Hillary's email tizzy: a reality check by the former Director of the Sunlight Foundation Labs

[pnwmom]

Clay Johnson, the former director of the Sunlight Labs of the Sunlight Foundation, a non-profit advocating transparency in government, wrote this:


(ON EDIT: I don't know why the link doesn't work -- but the address will work if you copy and paste.)


https://medium.com/@cjoh/hillary-s-email-858ccfc48277

Are you serious? Let’s be clear, that personal email was probably far more secure than her state.gov email account. The State Department’s email system has been compromised for months. It’s highly likely that it’s been compromised since forever: remember, during her tenure, Wikileaks released the State Department’s classified communications.

A better question is: why would she use the State Department’s email system to conduct official business? In fact, if it’s demonstrably insecure, does she not have a responsibility not to use it? It’s probably the case that if Hillary Clinton was focusing solely on security, using her personal email with 2 Factor Authentication was probably way *more* secure than using the honeypot mess of IT that is the State Department’s email servers.

Of the things that are speculative in this document, there is only one thing that I am absolutely certain of. After years of being on trial, of being investigated, and having every bit of her personal and public life pulled appart by People Magazine and vast conspiracies of all wings: Hillary Clinton knows that, too. She knows that the simplest way to keep something out of the public record isn’t to run an email server in her basement, it’s to use the telephone.

SNIP

One final thought: I’d imagine Secretary Clinton at some point emailed the White House. I made the mistake of emailing the White House from my personal account once (!) during my term, and managed to get back a nastygram from Counsel about it. How or why didn’t the White House tell Hillary to use her official .gov email account?

It could be that they knew the entire classified and unclassified email system was compromised and decided that the smartest thing to do was for her to use her personal email instead.

[2naSalit]

1. In the vast mire of

stuff about this I saw information about her needing to choose ONE account while in service which was why she combined both her State.gov and her personal email acct.s so she could have access to both while traveling the globe almost constantly.

You know, as a low level GS worker, I am prompted to keep all email at a minimum on my acct. by deleting all but absolutely pertinent emails necessary to do my job. I do send personal messages from both my .gov email and my personal acct. from the same computer. I don't have access to my .gov acct. off campus.

i think this is just so much crappola and a deflection from real issues that need our attention before they get set in stone and we can do little about it without a series of protracted actions.

So stupid to nit-pick details that are nothing more than hate-filled speculation.

[badgolfer]

2. Condi Rice

What email system did Condi Rice use when she was SOS?

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

6. While that question was not explicitly answered this morning,

during the C-Span call-ins to a current Sunlight Foundation director, it was suggested that she basically wasn't an e-mailer. I would guess that meant she spent a lot more time on the phone, or simply told staffers to email anyone she wanted with one of those 'dictated but not read' sort of deals.

[pnwmom]

10. Well, he's smart enough to qualify. Too many people lack basic common sense. n/t

[longship]

27. And/or technical knowledge...

But I think that you have the idea. This whole affair is bunkum.

[uponit7771]

4. This email thing wreaks of a thunder run; bring out the DNC haters while dragging the GOP

... haters down another rat hole

That's what I thought Benghazi was, a rat hole for the GOP..

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

5. John Wonderlich, the (current) Policy Director of the Sunlight Foundation

was on C-Span this morning taking call-ins about the issues, and seemed to pretty much totally disagree with your former director.

http://sunlightfoundation.com/team/jwonderlich/

He seemed to feel it was indeed significant, and that her personal email was NOT 'probably far more secure'.

[pnwmom]

7. Did he answer my biggest question?

Why didn't the Obama administration ever tell Hillary she had to use the government account? It's not like her use of her private server was a secret.

Clearly the Administration knew and didn't care.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

8. I think he mentioned that in a press conference a spokesman for the WH said they didn't even know

she was using personal email.

I found that ludicrous, unless everyone in the WH uses browser software that defaults to not showing the address from which emails are sent or replied to.

I would agree with your last statement - they knew and didn't care. That doesn't make it any better, though, and Republicans will simply hop up and down and say it shows a conspiracy between HRC's people and the WH.

[pnwmom]

9. They are lying. She sent THEM emails and there's no way they'd use software hiding return addresses.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

11. Sounds like it to me.

If C-Span archives the video of those morning shows, you can pull up his show from this morning to see who he said was the person who said that. It was the second call-in segment of the morning, I think. I thought that was 'Washington Journal', but maybe not, maybe that's only the first call in segment's name.

[pnwmom]

13. It would be crazy to hide return addresses. That's how anyone chooses what to open first!

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

14. I've used some software that does, though. It assigns a name as a tag and displays that instead.

So if it knows 'Scott' is [e-mail]' what is displayed is 'Scott' both in the 'From' field and in the 'To' field if you hit reply, rather than '[e-mail]'.

But if you hover your mouse over that 'Scott' you see the full address.

[AtomicKitten]

12. She was required to preserve personal emails on dept. servers

... and did not.

Mrs. Clinton did not have a government email address during her four-year tenure at the State Department. Her aides took no actions to have her personal emails preserved on department servers at the time, as required by the Federal Records Act.

It was only two months ago, in response to a new State Department effort to comply with federal record-keeping practices, that Mrs. Clinton’s advisers reviewed tens of thousands of pages of her personal emails and decided which ones to turn over to the State Department. All told, 55,000 pages of emails were given to the department.

link: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/03/us/politics/hillary-clintons-use-of-private-email-at-state-department-raises-flags.html

[pnwmom]

15. It's required by the Federal Records act now, within 20 days, but it wasn't THEN.

The writer said she didn't "at the time" put all her emails on department servers (though all to other state dept. addresses were automatically archived).

The writer didn't say it was "required by the Federal Records Act at the time."

Because it wasn't. Even now, there's a 20 day lag allowed. Then there was no time limit.

[AtomicKitten]

19. The Federal Records Act has recently made

... what she has done against the law. However, it was applicable as a regulation when she did it. IOW it was not illegal but it was wrong. It was a bullshit way to get around FOIA requests.

[pnwmom]

20. You're just spouting off, unless you can show me the regulation you're referring to.

I haven't seen any that included any deadline -- and she did preserve the emails.

[AtomicKitten]

23. Nice. Nothing like a Clinton supporter getting ugly

.... because they can't debate in a civil manner, just like last time. I will NEVER personally attack anyone here during this season. Bank on it.

[pnwmom]

24. "a Clinton supporter getting ugly." But YOU'LL never personally attack anyone. Yeah, right. n/t

[AtomicKitten]

25. Yeah, I called it correctly.

Have a nice evening.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

16. That's some of the least interesting parts of it to me.

I think the more important story is that State Department needs a serious IT overhaul, and none of our last half dozen Secretaries of State have done anything to keep their servers up to date and operational.

[pnwmom]

17. Agreed. The whole government needs regular IT overhauls, even more so than the rest of us. n/t

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

18. Do we really need a Department level position for governmental IT?

It seems to me that we shouldn't be constantly relying on outside contractors, but should have dedicated operations managers who see to it that every nook and cranny of the Federal government is using fast, efficient, reliable tech. We shouldn't be hearing that the VA is still losing things on paper, that Federal officials feel the need to have their own personal servers. I really do think we need a 'computer czar' with a department that takes care of tech for all the departments, rather than have them left to hit or miss ad hoc work.

[pnwmom]

21. I think we need it a lot more than we needed a "Homeland Security" department. n/t

[AtomicKitten]

22. John Kerry is using it exclusively for State business.

So we'll see how that goes. It could be a genuine problem or simply a ham-handed effort to provide cover for someone. Both are possible and time will tell.

[Dems to Win]

26. It would have been child's play to keep a contemporaneous archive on the State email server

Simply set up a reflector on her server that sent a copy of all emails sent to or received to her official SOS mailbox to a mailbox at State. Since she was running her own server, she could easily have made herself two addresses, and used one only for official SOS business, that she knew was also being archived at State.

That way, State would have been able to respond to FOIA requests promptly, including the one from the AP that's been at State since 2010.

She could have used her own convenient reliable email server and still made her records available for capture in real time. Child's play. If she had just thought it important enough to do it.

[AtomicKitten]

28. That would have been the smart thing to do.