The Shocking Truth: Colin Powell’s Emails Don’t Matter

[Bill USA]

http://www.newsweek.com/2016/02/19/colin-powell-emails-hillary-clinton-424187.html

The shocking truth about the last two Republican secretaries of state has finally come out: Colin Powell and aides to Condoleezza Rice trafficked in classified information on their personal email accounts. This is an enormous scandal!

Oh, wait. No, it’s not.

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In addition to the classified email system used in SCIFs, there are personal email accounts. Prior to 2013, these could be accounts inside the relatively unsecure State Department system or private email accounts. If they are private—running through a commercial or personal server—they have to follow some rules set up in the Federal Register. There are no guards, no red-black procedures, no construction rules, no special rooms, no TEMPEST, no TSCM. And most important: Until 2013, there was no rule against using them. In fact, the rules specifically allowed for them. Check out the relevant section in the Code of Federal Regulations (36 CFR Chapter XII, Subchapter B, section 1236.22b) for the rules regarding the use of personal email accounts by any State Department official.

To give an idea of how insecure these communications could be, Powell’s personal email is an AOL account, and he used it on a laptop when he communicated with foreign officials and ambassadors, unless the information qualified for a SCIF. (Clinton sent only one email to a foreign dignitary through her personal account, and her communications with ambassadors were, for the most part, by phone.)

So did Powell and the aides to Rice violate rules governing classified information, since the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) staff has recently determined that some of their years-old personal emails contain top-secret material? No. The rules regarding the handling of classified information apply to communications designated as secret at that time . If documents that aren’t deemed classified, and aren’t handled through a SCIF when they are created or initially transmitted, are later, in retrospect, deemed secret, the classification is new—and however the record was handled in the past is irrelevant.
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As I have pointed out before, email accounts with commerical email service providers are subject to examination by large staffs of cyber security personell employed by the email service providers. These security staffers jobs are to protect their systems from attack by hackers and various kinds of malware. IN ORDER TO DO THEIR JOBS THEY HAVE TO BE ABLE TO EXAMINE ANY AND ALL EMAILS AND ASSOCIATED ATTACHMENTS. THEREFOR, COMMERCIAL EMAILS ACCOUNTS ARE BY THEIR VERY NATURE UNSECURE, AND INAPPROPRIATE FOR SENDING CLASSIFIED INFORMATION.

[tonyt53]

1. Only Hillary did such a thing

I can tell that from reading all the posts about it. She is the only government employee to have ever done such a thing. She invented it and has a patent on it.

[thesquanderer]

2. This old article has nothing to do with today's report, which is not about classified info.

That report is yet to come.