after all the Sturm und Drang what do we have, no criminal charges, no nefarious acts, nothing all
that out of the ordinary in D.C. .....
So there it is. After all the Sturm und Drang, no criminal, indictable acts, no nefarious subterfuge, not even anything highly unusual. The GOP's hysterical shouting of Hillary's email 'scandal' amounts to nothing too out of the ordinary in D.C. Yes, she had a private email account which she used for official business. The State Dept's IG, in his recent report, found that use of personal email accounts among high level execs for official business is common. Which means there was no clear cut policy re such practice. It's known the Government computer systems are slow and the practice of going around it, in order to do your job is widely known to be true (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-hillar...
In terms of the legalities, Clinton's use of personal server to handle emails is no different than Colin Powell's and Condi Rice's use of personal email accounts with commercial email service providers. There is, however, a way in which Clinton's use of a personal server is very much different than using a personal email account with a commercial email provider. Commercial email providers have large numbers of cyber-security personnel, whose job it is to protect their system from intrusions by hackers and malware. In order to do their job they MUST HAVE THE ABILITY TO EXAMINE ANY AND ALL EMAILS/ATTACHMENTS ON THEIR SERVERS. This means that if any classified data were to be included in any emails through a commercial email service provider, NO ONE CAN GUARANTEE THAT SUCH CLASSIFIED INFORMATION IS PROTECTED FROM EXAMINATION BY UNAUTHORIZED PERSONS. NOTE that, these cyber-security personnel, in the employ of private companies DO NOT HAVE GOVERNMENT SECURITY CLEARANCES. Hillary's server however, was on government property, managed by government personnel, protected by Government personnel (Secret Service). Hillary's emails were secure.
Hillary's email system was managed & protected by Government personnel in contrast to emails residing on a commercial email service provider's server. But what about the Government emails system? How does Clinton's email server compare to that?
Well, as Dir Comey had to admit, the FBI found no evidence her server had been hacked. Comey did, offer the conjecture that it's possible a sophisticated bad actor could have hacked into Clinton's server and not left any evidence of having done so. Unfortunately, this hypothesis has certain practical problems. It should be obvious to Mr. Comey that no bad actor who goes to the trouble of getting malware onto someones server is going to have such malware erase itself from said server after a period of time. This just makes no sense. IF someone goes to the trouble to get malware onto a server, they are going to want that malware to remain there updating the bad actor as to what is transpiring on that server (i.e. emails sent & received) for an indeterminate length of time. It is simply not realistic to suppose someone would get malware secreted onto someone's server and to limit it's service by having it erase itself after some passage of time.
Mr. Comey said that the FBI was able to detect malware in some of the emails of some people that Clinton communicated with. Well, this is noteworthy, because if the FBI's malware detecting software could find malware in somebody's emails it sure as hell can detect malware on Hillary's server.
IT should be noted that while Clinton's server showed no signs of being hacked, during Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State a number of Government computer systems, including that of the Department of State ..HAD BEEN HACKED!
There is a reason, Clinton's server was not hacked into, while other Government systems had been.
And it has nothing to do with the caliber of anti-virus software on these respective systems.
The most often used method of hacking into a computer system/server is by sending a phony email, which is made to look like an official, bona-fide email. This increases the likelihood of someone opening such an email. This phony email will have a link in it and present a plausible reason for the victim to click on that link. What you need is for one person - of all the users on that system - to 'buy' the subterfuge and click on that link. When they do, the malware is at that url (internet location) and once the browser on the victims computer goes to that internet location, the malware is downloaded to the client computer. Once on the client computer the malware is able to secrete itself onto the server/servers supporting that system.
Each person on a given computer system is a potential open window for the bad actor to fool to get his malware onto that system. Now Clinton's email was accessed by one person - Hillary Clinton. The State Dept has about 11,000 people on their computer system. That means a bad actor has 11,000 chances to fool someone to get the fake email opened to get his malware on the target computer system (server). So there's the difference: on Clinton's email system the bad actor has one chance to 'beat the system'. On the State Department's system he has 11,000 chances to find one person to fool and get his malware on that system. This is another factor In why Clinton's email server was not hacked and several Government systems were. And this factor itself, may have been the reason Colin Powell advised Hillary Clinton to set up her own email account when she was appointed Secretary of State. She chose to use a government controlled satellite server rather than a commercial email service.
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FWIW: posted to Washington Post's PLUM LINE, Open Thread today.(I only mentioned this to encourage others to do the same - Represent Democrats and rational realism on the pages of M$M)
