And POP goes the Hillary Email Balloon - Colin Powell & Condoleezza Rice had classified items

[stevenleser]

http://steveleser.blogspot.com/2016/02/and-pop-goes-hillary-email-balloon.html

And POP goes the Hillary Email Balloon - Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice had classified items in their personal emails too

My, my my. Once again I have been proven to be right, this time about the faux Hillary email scandal.

According to CNN:

Colin Powell and top staffers for Condoleezza Rice received classified information through personal email accounts, according to a new report from State Department investigators.

Hillary Clinton has received severe criticism -- particularly from Republicans and computer security experts -- for using her personal email account while serving as the nation's top diplomat under President Barack Obama. Thursday's revelation about the two secretaries of state under former President George W. Bush gave her supporters an opportunity to claim the Democratic presidential candidate was being singled out over the practice.

The emails were discovered during a State Department review of the email practices of the past five secretaries of state. It found that Powell received two emails that were classified and that the "immediate staff" working for Rice received 10 emails that were classified.

The information was deemed either "secret" or "confidential," according to the report, which was viewed by CNN.

In all the cases, however -- as well as Clinton's -- the information was not marked "classified" at the time the emails were sent, according to State Department investigators.
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more at http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/04/politics/hillary-clinton-email-classified-colin-powell-condoleezza-rice/index.html

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Well, I'd say that as far as the nonsense about Hillary being prosecuted for this goes, as idiots like Republican Congressman Darrell Issa and others have been insinuating, the chances of that just went to zero percent. Which is as it should be.

What I tried to tell people is that this entire nonsense was predicated on Hillary being able to tell the future in two respects, knowing that someone was about to send her an email and knowing that at some point in the future, the contents of that email was going to be considered classified. Content that is later classified is pretty regularly sent to non-secure emails throughout all agencies and branches of the government. It's one of the challenges for those trying to protect sensitive information and its a tough challenge to resolve because you can't tell the future. It's as simple as that.

I also tried to tell people that this has nothing to do with Hillary using a personal email account. I am sure there will be folks who read that last sentence and don't quite understand what to make of it. I will explain. You see, just like Hillary's personal email account, the State.gov email account that she would have otherwise used is not rated secure to receive classified email/information. The same rule violation in terms of safeguarding classified information would apply if the emails had gone to her State.gov email. And as I indicated in the previous paragraph, she would similarly have no way to have prevented it or known beforehand that the contents would later be declared to be classified.

So the whole brouhahah that Republicans manufactured over her use of a personal email account makes no sense at all. I had a debate with a conservative former CIA agent on Sirius radio and when I said that part about the personal email vs State.gov he had to acknowledge I was correct.

For classified communications, you are supposed to use the systems called SIPRnet (For classified up to Secret) and JWICS for Top Secret. SIPRnet was in the news during the Chelsea Manning affair as Manning willy-nilly released classified information from SIPRnet to make some sort of point about something completely unrelated to 99.99999% those emails, but I digress.

Like the IRS scandal and various other "scandals" Republicans found something that had been going on for a long time, or a system that had flawed elements, and then they blamed the current Democratic President and Agency head for it and blew it up into a scandal.

What's clear from the latest revelations from former Secretaries of State Powell and Rice is that this particular attempt at a scandal to hurt Hillary Clinton is over.

[DesertRat]

1. K&R

[Cheese Sandwich]

2. Comparing it to one of the most corrupt administrations in US history - talk about setting a low bar

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

3. So Hillary was just doing what sensible BushCo republicans were doing?

[stevenleser]

6. See my #5. nt

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

8. Your number 5 iscoming out the consistancy of

number two.

Knock yourself out.

[stevenleser]

9. I'm not the one who couldn't comprehend a simple article. nt

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

11. But you are the one comparing Hillary to BushCo republicans.

[stevenleser]

13. Yes, and I explained that in my endorsement of her. I'll kick it again just for you. nt

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

17. Yes, I'm sure that you must feel very proud of her accomplishments

in being just like Colin and Condi.

[stevenleser]

21. Yes, I do. And you have no point. All people breathe. You breathe, Cheney breathes.

So that makes you like Dick Cheney? That is equivalent to your "logic"

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

23. "Yes, I do."

Ahahahahahahaha!

Enjoy your bucket o-fail!

[stevenleser]

25. I guess you enjoy being compared to Dick Cheney. Well done!

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

26. Too late for you to backtrack or sidestep, steve.

Your big bucket o-fail was well earned tonight.

Take a bow.

[stevenleser]

27. No backtracking, your logic led you right into that trap. You're Dick Cheney. nt

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

28. LOL. More BushCo word salad.

[stevenleser]

5. And you just demonstrated very well what a Bernie bro is and why so many folks don't like them.

Well done, champ.

[Katashi_itto]

7. Whats the latest on Whoopi?

[guillaumeb]

10. From another source:

WASHINGTON — The State Department has discovered a dozen emails containing classified information that were sent to the personal email accounts of Colin L. Powell and close aides of Condoleezza Rice during their tenures as secretaries of state for President George W. Bush.


Two emails were sent to Mr. Powell’s personal account, and 10 to personal accounts of Ms. Rice’s senior aides. Those emails have now been classified as “confidential” or “secret” as part of a review process that has resulted in similar “upgrades” of information sent through the personal email server that Hillary Clinton used while she was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013. The State Department did not say who sent the emails to Mr. Powell or to Ms. Rice’s aides.

It is against the law to have classified information outside a secure government account.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/05/us/politics/state-dept-classified-data-found-ex-secretaries-personal-email-john-kerry-condeleezza-rice-colin-powell.html?_r=0

But it is still against the law............to have classified information outside a secure government account. Correct?

[stevenleser]

12. No. It's not against the law to receive an email in your account. It's not against the law to

receive an email that is not classified.

That it is later declared to be classified does not make it a crime.

[Fawke Em]

20. It may not be a crime, but I'll be damned if I want hackers reading senstive information

because someone, for simple convenience, used a server that was less secure than most people's home computers.

And don't feed me the line about other federal government sites being hacked. Those are on outward-facing servers. SIPRnet and the other servers that hold classified information are not outward-facing and are structured to protect that information with layers of security.

[guillaumeb]

22. While it may not have been a violation of the letter of the law,

If Secretary John Kerry did today what Clinton did, it would run afoul of the current laws on the books, which require government officials to copy or forward work email sent or received on a private account to their government account within 20 days. Hillary’s email use, though, does not appear to have violated any of the laws that were in place when she was in office—even though it did clearly fall well short of the Obama administration’s preferred best practices and was also explicitly discouraged by the State Department.


If she didn’t break any specific law, though, then what’s the big deal?


Clinton does not appear to have violated the letter of the law but she did ignore the spirit of it when she went out of her way to create a system that gave her unprecedented control over what could become public. Hillary’s private email account and server effectively shielded her messages from Freedom of Information Act requests, congressional subpoenas, and other searches.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/08/20/hillary_clinton_email_scandal_explained.html

Why the obsession with secrecy from the government itself?

[stevenleser]

24. You couldn't be more wrong. It goes against everything our system is based on to come back

at someone who has done something legal, and later change the rules to call it criminal.

If you pass a law and try to hold someone as having violated it before the law was passed you cannot do it because there is a constitutional protection against such "Ex Post Facto" laws.

It is against our Constitutional values to do those kinds of things. I don't think we should be inventing ways to make things done by people to be criminal.

[Fawke Em]

14. Just because they did it doesn't make it right.

I don't know the particulars of Rice or Powell's private computers and how protected they or their servers were, but I do know Clinton's wasn't.

And, if its found that none of them had a protected server, then they're ALL at fault and ALL should be held accountable.

This "he/she started it first" crap should be left to second graders.

[rurallib]

15. mark to find tomorrow

[davidn3600]

16. Thing is...she got caught

If you see three cars in front of you run a red light and you decide to do the same, is it fair that the police only pulled you over? Does that change the fact you broke the law? Good luck talking your way out of that fine.

In any event...the idea that our government is and has been exchanging highly classified information over private e-mail is frightening. Anyone with any knowledge of IT security or how e-mail works knows why that's a problem. I have no doubt in my mind the Chinese and the Russians have intercepted a lot of classified info because of this for probably well over a decade.

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

18. But everybody worth their salt knows

that BudhCo was shady at best and overtly criminal.

Now we have an...ahem... democrat singing the praises of Clinton ding nothing different than BushCo.

Some fights hou should just walk away from.

[BlueCaliDem]

19. No! No! No! IOKIYAR, remember?

[nichomachus]

29. Well, I will definitely not vote for them for president nt

[Skwmom]

30. You expect people to fall for this?

The state dept, in the bag for Clinton, finds a couple of emails that it gives a low classification. Wow, how convenient.

Clinton had a server and top secret emails.

It's stuff like this that make us no better than the Rove Republicans.

[stevenleser]

31. All facts: Powers and Rice had the same things happen. Those are facts.

Sorry they disappoint you.

[Skwmom]

32. It's like comparing apples and oranges. n/t