Turns Out Hillary Clinton Had Hundreds Of Potentially Classified Emails On Private Server; Officials Ask For Criminal Investigation [Update]

from the well,-look-at-that dept

Update: In addition to the update already added at the bottom of this story, later on Friday it came out that the initial report was wrong and the call for an investigation was not for a criminal investigation. Original post follows:

Earlier this year there was a bit of a scandal over the fact that Hillary Clinton had used a private server for her emails, something she knew was inappropriate and which clearly exposed her emails to foreign spies. When she finally agreed to address the issue, one of the key points she made in her defense was that she never had classified material on the server:

CLINTON: I did not email any classified material to anyone on my email. There is no classified material.

So I'm certainly well-aware of the classification requirements and did not send classified material.

Many -- including State Department officials -- found this nearly impossible to believe, especially given just how much stuff the State Department classifies (whether or not that information should be classified is another discussion for another day).

A former senior State Department official who served before the Obama administration said that although it was hard to be certain, it seemed unlikely that classified information could be kept out of the more than 30,000 emails that Mrs. Clinton’s staff identified as involving government business.

“I would assume that more than 50 percent of what the secretary of state dealt with was classified,” said the former official, who would speak only on the condition of anonymity because he did not want to seem ungracious to Mrs. Clinton. “Was every single email of the secretary of state completely unclassified? Maybe, but it’s hard to imagine.”

Back in May, with the first release of a bunch of her emails, some noted that, indeed, they couldn't find any evidence of classified information, though some were later retroactively classified.

But, of course, that was just one batch of the emails. A few weeks ago, reports started leaking from inside the State Department that, in fact, there was classified information on that server, and late last night the other shoe dropped, with a report in the NY Times that two separate Inspectors General have requested the Justice Department open a criminal investigation into Clinton's mishandling of sensitive information -- in particular the inclusion of "hundreds" of potentially classified emails on her private server.

Two inspectors general have asked the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation into whether Hillary Rodham Clinton mishandled sensitive government information on a private email account she used as secretary of state, senior government officials said Thursday.

The request follows an assessment in a June 29 memo by the inspectors general for the State Department and the intelligence agencies that Mrs. Clinton’s private account contained “hundreds of potentially classified emails.” The memo was written to Patrick F. Kennedy, the under secretary of state for management.

The report also notes that these same Inspectors General were particularly annoyed with how the State Department has been handling this, saying that one of the emails that was revealed publicly last month contained classified information that should not have been released (though they obviously did not identify which email).

In a second memo to Mr. Kennedy, sent on July 17, the inspectors general said that at least one email made public by the State Department contained classified information. The inspectors general did not identify the email or reveal its substance.

[....]

The inspectors general also criticized the State Department for its handling of sensitive information, particularly its reliance on retired senior Foreign Service officers to decide if information should be classified, and for not consulting with the intelligence agencies about its determinations.

Back in March, when the whole email scandal broke, it was pretty clear that Clinton hoped to address it quickly and then hope that the whole thing would blow over. And, for the most part, it actually did. However, a criminal investigation and potential charges would obviously put it back on the front page again. Either way, it still raises serious questions as to what the hell she was thinking and more importantly, what the hell her staff was thinking. There is no way they could not have known how dangerous this was. Clinton's bizarre defense that the system was secure because the server was physically guarded never made much sense, but it still boggles the mind that everyone allowed this to happen in the first place. At this point, it has to be considered all but confirmed that foreign intelligence agencies had full access to all of her emails, including those that had classified information.

Update: Well, this is interesting. Some have noticed that after it was published, the NY Times quietly "softened" its original story... An hour after publishing it, the report changed so that it no longer said that the question was if "Hillary Clinton mishandled" her emails, but rather if "sensitive government information was mishandled in connection with the personal email account Hillary Rodham Clinton."

Filed Under: classified, doj, emails, hillary clinton, sensitive information, state department

Federal Election Committee Tries To Shut Down 'Stop Hillary' PAC Because Donors Might Think Hillary Clinton Is Behind It

from the so-much-for-confidence-in-the-electorate... dept

The Federal Election Committee has admitted it couldn't regulate itself out of a wet paper bag filled with "anonymous" donations, but it is still doing its damnedest to justify its existence. Unable to prevent the wholesale auction of political positions, it has turned its attention to a political action committee aimed only at preventing a certain candidate from being elected.

The FEC first sent a letter to Stop Hillary in April requesting it change its name, and followed up with a phone call threatening enforcement action this week, according to an attorney for the group. But the group is standing firm, arguing the freedom of speech protections afforded by the First Amendment to the Constitution shield it.

Specifically, the FEC cites this part of its regulations as being violated by the Stop Hillary PAC.

Your committee's name includes the name of a candidate; however, your committee does not appear to be an authorized committee of that candidate. If your committee is authorized by a candidate, please amend your Statement of Organization (FEC Form 1) and choose the correct "Type of Committee." Otherwise, you must amend your Statement of Organization to change the name of your political committee so that it does not include the candidate's name and/or provide further clarification regarding the nature of your committee. (52 U.S.C. §30102(e)(4) (formerly 2 U.S.C. §432(e)(4)) and 11 CFR § 102.14)

Since the only candidate's name being used is the candidate the PAC doesn't want to win, it seems unlikely Hillary Clinton would be amenable to "authorizing" this committee. Supposedly, this lack of direct authorization might lead to confusion in voters, who might accidentally donate money to a PAC directly opposed to their views, due to the public's apparent inability to parse the complicated phrase "Stop Hillary." At least, that's what the FEC's arguing.

Dan Backer, legal counsel for Stop Hillary, argues that not only does this ruling impact the PAC's free speech, but it's also very, very stupid.

This Committee respectfully declines the Commission's invitation to sacrifice its constitutionally protected right to free speech and free association solely for the benefit of what appears to be the Commission's preferred candidate for Federal office.

Certainly, the Commission has offered no other rational basis for such absurdity. It is hard to fathom who exactly it is that is so lacking in basic concepts (perhaps not even knowing what the definition of "is", is?) that to them the use of the verb 'STOP' immediately preceding the clear object to be stopped, 'HILLARY' demonstrates anything other than clear opposition to that object. Perhaps the Commission should reevaluate its continued lack of faith in the competency of Hillary Clinton's supporters and afford them the benefit of the doubt.

If this doesn't get the Federal Election Committee to reconsider its misguided regulation attempt, the "Stop Hillary" PAC can always hope the final decision is placed in the hands of the agency's six commissioners -- which should lead to immediate gridlock. And as the candidates head down the road towards Election Day 2016, the fiercely partisan commissioners will still be arguing over which conference room to use and what soft drinks should be supplied, leaving "Stop Hillary" free to throw money to whatever candidate seems most likely to keep her out of the nation's highest office.

Filed Under: fec, federal election committee, hillary clinton, pac, stop hillary

Clinton Email Case Gets Nutty: Clinton Offers Faux Support For Faster Release... That She Could Have Done Herself

from the let's-try-this-again dept

The whole saga over Hillary Clinton's emails is getting more and more bizarre. Last night, FOIA ninja (it beats the "FOIA terrorist" label some have given him), Jason Leopold revealed that in his FOIA lawsuit over the release of the emails, the State Department was claiming that it would take at least until January of 2016 to release the piles and piles of emails that Clinton gave them... in printed form. (In case you were living under a rock, Clinton used her own personal email server while Secretary of State, and only just recently handed over copies of the emails to the State Department -- after her own staff vetted them -- and then nuked the entire server).

The State Department went into great detail [pdf] explaining why it's going to take so damn long. In large part, it's because Clinton handed them all over in printed form, rather than digital form, and the State Department had to staff up just to go through all the emails.

As noted above, the Department received the 55,000 pages in paper form. The documents were provided in twelve bankers’ boxes (approximately 24” x 15” x 10 ¼” in size) with labels placed on the outside of the boxes that corresponded approximately to the timeframe of the documents within a given box. The Department initially performed tasks necessary to organize the records. This included foldering, boxing, and creating a box level inventory of the records. In consultation with the National Archives and Records Administration, the Department also conducted a page-by-page review of the documents to identify, designate, mark, and inventory entirely personal correspondence, i.e., those documents that are not federal records, included within the 55,000 pages.

Given the breadth and importance of the many foreign policy issues on which the Secretary of State and the Department work, the review of these materials will likely require consultation with a broad range of subject matter experts within the Department and other agencies, as well as potentially with foreign governments. These records are comprised of communications to or from the former Secretary of State, who was responsible for the overall direction and supervision of the full range of activities of the Department, which operates in approximately 285 locations around the globe. The Department is committed to processing the 55,000 pages as expeditiously as possible, while taking into consideration the Department’s other legal obligations.

The Department has taken multiple steps to facilitate its review of the 55,000 pages. It has developed an approach for addressing the review, upgraded the capabilities of the Department’s processing software, and dedicated staff. Currently, this project is staffed fulltime by a project manager and two case analysts, as well as nine FOIA reviewers who devote the entirety of their time at the State Department to this effort, plus other analysts and information technology specialists who provide collateral assistance to this review in addition to their regular duties. The team managing this project has met daily since early April to implement and oversee this large undertaking.

Each page of the 55,000 must be individually hand-processed in order to ensure that all information is being captured in the scanning process. The scanning process itself involves five steps that are time-consuming and labor-intensive. These are: (1) scanning (inserting barcode separator sheets between each document and its associated attachments and then scanning the documents, which includes converting them for optical character recognition [“OCR”], and then inputting the resulting OCR-ed files into the system in batches based on search segments); (2) scanning quality control (the scanned material is checked to ensure that each document is scanned properly and to flag documents that need to be re-scanned); (3) indexing (indexers review each scanned document to manually input bibliographic coding, such as the “To,” “From,” “CC,” “BCC,” “Date Sent,” and “Subject” fields associated with that document into the system); (4) indexing quality control (a senior indexer reviews the indexed documents to ensure that the bibliographic coding has been properly input into the system); and, (5) duplicate detection resolution (the computer analyzes the indexed documents to identify possible duplicates between the document being ingested and those documents that already exist in the system). Any possible duplicates that cannot be resolved (identified as an exact duplicate, near duplicate, not a duplicate) by automated means are pushed forward for individual review for manual adjudication. This process was made even more complicated by the fact that some, but not all, of the paper records that the Department received were double-sided. It took the Department five weeks to perform the scanning process, which was completed recently in May. There will be further work required to load these into a searchable database, which will be completed by mid-June.

When asked about it by reporters this morning, Clinton gave a really ridiculous answer, urging the State Department to speed up the work of releasing the emails, saying that she wanted them released:

“I have said repeatedly: I want those emails out. Nobody has a bigger interest in getting them released than I do,” she told reporters at a campaign stop in Iowa in a rare question-and-answer session. “...[A]nything that [the State Department] might do to expedite that process, I heartily support.”

You know what would have expedited the release? First, using the State Department's own email system while you were Secretary of State, so this wouldn't have even been an issue. And, second, when all of this became an issue handing over the emails in electronic form, rather than in printed form in a bunch of boxes.

Meanwhile, the judge in the case, Judge Rudolph Contreras, is not impressed. This morning he issued a minute order telling the State Department that waiting until January of next year was unacceptable, and ordering the State Department to set a renewed schedule with rolling releases every 60 days:

As stated on the record at today's status conference, Defendant shall file a notice to the Court on or before May 26, 2015, that includes the following: (1) a new production schedule for the Secretary Clinton e-mails that accounts for rolling production and updates from counsel every 60 days, (2) a proposed deadline for production of the Secretary Clinton e-mails relating to Benghazi, and (3) a proposed order that encapsulates the parties' agreement on the narrowing of Plaintiff's request concerning searches for records beyond the Secretary Clinton e-mails. SO ORDERED. Signed by Judge Rudolph Contreras

In the end, there may turn out to be nothing much of interest in all of those emails (though, of course, the fact that Clinton's own staff went through them and got rid of a bunch first will keep conspiracy theorists in business for ages), but the way that Clinton has handled this whole thing is really ridiculous. Who the hell thinks it's a good idea to print out 55,000 pages of records that were original electronic unless you're trying to hide stuff and make life difficult for those going through it?

Filed Under: clinton email, email, foia, hillary clinton, jason leopold, print outs, state department

If You Really Think TPP Is About 'Trade' Then Your Analysis Is Already Wrong

from the don't-fall-for-the-marketing. dept

George Mason University professor Bill Schneider recently had an interesting blog post over at Reuters in which he discusses how Hillary Clinton is in a tough spot concerning the TPP and TTIP agreements, in that much of the Democratic party is now vehemently against these "trade" deals, while historically, the Clintons have been for them. The piece argues that whichever side Hillary takes will create a problem for her presidential campaign. The politics in the piece may be right, but almost the entire thing is built on the assumption that the TPP agreement really is about "trade" and that such an agreement will lead to cheaper goods and such. Take this passage for example:

Trade is not an ideological issue. It’s a populist issue — the people versus the establishment. Ordinary Americans are suspicious of trade deals. Economists have a hard time understanding this, but most people see trade not as an economic issue but as a moral issue.

People think it’s wrong for them to benefit as consumers from lower prices for foreign-made goods if it throws Americans out of work. Will they purchase the foreign-made goods? Of course they will — as long as they’re cheaper. That’s rational economic behavior. They just don’t think they should be allowed to.

I don't think that's actually what people are thinking at all, but even if we run with it, it's based on the very faulty premise that these agreements have anything to do with free trade at all. As we've discussed in the past, they do not. They are quite clearly often about the opposite of free trade. In the past, we've strongly recommended Michael Goodwin's epic comic about TPP where he shows how it's really got little to do with free trade, and everything to do with the ability to move investment capital around: Perhaps an even better explanation comes from Tim Lee over at Vox, who goes into the history of these agreements, noting that the "free trade" stuff has mostly already been taken care of, as there aren't that many meaningful tariffs/trade barriers left. Instead, trade agreements have become a sort of secret playground for big corporations to abuse the process and force favorable regulations to be put in place around the globe. He discusses the history and how organized labor, the copyright industries, the pharmaceutical industries and more now basically use trade agreements as a secretive, anti-democratic process to force through regulations they want.

As the opportunities for trade liberalization have dwindled, the nature of trade agreements has shifted. They're no longer just about removing barriers to trade. They've become a mechanism for setting global economic rules more generally.

This trend is alarming to Simon Lester, a free trader at the Cato Institute. "We've added in these new issues that I'm skeptical of," he says. "It's not clear what the benefits are, and they cause a lot of controversy."

And this system for setting global rules has some serious defects. We expect the laws that govern our economic lives will be made in a transparent, representative, and accountable fashion. The TPP negotiation process is none of these — it's secretive, it's dominated by powerful insiders, and it provides little opportunity for public input.

If you make the facile assumption that the TPP is actually about free trade, then you might be confused about all the hubbub about it. If you actually take the time to understand that much of what's in there has nothing to do with free trade and, in fact, may be the opposite of free trade, you realize why there's so much concern.

Filed Under: free trade, hillary clinton, investment, non-tarriff barriers, regulations, secrecy, tpp, trade, trade agreements, ttip

Dear Politicians: Responding To The Clinton Email Scandal By Proudly Affirming You've Never Used Email Isn't Helping

from the dumb-dumbs dept

Hey, politicians who read Techdirt... look, can we talk for a moment? As someone with a keen interest in DC machinations and politics on a national level, I feel like I know you guys well enough to have a heart to heart with you. And I get how the DC game is played. Some story comes out creating a national outrage with some percentage of the country and the whole thing seems designed to thieve the attention you might otherwise be getting from the press and the constituency. It's not only tempting, it's downright irresistible to react to such a story in an insane way, even if only to momentarily draw attention, any kind of attention, back on yourselves. I get it, believe me. When I first saw the trailer for the new Game of Thrones while sitting in my living room with my family, for instance, I immediately stood up, took my pants off, and ran around the block a few times until my wife clotheslined me on the third lap. Because, let's face it, that's how we roll, am I right?

But, guys, seriously...there's enough meat on the bone in the Hillary Clinton super-secret unofficial email fiasco-steak to work with. You really don't have to lose your minds and draw all the wrong kind of attention to yourselves as a result. For example, don't be Lindsey Graham.

If you click that link, there's a video of Senator Lindsey Graham (we'd embed it here, but NBC still hasn't figured out how to allow HTTPS embeds, because it doesn't care about your privacy, apparently). Here's the key part of Graham's exchange on Meet the Press.

Chuck Todd asked Graham, "Do you have a private e-mail address?"

Graham's answer: "I don't email. No, you can have every email I've ever sent. I've never sent one. I don't know what that makes me."

Well, Senator, it quite likely makes you the most unqualified member of the subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law for starters. Because email is ubiquitous enough at this point that I'm not even sure it should be called "technology" without being prefaced by the qualifier "super old and probably due for displacement." To at once sit on that committee and proudly state that you've never sent an email during your time in office sounds like you're begging to be replaced on that committee.

But my point is a larger one: the Clinton email scandal is one that should not result in any thinking person believing that having never sent an email to anyone ever is a bragging point. Put this kind of reaction into other contexts and see how far it gets you. One wouldn't, for instance, react to the cluster-bomb that has become Obamacare by proudly stating, "I've never even gone to a doctor!" One wouldn't criticize our foreign policy in the Middle East by proudly shouting, "Dude, I've never even been out of our country!" That's just stupid.

And so is proudly claiming that you've never sent an email. You want to have some kind of massive reaction to get attention? Fine, just don't say stupid things like Lindsey Graham. My suggestion? Take your pants off and go for a jog. You'll feel better when you do, I promise.

Filed Under: clinton email, email, hillary clinton, lindsey graham, politicians

Hillary Clinton Finally Answers Questions About Her Email... And It Only Raises More Questions

from the that-doesn't-make-sense dept

Hillary Clinton and her team apparently felt that it was finally time to have the Candidate* address the whole email thing, which she did with a press conference, in which she tried to brush the whole thing off as nothing. Here's the key bit from her prepared remarks:

Now, I would be pleased to talk more about this important matter, but I know there have been questions about my email, so I want to address that directly, and then I will take a few questions from you.

There are four things I want the public to know.

First, when I got to work as secretary of state, I opted for convenience to use my personal email account, which was allowed by the State Department, because I thought it would be easier to carry just one device for my work and for my personal emails instead of two.

Looking back, it would've been better if I'd simply used a second email account and carried a second phone, but at the time, this didn't seem like an issue.

Second, the vast majority of my work emails went to government employees at their government addresses, which meant they were captured and preserved immediately on the system at the State Department.

Third, after I left office, the State Department asked former secretaries of state for our assistance in providing copies of work- related emails from our personal accounts. I responded right away and provided all my emails that could possibly be work-related, which totalled roughly 55,000 printed pages, even though I knew that the State Department already had the vast majority of them. We went through a thorough process to identify all of my work- related emails and deliver them to the State Department. At the end, I chose not to keep my private personal emails -- emails about planning Chelsea's wedding or my mother's funeral arrangements, condolence notes to friends as well as yoga routines, family vacations, the other things you typically find in inboxes.

No one wants their personal emails made public, and I think most people understand that and respect that privacy.

Fourth, I took the unprecedented step of asking that the State Department make all my work-related emails public for everyone to see.

I am very proud of the work that I and my colleagues and our public servants at the department did during my four years as secretary of state, and I look forward to people being able to see that for themselves.

Again, looking back, it would've been better for me to use two separate phones and two email accounts. I thought using one device would be simpler, and obviously, it hasn't worked out that way.

Later, in the Q&A session she added a few "details." On the question of which emails she kept private (which she says she deleted), she claimed it was just stuff that don't need to be shared, such as emails between herself and Bill Clinton:

And the process produced over 30,000 you know, work emails, and I think that we have more than met the requests from the State Department. The server contains personal communications from my husband and me, and I believe I have met all of my responsibilities and the server will remain private and I think that the State Department will be able, over time, to release all of the records that were provided.

As for the security of the emails, she insists they were fine because they were guarded by the Secret Service:

Well, the system we used was set up for President Clinton's office. And it had numerous safeguards. It was on property guarded by the Secret Service. And there were no security breaches.

So, I think that the -- the use of that server, which started with my husband, certainly proved to be effective and secure.

Now the proper follow up to that is how the hell do you know there were no security breaches. Having Secret Service agents guard the physical machine is one thing. Making sure there were no online breaches is another thing entirely. Trevor Timm, over at the Guardian, notes that Clintons statements only raise a lot more questions.

For example, she claims that the private emails were things like emails with Bill. But, as Timm points out, just hours earlier, Bill Clinton's spokesperson said that the President still doesn't use email.

The former president, who does regularly use Twitter , has sent a grand total of two emails during his entire life, both as president, says Matt McKenna, his spokesman. After leaving office, Mr. Clinton established his own domain that staff use–@presidentclinton.com. But Mr. Clinton still doesn’t use email himself, Mr. McKenna said.

So, was Hillary lying when she said other emails were just her and Bill chatting -- or was Bill's own spokesperson wrong?

Timm also digs in on that "no security breaches" claim, and finds that Clinton's people did a followup with a caveat: "there is no evidence there was ever a breach." Which could mean there was one, and they just never knew about it. Furthermore, the better question (and one a reporter in the press corp. should have asked) is not about the Secret Service guys guarding the box, but who set up the computer security for the email server. But no one did. Here's Timm:

Also: what type of security professionals were looking after the server? Clinton said the secret service guarded it, but we have no idea the expertise of the person actually running it. Experts have already pointed to basic holes in the email server’s security based on public data, and as any systems administrator will tell you, running your own email server is never simple.

Another point raised by Timm: Clinton seems to be willfully misstating the rules when she claims she didn't violate them:

Clinton also said at the press conference she “fully complied with every rule I was governed by”. Well, actually: a 2005 State Department directive said “It is the Department’s general policy that normal day-to-day operations be conducted on an authorized [Automated Information System], which has the proper level of security control to provide nonrepudiation, authentication and encryption, to ensure confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the resident information.”

Sources told Politico the rules were “clear-cut”. An ambassador was harshly criticized in 2012 for breaking this rule in the same manner Clinton did and subsequently fired in part for using a private email account at work. And Clinton herself signed a State Department cable in 2011 saying that all ambassadors should avoid personal email for professional business.

In the end, this response tried to answer questions, but only served to raise a bunch of new ones.

* Still not officially running

Filed Under: bill clinton, clinton email, email, hillary clinton, security

How Hillary Clinton Exposed Her Emails To Foreign Spies... In Order To Hide Them From The American Public

from the how-hard-is-it-to-just-use-the-government's-email dept

So the whole Hillary Clinton email story is getting worse and worse for Clinton. We already noted that there was no way she couldn't have known that she had to use government email systems for government work, as there was a big scandal from the previous administration using private emails and within the early Obama administration as well. This morning we discovered that Clinton also gave clintonemail.com email addresses to staffers, which undermines the argument made by Hillary's spokesperson that it was okay for her to use her own email address because any emails with staffers would still be archived by the State Department thanks to their use of state.gov emails. But that's clearly not the case when she's just emailing others with the private email addresses.

As we noted yesterday, there are two separate key issues here, neither of which look good for Clinton. First, is the security question. There's no question at all that as Secretary of State she dealt with all sorts of important, confidential and classified information. Doing that on your own email server seems like a pretty big target for foreign intelligence. In fact, Gawker points out, correctly, that Hillary's private email address was actually revealed a few years ago when the hacker "Guccifer" revealed the inbox of former Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal. So it was known years ago that Clinton used a private email account, and you have to think it was targeted.

Anonymous State Department "cybersecurity" officials are apparently shoving each other aside to leak to the press that they warned Clinton that what she was doing was dangerous, but couldn't convince her staff to do otherwise:

“We tried,” an unnamed current employee told Al Jazeera. “We told people in her office that it wasn't a good idea. They were so uninterested that I doubt the secretary was ever informed.”

The AP has a somewhat weird and slightly confused article detailing the setup of the email system, but seems to imply things that aren't clearly true.

It was unclear whom Clinton hired to set up or maintain her private email server, which the AP traced to a mysterious identity, Eric Hoteham. That name does not appear in public records databases, campaign contribution records or Internet background searches. Hoteham was listed as the customer at Clinton's $1.7 million home on Old House Lane in Chappaqua in records registering the Internet address for her email server since August 2010.

The Hoteham personality also is associated with a separate email server, presidentclinton.com, and a non-functioning website, wjcoffice.com, all linked to the same residential Internet account as Mrs. Clinton's email server. The former president's full name is William Jefferson Clinton.

While Eric Hoteham may be a mysterious non-entity, as Julian Sanchez points out, an early Clinton staffer was named Eric Hothem. Of course, Stanford cybersecurity guru Jonthan Mayer also notes that Hillary's old home server is still online and running Windows Server 2008 R2. However, the AP reports that the email has moved around a bit over the past few years:

In November 2012, without explanation, Clinton's private email account was reconfigured to use Google's servers as a backup in case her own personal email server failed, according to Internet records. That is significant because Clinton publicly supported Google's accusations in June 2011 that China's government had tried to break into the Google mail accounts of senior U.S. government officials. It was one of the first instances of a major American corporation openly accusing a foreign government of hacking.

Then, in July 2013, five months after she resigned as secretary of state, Clinton's private email server was reconfigured again to use a Denver-based commercial email provider, MX Logic, which is now owned by McAfee Inc., a top Internet security company.

That likely means the email was much more secure after July of 2013, but it certainly raises questions about how secure it was for years before that.

Though, we do know that it was secure from one thing: FOIA requests. That is the second of the two big issues raised by this whole thing. By using her own email setup, she was clearly able to hide important documents from FOIA requests. In fact, as Gawker notes, her staff's defense of the use of her private email, actually now confirms emails as legit that the State Department denied existed back when Gawker made a FOIA request years ago.

That's because following that Guccifer hack, Gawker filed a FOIA for those emails and was told they don't exist. Yet, now Clinton staffers point to that old Gawker article to suggest that the private email address is "old news," thus confirming that the emails were legit, even though the State Department denied them.

The Clinton camp’s claims about the email account being above-board is also contradicted by the State Department’s response to Gawker’s inquires two years ago. After we published the story about Blumenthal’s correspondence with Clinton, we filed a FOIA request with the agency for all correspondence to date between Hillary Clinton and Sidney Blumenthal, specifically including any messages to or from the hdr22@clintonemail.com account. The screenshots and other documents released by Guccifer—which have now been validated by Clinton’s spokesman—confirmed that such messages existed.

But the State Department replied to our request by saying that, after an extensive search, it could find no records responsive to our request. That is not to say that they found the emails and refused to release them—it is conceivable, after all, that the State Department might have attempted to deny the release of the Clinton-Blumenthal correspondence on grounds of national security or Blumenthal’s own privacy. Instead, the State Department confirmed that it didn’t have the emails at all.

Which is exactly why Clinton used a non-State Department email server to conduct her official business.

According to the NY Times, the State Department says that it won't go back to correct the FOIA requests that it responded to in the past, saying that such records didn't exist. Instead, it will only now search the emails that have been turned over by Clinton's staff. That is another 50,000 emails, but no one knows what emails the staff removed or refused to turn over.

Either way, there are two huge problems here. Clinton likely exposed her emails to foreign spies, while keeping them away from the American public.

Filed Under: clintonemail, email, foia, hillary clinton, security, transparency

Breaking: Clinton Gave Staffers Clintonemail.com Addresses Too

from the it's-turtles-all-the-way-down dept

There has been quite a kerfuffle around the apparent fact that Hillary Clinton solely used her personal email account for government business. This piqued my curiosity, especially since I've been playing with a service called Conspire lately.

Conspire is a startup that analyzes your email and then seeks to provide you with an email chain with which to introduce you to the desired person. So, say I wanted to email my current business crush, Marcus Lemonis, Conspire's system found a path with which I could ask for an introduction. In my case, my friend Espree could email her friend Nathan for an introduction to Marcus. Neat. I can definitely see how Conspire could become a useful tool, albeit one that raises some very interesting privacy questions.

So, I looked for Hillary Clinton's now famous hdr22@clintonemail.com email address in Conspire. No luck. Conspire is still growing, so I suppose it makes sense that none of its members have yet to email Hillary. But then I tried just the clintonemail.com domain in the search, and got one hit. Huma Abedin, Hillary's long-time aide, had an email address with the clintonemail.com domain in Conspire's records. Unfortunately, I have no connection path to Ms. Abedin, so I can't ask the system to facilitate an introduction, but it is fascinating. What other Clinton staffers were using email addresses at the clintonemail.com domain? Seems like at least one was. To be fair, Abedin not only was Clinton's deputy chief of staff in the State Department, but she also continued to work for Clinton after Clinton left office. It is possible that she only got the email address after leaving the government, but it certainly raises some serious questions about whether or not other State Department staffers were provided private clintonemail addresses to avoid transparency requirements. In fact, Politico is reporting specifically that Abedin and other staffers used non-government email addresses while in the State Department, which suggests the clintonemail address may have come earlier:

Clinton’s personal aide, Huma Abedin, and her communications adviser, Philippe Reines, regularly used unofficial email accounts for work-related email, former colleagues said.

This also makes me wonder what other new communications mediums our government officials are using. Could world leaders be SnapChatting each other? Or perhaps sending international YO's? Or trolling each other on YikYak? And, if they are, are they complying with records retention laws?

Filed Under: clinton, clintonmail, email, foia, hillary clinton, huma abedin, transparency

There Is No Way That Hillary Clinton Didn't Know She Was Supposed To Use A Government Email Account

from the this-makes-no-sense dept

As you may have heard, the latest political "scandal" involving a major Presidential contender comes via the NY Times reporting that when Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, she refused to have a government email address, and conducted all her work via a personal email account.

Hillary Rodham Clinton exclusively used a personal email account to conduct government business as secretary of state, State Department officials said, and may have violated federal requirements that officials’ correspondence be retained as part of the agency’s record.

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.

This is dumb on many, many levels and there appears to be no excuse for it happening. First off, using a personal email as Secretary of State seems like a massive privacy and security risk. While one hopes that there was at least some attempt to better secure her personal account by government security experts, it's still almost certainly less secure. Given how much sensitive information the Secretary of State has to deal with, it seems inexcusable that she was allowed to conduct official business via her personal account. That to me seems like an even bigger deal than the part that everyone else is focused on: the failure to preserve her emails as required by law.

Of course, the failure to preserve the emails is a big deal as well. But here's the really stunning thing: there is simply no way that Clinton and others in the administration didn't know that she was supposed to be using a government email address and preserving those emails. That's because both the previous administration and others in her own administration got in trouble for using personal email addresses. As Vox notes, towards the end of the Bush administration there was a similar scandal involving a variety of high level administration members using personal email to conduct government business and to avoid transparency requirements.

That scandal unfolded well into the final year of Bush's presidency, then overlapped with another email secrecy scandal, over official emails that got improperly logged and then deleted, which itself dragged well into Obama's first year in office. There is simply no way that, when Clinton decided to use her personal email address as Secretary of State, she was unaware of the national scandal that Bush officials had created by doing the same.

That she decided to use her personal address anyway showed a stunning disregard for governmental transparency requirements. Indeed, Clinton did not even bother with the empty gesture of using her official address for more formal business, as Bush officials did.

But that's not all. What the Vox report doesn't note is that the scandal actually carried over to the Obama administration also, as the White House's first Deputy CTO was reprimanded for using his personal email address as well, early in 2010. So there was both a scandal about the similar use of private email accounts in the previous administration and in the Obama administration. It's impossible to believe that Clinton or the other key people who worked for her in the State Department were unaware of one or both of these issues while she was using her personal email address.

While the White House's email system may be clunky and annoying to use (as I've heard repeatedly), there's simply no excuse for Clinton not to have used it at all -- and for the emails she did send not to be preserved as required under the law. A few years ago, we mocked Homeland Security boss Janet Napolitano for refusing to use email entirely -- though at least she was upfront about the reason. She didn't want to be held accountable for what she said -- though, the reality was she would still have staff members send emails for her. Clinton appears to have wanted to be free of that accountability as well, but to still have the benefits of direct electronic communication herself. In short, she purposely ignored the law for her own benefit.

Filed Under: email, hillary clinton, personal email accounts, public records, scandals, transparency

Hillary Clinton Still Refuses To Make Her Views Clear On Surveillance, And That's A Problem

from the this-is-an-issue dept

Earlier this year, we noted that absolutely-running-for-President-while-pretending-to-think-about-it Hillary Clinton gave a stupid and vague non-answer answer to her position on government surveillance. It was the perfect politician's answer, refusing to really take a position that could be held against her at some point in the future. Except, on important issues, refusing to answer sometimes isn't an answer, and this is a perfect case of that. The leading contenders for the Republican nomination appear to have all made statements one way or the other, while Hillary has done everything possible not to take a position on the matter.

If Hillary Clinton has a position on the government's domestic spying, she's doing a good job of hiding it.

More than a year after Edward Snowden's leaks, the former secretary of State has yet to offer a meaningful assessment of the National Security Agency's mass-surveillance programs. She's had plenty of chances, but in interviews, speeches, and even her new book, Clinton has repeatedly ducked the issue with vagaries and cliches.

The possible 2016 candidate rarely discusses NSA spying unprompted. And when she does, her remarks are often couched in opaque platitudes about the need to balance privacy and national security concerns.

Again, it's not surprising from a political standpoint, but you have to wonder if it will come back to hurt her. While surveillance may not be a top voting issue these days, many inside DC seem to be underestimating just how important it is to many people.

Filed Under: hillary clinton, nsa, politics, surveillance