Clinton and Private Emails at State

 

AP120312029982-638x430I retired from the U.S. Foreign Service in 2011. From my experience with State Department IT, I would like to raise the following points:

(1). Yes, State Department workers are allowed to use their private emails on Department/Embassy computers. That was a gift from Colin Powell, who recognized that our long days gave us little time at home to communicate with the nonofficial parts of our lives. However, we were always told, when logging in, that we had “no expectation of privacy.” I.e., all our private account emails would be read and saved. It seems, therefore, that somebody was actively shielding Hillary Clinton’s private server system from leaving any traces in Department of State IT.  (I assume that that is something that can be done.)

(2).  How did Clinton, when Secretary of State, read and respond to classified cables and emails? Every Embassy/Department worker has an unclassified and a classified log-in; confidential and secret material is available only on the latter, and the classified system cannot send anything to the unclassified side. If Clinton had only her home-brew server, registered to the apparently fictitious Eric Hoteham, then she could not have received, or responded to, classified material on her computer.  That could mean that she was relying on the inefficient (and less transparent) system of getting classified material only in hard copy, and then directing responses verbally or by hand-written notes — or perhaps her aides figured out a way to leak classified material to her private account.

A murky business, as is always the case with the Little Rock Grifters. Comments, especially on my IT interpretation, are welcome.

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  1. WI Con Member
    WI Con
    @WICon

    I was hoping that someone with your background or an IT background would post on this scandal. Talk about a lie in plain sight.

    I thought of the hundreds of thousands of emails she was part of: Did she have a “.gov” address that was routed automatically to the Clinton server? Did foreign officials contact her, and underling on that “hdr22@clinton.com” address? Did people send it to the .gov address and have it bounce back? What did they think? who did they call? Has anyone asked Barry what was the email address he used to contact Hillary? Did anyone in the MSM receive an email from her – what did they think with that address – all off the record?

    There wasn’t one whistle blower in 4 years that notified someone of this vulnerable/potentially illegal system?

    There are thousands of people that should be fired over this and hundreds prosecuted.

    • #1
  2. She Member
    She
    @She

    I am sure that there are thousands of hard-working State Department workers who would like to be able to use their private email at work, just as there are thousands, perhaps millions, of hard working Americans who work in companies where they are not permitted to use private methods of electronic communication during their work hours or for their work. I do not see why government employees should be held to a lower standard than the rest of us or why they should enjoy another special privilege that we do not.

    As for ‘no expectation of privacy’ when it comes to using personal email for work purposes, I’d like someone to explain to me how Hillary, logging into her private email at home, and sending a email to, say, the One of Ife, in which she mentions several sensitive subjects and discourses on the meaning of much classified information, to which he responds in kind, is ever going to be found out. To say that one ‘can not’ send classified information to or from an unsecured or private email account is absurd. Paging Edward Snowdon.

    I would like someone to do this: scrap all this nonsense about lost servers, no backups, incompatible file formats, and all the other ‘this is all much to complicated for you rubes in flyover country to understand because you are not an awesome IT professional like me, Hillary Clinton,’ business. Take Hillary’s 55,000 emails and dump them into a database. (55,000 records is nothing, a minuscule number in the context of today’s computer capabilities). Then take ALL state department emails with a FROM or a TO field that includes Hillary’s private address and dump them into another database. (Assuming that they are willing to cough them up hahaha). Then compare the two and find out what is missing. If Hillary’s 55,000 is not an exhaustive accounting, I assure you there will be discrepancies, even if half the rest of the people were using off-the-grid email accounts too.

    She, and her apologists, are a disgrace. And a liability and security risk to the country they purport to love and serve.

    As for the question of whether Congress should ‘seize’ Hillary’s email, I think her job-related email already belongs Congress in its role as the peoples’ elected representative. Because Hillary’s job-related email is owned by her employers, who, last time I looked, were the American people. And if they have any sense at all, they will mark her employment history ‘Not Eligible for Re-hire’ and consign her to grandmotherly anonymity for the rest of her life. Speaking as a grandmother, I’ll just say that this is a much better fate than she deserves.

    Those are my ‘IT person’ comments.

    • #2
  3. PHCheese Inactive
    PHCheese
    @PHCheese

    She is upset. She does not like Hillary. Me does not either.

    • #3
  4. She Member
    She
    @She

    PH, a lovely comment. Thank you. And you are correct on all counts. I tried to like your comment but my iPad won’t let me, and the antenna on my internet satellite has been knocked squiffy by the snow and ice so I can’t get online via wi-fi at the moment. Hoping for some warmer weather and some melting over the next week.

    • #4
  5. PHCheese Inactive
    PHCheese
    @PHCheese

    It was 75 here yesterday, high of 46 today but spring is in the air She.

    • #5
  6. Ricochet Inactive
    Ricochet
    @GoldwatersRevenge

    Hillary and Bill have always walked the line somewhere between immorality and illegality, but sometimes clearly illegal. The following piece goes back to Hillary’s time serving as a 27 year old lawyer serving the democrats in the Nixon investigation. Her tactics attempting to deny Nixon the right to legal council clearly got her fired. Her pattern of questionable behavior was present then and continues until today.

    http://www.eohistory.info/2013/hillaryHistory.htm

    • #6
  7. user_86050 Inactive
    user_86050
    @KCMulville

    Although I think the Clinton Connection (foreign money corruption) is a bigger scandal, I do want to mention that for Democrats, email security is like the referee in professional wrestling … again and again, they miss the foul!

    Lois Lerner , the EPA, the IRS, Hillary … they all disregard the regulations about email, and so far, they’ve completely gotten away with it.

    • #7
  8. user_82762 Inactive
    user_82762
    @JamesGawron

    Michael,

    ..all our private account emails would be read and saved. It seems, therefore, that somebody was actively shielding Hillary Clinton’s private server system from leaving any traces in Department of State IT. (I assume that that is something that can be done.)

    How do we know that her server emails weren’t backed up at Department of State IT? Do you remember Koskinen. He sat there through days of questioning repeating that there were no backups left. He was head of the IRS!! Funny, now we have the backups. How do we know State doesn’t have the backups of her server emails and this whole thing is a cover story to prevent anyone from ever getting hold of the relevant information. She’ll take the heat of using a private server but nobody gets to see those emails. Not a judge, not an oversight committee, nobody.

    Regards,

    Jim

    • #8
  9. user_280840 Inactive
    user_280840
    @FredCole

    Hey, Michael, thanks for posting this.

    • #9
  10. Ross C Inactive
    Ross C
    @RossC

    PHCheese:She is upset. She does not like Hillary. Me does not either. [redacted for CoC].

    She may be but let’s keep it civil.

    • #10
  11. Ricochet Inactive
    Ricochet
    @Michael

    James Gawron:Michael,

    ..all our private account emails would be read and saved. It seems, therefore, that somebody was actively shielding Hillary Clinton’s private server system from leaving any traces in Department of State IT. (I assume that that is something that can be done.)

    How do we know that her server emails weren’t backed up at Department of State IT? Do you remember Koskinen. He sat there through days of questioning repeating that there were no backups left. He was head of the IRS!! Funny, now we have the backups. How do we know State doesn’t have the backups of her server emails and this whole thing is a cover story to prevent anyone from ever getting hold of the relevant information. She’ll take the heat of using a private server but nobody gets to see those emails. Not a judge, not an oversight committee, nobody.

    Regards,

    Jim

    True.  I was insufficiently mistrustful!

    Michael

    • #11
  12. PHCheese Inactive
    PHCheese
    @PHCheese

    Ross there is civil and then there is honest. I write this as two are asleep at my feet.

    • #12
  13. Paul A. Rahe Member
    Paul A. Rahe
    @PaulARahe

    Very instructive, this. Thank you.

    • #13
  14. nyconservative Member
    nyconservative
    @nyconservative

    The whole point of setting up a server in your house is to avoid prying eyes and keep any and all communications private.National security be damned,we will never see these e-mails and anything we do see will be what she and the rest of the criminal organization wants us to!

    • #14
  15. George Savage Member
    George Savage
    @GeorgeSavage

    WI Con:I was hoping that someone with your background or an IT background would post on this scandal. Talk about a lie in plain sight.

    I thought of the hundreds of thousands of emails she was part of: Did she have a “.gov” address that was routed automatically to the Clinton server? Did foreign officials contact her, and underling on that “hdr22@clinton.com” address? Did people send it to the .gov address and have it bounce back? What did they think? who did they call? Has anyone asked Barry what was the email address he used to contact Hillary? Did anyone in the MSM receive an email from her – what did they think with that address – all off the record?

    There wasn’t one whistle blower in 4 years that notified someone of this vulnerable/potentially illegal system?

    There are thousands of people that should be fired over this and hundreds prosecuted.

    I wonder whether her server “spoofed” a .gov return address–pretty simple to do, check out deadfake.com .   However, this is also pretty easy to detect if you  are, say, a foreign government interested in intercepting official US communications.

    • #15
  16. George Savage Member
    George Savage
    @GeorgeSavage

    nyconservative:The whole point of setting up a server in your house is to avoid prying eyes and keep any and all communications private.National security be damned,we will never see these e-mails and anything we do see will be what she and the rest of the criminal organization wants us to!

    My own hunch is that Clinton’s IT staff took pains to ensure that her privately controlled email server contained the only copy of her email correspondence.  We shall perhaps see if this is true.

    Another guess:  Her private server has been thoroughly scrubbed of potentially embarrassing messages.

    • #16
  17. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    George, if they scrubbed her server with the same diligence with which they secured it, all that stuff is probably still on there.

    • #17
  18. J. D. Fitzpatrick Member
    J. D. Fitzpatrick
    @JDFitzpatrick

    Percival:George, if they scrubbed her server with the same diligence with which they secured it, all that stuff is probably still on there.

    I would love, love, love to see Hillary hoist by her own petard–an impossible to secure private email address leading to the release of of information that implicates her in wrongdoing.

    Sort of like Nixon taping Oval Office conversations for his memoirs, only to see them subpoenaed during the Watergate investigation. Prosecutor falls victim to the hubris of the man she once sought to prosecute? One of those nice little circles that history sometimes makes.

    • #18
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