The position of SecState seems to me to entail a great deal of power, responsibility, and some degree of discretion. If she sends an e-mail concerning the floral arrangements for the formal meeting with the President of BongoBongo, and fails to send it on a secure network, I will try not to get too worked up about it. Of course, if she were to send out our troop deployments, ammo supplies and locations, then maybe. But SecState is not SecDef.
As well, who’s to say? If she says the floral arrangements are not sensitive info but the NSA says they are, who decides? Apparently, POTUS had some faith in her intelligence and discretion, because she parked her butt in the chair. She is neither stupid nor an ISIS mole.
Can anyone point out any consequences, dire or otherwise, from her alleged sloppiness?
Why be deliberately obtuse? You really think there is no secret info on negotiations, intelligence or policy that crosses the SecState’s desk? Flower arrangements is all you figure?
The fact seems to be that State’s handling of electronic info is pretty shitty. Instead of addressing that problem, Hillary became an example of it. You should be able to accept someone saying that without assuming they want her arrested or think Trump would be a better President.
She sent and received emails about things like imminent drone strikes on a server that was easily vulnerable to hacking. That’s the epitome of being sloppy as to security. I fail to see how you could continue to call it “alleged” sloppiness. Surely, sloppiness is the most exculpatory possibility here.
And there’s no particular reason to think we would know of the consequences of someone breaching her server. Take the example from the WSJ article. If monitoring of the server communications gave advance notice that there would be an imminent drone strike in Pakistan, and some targets were tipped off to lay low for a few weeks, how would we ever know that? More to the point, there need not have been any “dire or otherwise” consequences for this to have been an example of poor judgment that has revealed a significant problem in our nation’s security apparatus.
I’m back to asking something I tried earlier but didn’t state very clearly, Richard. So you’ve changed your mind – does this impact anything you do in the real world? Is it serious enough for you to change your vote? Did you formerly believe no investigation was really necessary, but now you do? The facts as you know them changed, but what changed about you in response to that new knowledge?
Any amount of security can be breached, what matters is the likelihood of the breech, and the likelihood that the person doing the breaching can both understand the context of whatever information he’s accessing, and utilize it in time to do anything.
The systems in use were good enough for previous SoSs, saying Clinton should have done better is a slightly reasonable criticism. But suggesting it’s a *scandal *is goofy.
Bush trumps up a war, tortures people, and it’s all, “hey cool” and Clinton does’t revamp security at the State Department, and it’s, “SHE MUST GO TO PRISON!”
The level of banality that these attacks drop to is a real drag. And like Obama, if this is genuinely the worst thing that can be found to attack her, awesome.
How is that not almost entirely addressed in the OP? He said he believes this is a true national security scandal, so clearly he thinks the investigation was warranted. He said it “… it has caused me to downgrade my estimation of Clinton’s judgment by a good notch. I’m not sure she has worse judgment than her competitors, but it’s now a closer call in my book.” I can’t imagine Richard is going switch to Trump over this.
As CarnalK notes, I think I covered most of that in my OP. This line of questioning reads to me like you agree with posters like Lobohan who appear to believe that unless criticism is enough to change your vote then it’s not worth bothering to sort out which parts of it are legitimate and illegitimate.
I think that’s just a totally wrongheaded way to approach stuff like this, and contributes to our poisonous tribal culture. We should pay attention to the details of criticisms of Democratic candidates, and form opinions for ourselves, even when the issue does not rise to the level of changing our votes. Do I really have to defend that position?
Apparently, yes, as you’ve been doing for multiple pages now. So your opinion is that your trust and/or faith in Hilary has been slightly reduced, though not enough to change anything about your opinion of her versus rival candidates. And you feel that trusting Hilary’s judgment slightly less is something important we should all share in.
My trust in her judgment hit bottom when she didn’t dump Bill after it became clear what a personal sleaze he was. Perhaps she displayed good political judgment in carpetbagging her way into a NY senatorial seat, but I thought it was a perfect example of naked political opportunism and it offended me.
So this email thing is incredibly small potatoes in my mind compared to other issues.
And yes, disliking her as I do (and have for years), I will STILL vote for her to be president as a far better choice than any of the Republicans in the race.
To me, it’s just another of many episodes of voting for the lesser evil.
I think it’s worth sorting out which parts are legitimate or illegitimate. It’s just after following this for years now, it seems like the critics are pointing at trivialities and making astonished faces, and gasping about how awful it all is.
Hold up there, hoss. From whence and whom this information? That little nugget right there, that isn’t sensitive information? Who was authorized to disclose it, and by whom were they authorized?
Things “like” imminent drone strikes? What do you mean, they bear some resemblance? So, then, it would not be actual drone strikes, but something someone has decided is very, very similar? Who decided that?
If the problem is systemic, why should I believe that her actions did not, in fact, enhance security? You rightly point out that we may very well not know of any dire consequences, but seem willing to the leave the ghost of that absence as a talking point. Who knows? Could have been anything!
“…revealed a significant problem…” Well, OK. Should Hillary have broken out her mad programming skills and whipped it into shape? Wait, I hear the State Dept runs on DOS…
And as much as I appreciate a dispassionate and objective approach, this is a political shitstorm. Might as well shout “Theater!” in a crowded fire.
Your underlying assumption–that she conducted all, or even merely a substantial portion, of State’s business through her BlackBerry–is incorrect, invalidating your point.
See, I’m confused here. Clinton asked for a secure Blackberry and the NSA told her to pound sand. Even ignoring the question of why one of the top 10 or so government officials doesn’t merit all the infrastructure they asked for, how can we then get upset that subsequent emails had to be sent in the clear?