No. It’s the subject of debate. I hate to quote myself, but I laid it out in the thread on Hillary Clinton scandals.
[QUOTE=Whak-A-Mole]
No Sec State has ever had a private email server before her. Comparing her to the governor of Florida is apples and oranges.
Using a private email server as senator is also not the same thing as using one as Sec State.
Also one has to wonder why she even wanted to use one (answer…she wanted to avoid FOIA requests…so much for transparency).
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Your first two sentences are statements without any support. Please elaborate on why. I think Clinton, like Bush, is a mega-famous name which people would want to interfere with. So they have great incentive to maintain secure lines of communication. Likewise, I imagine that a Senator (especially a high-profile one) has great incentive to maintain those same secure lines of communication. I refer it to emphasize that this was likely a secured system. Whether it was in fact secure is simply not yet known, and you (and I) would be guessing if we reached a conclusion at this point.
Since you have an answer in the third sentence, please cite it.
I noted that her email system likely was encrypted, too. I was not aware of Guccifer - ignorance fought. I would note, however, that he apparently hacked Sidney Blumenthal, and not Clinton. I still contend that she probably had a secure system, if her personal obsession with privacy is to be believed.
Ha! You taunt me by citing to a newspaper article about the report.
Yes. I have read the report. Why don’t you read it (and not someone’s opinion about it), and get back to me.
In the world of top secret info things do not need to be labelled “secret” to be secret.
For instance, imagine you are in the situation room in the White House and some info is given there. It has not been officially classified as “secret”. Do you think the people in that room can then march out to the media and tell about what they learned in that room because no one has put a "top secret"stamp on it yet?
It is amazing how hard you have to work to defend her.
No Sec State has had a private email server while they held the office. If you can prove otherwise be my guest.
And why you would think a senator is privy to the same things as the Secretary of State is beyond me. Sec State is probably the most powerful position in government below the president. For a long time Sec State was second in line to the presidency. It is a position of power well past a senator.
Josh Earnest was not speaking specifically about this investigation. He said,
“And that’s why the president, when discussing this issue in each stage, has reiterated his commitment to this principle that any criminal investigation should be conducted independent of any sort of political interference.”
He was speaking in general terms about the principle of conducting investigations independent of political interference.
The State Department released a report where they concluded previous Secretaries of State had used private email, and received classified information. Or rather, information that was determined to now be considered classified.
The law you cite states, in part:
“(a) Whoever knowingly and willfully communicates, furnishes, transmits, or otherwise makes available to an unauthorized person, or publishes, or uses in any manner prejudicial to the safety or interest of the United States or for the benefit of any foreign government to the detriment of the United States any classified information—”
It is arguable that placing on a private server does not meet that standard. There was no intent to provide or communicate or transmit classified material to anyone not qualified to view it.
It can be poor practice and risky of breaches without being an intentional violation of that act.
It also says
That means it had to have been classified at the time.
Is your friend that you are lying to about his surprise party acting in his official capacity when you lie to him? If not, you are in the clear.
But not more powerful than the vice president. Secretary of State is fourth in line currently and was Second for only 61 years. The Speaker of the House and the President Pro Tem of the Senate have been in line before the Sec. of State for 165 (non continuous) years.
Well, then it’s a good thing my quote included a story from CNN (quoting Colin Powell about the dispute over retroactive classification of emails), an NPR story that said Clinton’s emails were retroactively classified, and a Politifact article which quoted the Director of the National Security Archive when explaining that there is disagreement between departments over what should be classified.
Classification is a matter of debate within government; it is not as clear cut as you are claiming.
Please re-read what you wrote. “[T]he world of top secret info” necessarily implies a classification has been applied. Things that are “top secret” are such because somebody deemed them classified. In the State Department, that decision maker is the Secretary of State, per this Executive Order.
By the way, if you read the other parts of the order, you will note that the word used is “may”, and not “shall”, with regard to the classification of documents (i.e. a document may be classified when the following conditions are met…)
And, as the Politifact article in my previous post further explains (with a goofy Star Wars analogy), information may be classified in one context, and not in another
[QUOTE=Whack-A-Mole]
For instance, imagine you are in the situation room in the White House and some info is given there. It has not been officially classified as “secret”. Do you think the people in that room can then march out to the media and tell about what they learned in that room because no one has put a "top secret"stamp on it yet?
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Do you think that discussion in the situation room are not deemed confidential by virtue of the fact that they occur in the situation room? This is akin to my earlier comment that truly secure communications were almost certainly not transmitted by email at all.
The hard work comes because people impute motives and consequences where this is no evidence of such. We simply don’t know if anything sensitive was leaked. We can infer that the government needs to improve its day-to-day communications systems, since they are not up to the task of a modern 21st century operation, but that’s about it.
:smack: I managed to miscount your sentences; I saw three when there were four - my mistake. I agree that she is the only Secretary of State to have a private server. I meant to ask for a cite on your assertion that she maintained such a server to avoid FOIA requests.
I think we are looking at this from different perspectives. I see your point that a Secretary of State is likely to touch more sensitive information than a Senator or a Presidential Candidate. But my point was that, as world famous Hillary Clinton (who has spent years being "scandalized), she had great incentive to maintain a high secure system well before she became Secretary of State.
Classification is done by far more people than the president and sec state. The government generates a lot of information and those two would do nothing but classify documents all day if they were the only ones who could do it. To wit you for some reason did not quote the whole section (highlighting mine):
Note section (d) highlighted above. Not putting a stamp on something does not magically make it not secret. Clinton knows proper procedures for classification and was trained specifically on it at least once per year. Also note the requirement for proper safeguarding of information. Safeguarding she explicitly sidestepped with her server.
So, were there classified documents on her server? The government says yes and is an example that things are secret and require proper handling even if Clinton did not put a secret stamp on it herself. Consider how absurd and meaningless top secret classifications would be if all one needed to do to avoid breaking the law was to simply not put a top secret stamp on it!
Now that we know secret information was on Clinton’s servers and that her not stamping it such doesn’t make it magically ok (if anything she violated her duty to properly classify such documents since Moriarty helpfully pointed out it is her responsibility to do) we can go to the next step:
So, did anyone have access to those emails who was not authorized to do so by receiving an official designation by receiving training as laid out in 4.1.b? Her IT guy didn’t meet that requirement but he certainly had access to the server.
Did she meet the requirements of 4.1.g? No. Clearly her server was not sufficiently secure as required.
Fortunately we do not need motive for criminal wrongdoing here. Mishandling government secrets is a crime regardless of motivation and it is not necessary for the information to make it into the wrong hands to be guilty of mishandling documents. That said we know Guccifer got into her server so that would count as a leak I would say.
We cannot read Clinton’s mind on this but we do know what she was supposed to know about these things and no one has ever accused Clinton of being stupid.
From the Inspector Generals report:
So we know Clinton is well aware of federal record keeping requirements and we know these concerns were raised and then shut down by staff. We know her server did not meet these requirements and later, when all this was coming to a head, Clinton attempted to wipe her server.
Just to counter even more the right wing echo chamber misunderstanding (have to put a :dubious: to that, by this time one has to say that those right wing sources of information are willfully misleading their readers and viewers) that the White House did call the investigation “criminal” (it did not) there are hints that the media is finally noticing where this is likely heading and why:
And I would suggest that it is just your opinion, many that looked at the case, and that have more experience than me, beg to differ on how serious that was; and while it is not set in stone, I think that the reports coming from the CNN sources are more on the money of what is coming.
If you actually believe this, you need to do some research. (I know, I know… Reading ANYTHING different than what you believe is a lie or part of Hillary’s “vast right-wing conspiracy.”
Your “Clinton talking points” are standard, but they fall far short of reality.
Whack-a-Mole, you seemed to have mined my post for whatever things you could quibble with, instead of addressing all the evidence presented to you.
I never said otherwise. My point was that, as Secretary of State, she was the final arbiter of what was classified. So, while she may delegated a lot of that responsibility to others, if she said something was not classified, it was not classified.
You read the executive order, but you ignored the part that I pointed out - it says documents “may” (instead of “shall”) be classified under certain conditions. It’s discretionary. Of course, if someone higher up than you exercises their discretion, you can’t override it. But if the “you” is the final decision maker, she is not going to be overruled.
And, to add to my point, while you did find another section to quote, you did not follow it to the section it references (Section 5.5), which describes the punishment for failure to break the rules.
(Emphasis added)
The Secretary of State, of course, is the head of the agency, and “corrective steps” are to be taken, if appropriate, making it discretionary by the Secretary of State. You must understand that, since you are correct that she alone cannot handle the daily classification duties, there are lots of rules for everyone else to follow so that they stay consistent with her exercise of official authority.
I’m not denying that she was trained on the importance of classification. (Although the problem our government deals with is the overclassification of materials, and that is reflected by the purpose of the Executive Order). Nor am I saying that stamps are required for classified information to be classified. I am not sure what points you think you are making by pointing that out to me, but it doesn’t address the cites I showed which demonstrate that classification is a subject of debate within government.
You continue to think you are scoring points by arguing that information can be top secret without having a stamp on it. I don’t disagree. It begs the question: Who then decides? Please answer that question so we can proceed.
And for those scoring at home: I have come to discover that when you read articles reporting on her handling of classified information, you will see references to the “intelligence community”. As my PolitiFact cite upthread argued, this reflects a debate within government, and not an indictment (literal or otherwise) of Mrs. Clinton.
Cite? I have no idea.
(Emphasis added)
This is a conclusion without support. Please lay out what gets you to “clearly”. It seems that your argument boils down to: She had stuff she knew was classified on a server that was insecure by virtue of the fact that it had classified information on it. Do you not see that as circular?
Let me try it this way: If the rule is that she could have classified information on her server, but only if her server was secure, what evidence would you present to show that it was insecure, and she should not have had classified information on it?
(My emphasis).
I’m sorry. I must have missed the criminal statute that you cited. How many years are we looking at here?
I see that you ignored my cite that showed that Guccifer got into Sidney Blumenthal’s email, not Hillary’s. “Got into her server” is factually incorrect. I suppose that Clinton should go to jail for Blumenthal’s conduct?
(Emphasis added).
Please cite to the FBI report that we are all waiting to read.
The “requirements” you are relying upon say that the system has to be secure. If you read the actual OIG report, you’d know that Federal Regulations actually contemplate the use of private email systems in government. Except for the fact that this arose out of an attempt to find Hillary Clinton criminally responsible for something (remember, this arose out of Benghazi investigations, which are another ridiculous travesty of time and money), it is totally unremarkable in government.
Does that speak to a concern about our government’s technology? Yes. Is it criminal? Cite the law…I dare you.
The Office of Inspector General report also outs John Kerry. Ho hum.
Email started under Madeline Albright, but she never used it. Rice rarely did, but Powell apparently encouraged it. He requested a line into his office so he could hook up his laptop, since he couldn’t email outside the department on the computers they had.
Since her boss at the time of the email incident has already endorsed her for the position of POTUS it would be a stretch to think that he would allow charges to be pursued against her. There is now no way this could go to trial before the election, after the election Obama could pardon whether she won or not and there is a thing anyone could do to Clinton or Obama. This whole email thing is just political fodder; it means nothing other than a talking point.