee, actually worked on Nixon's impeachment."

I wonder what a young Hillary Clinton would think of a private charity run by a former U.S. president and a potential future president that collected hundreds of millions of dollars from countries and companies hoping to influence the pair. Actually, I don't wonder: She would think it smells.

And yet, a New York developer donated $100,000 to the foundation at about the same time Hillary Clinton helped secure millions of dollars in federal assistance for the businessman's mall project.

An aide close enough to Bill Clinton to be considered a surrogate son, Doug Band, set up Teneo, a company that New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd calls "a scammy blend of corporate consulting, public relations, and merchant banking." Band recruited clients from the foundation donor list while encouraging others to donate. "Its marketing materials highlighted Mr. Band's relationship with Mr. Clinton and the Clinton Global Initiative, where Mr. Band sat on the board of directors through 2011 and remains as an adviser," according to a 2013 New York Times exposé.

Money came in. Favors went out. While there is no direct evidence of quid pro quo, the foundation and its namesakes created this perception problem. They own it.

[Isgrimnur]

Reuters

Likely Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton will try to defuse a controversy over her use of a private email account for official business as U.S. secretary of state at a news conference on Tuesday.

Clinton will hold a "brief" question-and-answer session with reporters after scheduled remarks at the United Nations in New York, slated to begin at 1:30 p.m., her spokesman said.

[Isgrimnur]

State Dept to release e-mails

[T]he State Department announced Tuesday afternoon that it plans to release her work-related e-mails on a publicly accessible Web site.
...
In Washington, State Department spokesman Jen Psaki said the department is undergoing a review of 55,000 pages of e-mails that Clinton has handed over that could take several months. All of the e-mails that meet the standards for public release will be available in a single batch on a Web site once the process is completed, Psaki said.

Of course, they can only release stuff that was given to them, but even so, I doubt that they'd release anything that was not related to their work that they might have inadvertently received.

The only real way forward without conspiracy theories having traction is to have an independent auditor review the server directly. What those rules for disclosure, etc., would be beyond me.

[Anonymous Bosch]

Reuters

Likely Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton will try to defuse a controversy over her use of a private email account for official business as U.S. secretary of state at a news conference on Tuesday.

Clinton will hold a "brief" question-and-answer session with reporters after scheduled remarks at the United Nations in New York, slated to begin at 1:30 p.m., her spokesman said.

It's hard to imagine how 'a "brief" question-and-answer session with reporters' could possibly do Hillary Clinton any favours whatsoever at this point. The only valid move she has would be to turn the mail server over to an independent party, but that seems unlikely. Even traditionally sympathetic left-leaning media outlets, like MSNBC and The Washington Post, have been eating her alive over this, and a "brief" question-and-answer session will almost certainly just fan the flames.

For all the praise of her experience earlier in this thread, I think Hillary Clinton is actually an incredibly inept and wooden political candidate (i.e. similar to Mitt Romney, in that while he was certainly qualified and could've been a perfectly capable POTUS, he was an absolutely awful candidate for reasons not entirely dissimilar to HRC).

[Isgrimnur]

CNN

Former secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she used a private domain for her official work during her time at the State Department out of "convenience," but admitted in retrospect "it would have been better" to use multiple emails.

"I opted for convenience to use personal email account, which was allowed, because I thought it would be easier to carry just one device," she said during a press conference after her speech at the United Nations Tuesday. "Looking back, it would've been better if I had simply used a second email."
...
The former secretary of state defended her process in choosing emails, telling reporters that she and her staff "err[ed] on the side of providing anything that could be possibly viewed as work-related."

Clinton said she didn't send any classified information with her email, but asserted that there were no security breaches on the server anyway, which she said had been set up for President Bill Clinton's use, was housed on private property and guarded by Secret Service agents.

Again, without an independent review, no one is going to believe her. I also wouldn't be surprised to see Senate Committee on Foreign Relations / House Committee on Foreign Affairs hearings worked up over this.

[Jaymann]

These things are so difficult to predict, but if HRC were to suffer a meltdown, who would be next up for a Democrat nod?

[Rip]

[Kraken]

I think Hillary Clinton is actually an incredibly inept and wooden political candidate (i.e. similar to Mitt Romney, in that while he was certainly qualified and could've been a perfectly capable POTUS, he was an absolutely awful candidate for reasons not entirely dissimilar to HRC).

I, too, find her devoid of charisma, but I think she'll be better packaged than Romney was and less likely to break script.

These things are so difficult to predict, but if HRC were to suffer a meltdown, who would be next up for a Democrat nod?

Biden would have the advantage coming out of the chute.

[LordMortis]

These things are so difficult to predict, but if HRC were to suffer a meltdown, who would be next up for a Democrat nod?

Bernie Sanders... And then we could watch the republican meltdown... I picture Sanders winning and how much the "small government, damn your socialism" republicans would pray the return of an incompetent Obama or a centrist in democrat clothing Clinton... or watch them actually go off the reservation with threats of tree of liberty and blood of patriots violent revolution propaganda.

[Anonymous Bosch]

I think Hillary Clinton is actually an incredibly inept and wooden political candidate (i.e. similar to Mitt Romney, in that while he was certainly qualified and could've been a perfectly capable POTUS, he was an absolutely awful candidate for reasons not entirely dissimilar to HRC).

I, too, find her devoid of charisma, but I think she'll be better packaged than Romney was and less likely to break script.

If her insipid theme of closing the gender pay gap is anything to go by, her packaging's certainly off to an awkward start:

There is only one presidential contender who has nothing to say, at least nothing new or that hasn’t been said for years by others. Speaking to a bunch of privileged, wealthy women in Silicon Valley, Hillary Clinton proclaimed her concern for gender equality and the middle class (generally not defined as people making six figures with stock options). The Post quotes her as saying: “We have to restore economic growth with rising wages for the vast majority of Americans, and we have to restore trust and cooperation within our political system so that we can act like the great country we are.” No — really?!

Then citing an even more privileged woman, she declared: “We all cheered at Patricia Arquette’s speech at the Oscars because she’s right.” Except we know that when accounting for factors such as part-time work and career choice, the wage gap shrinks considerably. (On the other hand, Clinton could have started with her own staff: “Clinton’s 28% gender pay gap while in the Senate was more than double the 13.3% current gender pay gap in Obama’s White House and more than three times the average gender pay gap for the Washington, D.C. labor market of only 9.2%.”)

Also, the key women in the Clinton Foundation earned 63 cents for every dollar the key men made. So once again, she comes across with all the authenticity of a nine-dollar bill.

[LordMortis]

[Anonymous Bosch]

AP sues State Department, seeking access to Clinton records:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Associated Press filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the State Department to force the release of email correspondence and government documents from Hillary Rodham Clinton's tenure as secretary of state.

The legal action comes after repeated requests filed under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act have gone unfulfilled. They include one request AP made five years ago and others pending since the summer of 2013.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, comes a day after Clinton broke her silence about her use of a private email account while secretary of state. The FOIA requests and lawsuit seek materials related to her public and private calendars, correspondence involving longtime aides likely to play key roles in her expected campaign for president, and Clinton-related emails about the Osama bin Laden raid and National Security Agency surveillance practices.

"After careful deliberation and exhausting our other options, The Associated Press is taking the necessary legal steps to gain access to these important documents, which will shed light on actions by the State Department and former Secretary Clinton, a presumptive 2016 presidential candidate, during some of the most significant issues of our time," said Karen Kaiser, AP's general counsel.

Said AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll, "The Freedom of Information Act exists to give citizens a clear view of what government officials are doing on their behalf. When that view is denied, the next resort is the courts."