I understand that what Hilary Clinton did that was undoubtedly wrong was (1) to mix her personal email with her official, sometimes confidential, government email.
What I have never understood (though perhaps everyone else does) is whether (2) this was done for some further malicious reason.
If (1), then, while unfortunate, this is hardly criminal, since Clinton gained nothing by mixing the emails.
If (2), then this is much more serious. If (2), what is it she gained?
As far as I can tell, there are some people who think she did this to dodge FOIA requests because of all the evil she was involved with.
Dodging the FOIA is the most likely nefarious reason. Even if you are not involved with “evils” I can see how the FOIA would be a pain. I have a friend who gave a bad recommendation about someone and it was later released via the FOIA. It made it all very awkward, even though the person he wrote abut was an incompetent buffoon. But it is also a convenience thing: having one email address makes everything easier. It’s not like she hid it, she sent emails to government officials from that account. If you want to hide stuff there are much better ways. Beyond that, anything sent over the Internet unencrypted is not secure. It doesn’t matter if it is sent from a government server, an email service like gmail, or your own private server. Once it hits the Internet it is unsecure.
Really classified stiff is sent via other means. The classified emails the FBI found are things like her daily agendas or travel arrangements. Stupid, but not treasonous. Powell used AOL, which is worse than a private server as anyone at AOL with admin privileges could probably access his emails. Tech companies employ tons of foreign nationals and easily blackmailed nerds.
I am afraid that the correct answer might be considered a hijack in GQ, so I’ll just give a hint: Google “Why Did Vince Foster Shoot Himself Three Times in the Back of the Head?”
I’m baffled by this. I have a personal email account and a business email account but I often use my business email account for personal things because the personal stuff is fairly innocuous (emailing my daughter’s school, for example) and I need to do it during business hours and see the responses as they pop up rather than having to constantly check my personal email inbox on my phone. Is this not a thing other people do? I mean, I’m not watching porn or downloading movies on my work account, but when you’re busy it’s easier to just use the email account in front of you, and far better to use the business email account for the occasional personal email (within reason) than the other way around.
I’m not sure what your point is — it almost looks like you’ve twisted things around and would be happier to defend the Secretary had she used her business email for personal matters than vice versa — but you should know that using business e-mail for personal matters is not recommended for several reasons, and may be contrary to your company’s policies. IANAL but I think use of a government email address for personal business may even be illegal.
This was very thoroughly covered during the 2016 campaign.
Clinton, like many of our senior relatives, is not comfortable with constantly changing technology, and her prime concern was that (1) she refused to use multiple smartphones/devices and (2) she would not give up her ancient Blackberry.
Her staff has to troll eBay and other second-hand sources to ensure there is a steady supply of the Blackberry model she likes.
When she became Secretary of State and was being pressured to accept a second phone by security staff for official use, she even asked Colin Powell what to do.
His advice to her, essentially, was, don’t let yourself get caught up in staff demands. You’re the secretary, tell them what you want based on your own convenience and let them deal with it. Your time is too valuable to spend serving the needs of technology instead of Vice versa.
Given that we now has a president (and staff) who uses whatever devices and email accounts whenever he wants, this shouldn’t be an eternal mystery any more. I seem to recall that The bush-Cheney administration also used private e-mail accounts extensively.
[Moderating]
And just what was the factual question here supposed to be?
Off to Great Debates.
The thing is, and someone can correct me if I’m wrong, but there’s no subpoena power behind a FOIA request. Clinton could have kept all of her nefarious stuff on a government email server, and if she didn’t want to release it during a FOIA request she could just have responded to the request saying, “Sorry, we don’t have anything like that.” If whoever made the request thought she was lying they’d have to sue and hope to get access to her emails during discovery, which is exactly the same process regardless of where they’re stored.
The only substantive difference is that in the case of that hypothetical lawsuit, it’d be easier to delete all the evidence off a server if the techs worked for Clinton versus working for the state department, but that’s a pretty narrow advantage. It also presupposes that Clinton would be willing to break the law by lying in response to FOIA requests and potentially deleting evidence during a lawsuit, but still for some reason to conduct criminal activity via regular email. Doesn’t make a lot of sense.
OMG-Really?? Why has no one ever brought this up before?
:rolleyes:
A solidified reputation as another Clinton who thinks the rules don’t apply to her.
Apart from “nefarious intent”, it’s part of a longstanding pattern of behavior.
It’s perhaps worth noting that her personal e-mail server was more secure than the official one she was supposed to be using: That one got hacked, but her personal server didn’t.
Do you have a cite that he was shot in the back of the head? Or three times? I always heard that the conspiracy theories centered around the missing exit wound, because the bullet went in from the mouth.
Note, those conspiracy theories are whackadoodledoo as well, but at least they kinda fit the facts, if you squint – unlike the idea that he was shot 3 times, and in the back of the head.
Not true, there’s TLS transport layer encryption (very common, I help folks troubleshoot it for a living), and competing methods of further encrypting the content of the message. Most email servers will accept an unencrypted session, but fewer and fewer are. Seeing it required on government servers is very common these days.
Now, of course, “secure” isn’t synonymous with “nobody else can read it, ever”, but it’s not all being transmitted in base64 encoded clear text, either.
Yeah, that’s the kind of screwed up part of this whole affair. I think Powell was foolish to advise Clinton to not listen to the experts on the security of her devices, and she was foolish not to listen, but it wouldn’t have done her too much good to listen to them in this case.
I still can’t get past the apparent fact that she was SoS for 6 years, sending 100s of thousands of e-mails, and no one said anything about her using her own e-mail server. If this was such a big deal, why didn’t someone bring it up then?
I’ve said it before, but as a longtime fed, every year I have to sign an acknowledgement of our Agency’s electronics/data/records policies. What she did is blatantly prohibited by any conceivable interpretation of the clear policies I’ve seen. I cannot imagine that State is greatly more lax in such things than my Agency.
I don’t even need to get to the question of whether she had any malicious motives. For me, it is sufficient (and cumulative evidence) that she did not believe the rules applied to her.
NOTE: my feelings did not interfere with my strong support for her candidacy.
Answer: it wasn’t such a big deal, until it could be used to discredit her politically.
While I don’t disagree, it’s my understanding that appointees are often not held to exactly the same standards as employees. I recall the suggestion that SecState was not (by tradition, at least) bound to the same policies. Certainly her predecessors did much the same (and I wouldn’t describe Colin Powell as one who thought rules generally did not apply to him).
I am also skeptical of the theory that Foster committed suicide by shooting himself in the back of the head three times. The suggested search term, however, will lead to a variety of hits that will help OP gain insight into the nature of the charges against Secretary Clinton. The first one following is from the Washington Post.