# What happened with the Hillary email scandal? **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [January 29, 2016, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-with-the-hillary-email-scandal/744574 "2016-01-29T14:58:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 21
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2016, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-with-the-hillary-email-scandal/744574/401 "2016-02-16T02:02:46Z")
I did you one better and told you the specific page. Here, I’ll quote it for you: > [@](#): > > In cases where unauthorized access to classified information has occurred, it may be advisable to discuss the situation with the individual(s) to enhance the probability that he or she shall properly protect it. The activity head shall determine if a debriefing is warranted. This decision shall be based on the circumstances of the incident, what is known about the person(s) involved, and the nature of the information. The following \*\*general guidelines \*\*apply… So, when you said, “There are NO ‘guidelines’ when it comes to storing, transmitting and managing classified information,” that was clearly incorrect. ---
**Author:** ![UberArchetype](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/2bfe46/32.png) [@UberArchetype](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UberArchetype)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2016, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-with-the-hillary-email-scandal/744574/402 "2016-02-16T02:04:49Z")
**Mr. Parker:** did it occur to you that the premise of your current argument is that Hillary had her own personal prerogative to deal with classified as she saw fit? That just wrong on so many levels. You really should be ashamed of yourself. ---
**Author:** ![UberArchetype](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/2bfe46/32.png) [@UberArchetype](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UberArchetype)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2016, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-with-the-hillary-email-scandal/744574/403 "2016-02-16T02:07:03Z")
> [@Richard\_Parker](#): > > So, when you said, “There are NO ‘guidelines’ when it comes to storing, transmitting and managing classified information,” that was clearly incorrect. I’m talking about “storing, transmitting and managing.” You’re talking about investigations. You clearly do even know what this topic is about. Please just go away. ---
**Author:** ![CarnalK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnalk/32/486_2.png) [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2016, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-with-the-hillary-email-scandal/744574/404 "2016-02-16T02:42:57Z")
> [@UberArchetype](#): > > I’m talking about “storing, transmitting and managing.” You’re talking about investigations. You clearly do even know what this topic is about. Please just go away. 😕:smack::dubious: ---
**Author:** ![UberArchetype](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/2bfe46/32.png) [@UberArchetype](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UberArchetype)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2016, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-with-the-hillary-email-scandal/744574/405 "2016-02-16T02:56:42Z")
Yeah sorry, don’t know what came over me. Some spelling issues too. Just in too much of a hurry, resenting spending time replying to asinine jibberish. Anything you’d care to add to the discussion? :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![CarnalK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnalk/32/486_2.png) [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2016, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-with-the-hillary-email-scandal/744574/406 "2016-02-16T03:28:33Z")
Aren’t just calling everyone ignorant without anything specific to back it up? No, nothing to add. 🆒 ---
**Author:** ![spifflog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c5a1d2/32.png) [@spifflog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spifflog)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2016, 12:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-with-the-hillary-email-scandal/744574/407 "2016-02-16T12:02:08Z")
Please answer this then if you would. If a government employee has unauthorized, unsecured, TS SCI material in their home, should there be any ramifications, or should they just be told not to do it again? There are tens of thousands of government employees (and numerous others) that would be interested in what your policy is. Thanks in advance. ---
**Author:** ![UberArchetype](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/2bfe46/32.png) [@UberArchetype](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UberArchetype)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2016, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-with-the-hillary-email-scandal/744574/408 "2016-02-16T16:39:50Z")
> [@CarnalK](#): > > Aren’t just calling everyone ignorant without anything specific to back it up? No, nothing to add. 🆒 May you should think about that next time you consider offering comments or opinions on topics with which you lack adequate experience or familiarity? ---
**Author:** ![UberArchetype](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/2bfe46/32.png) [@UberArchetype](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UberArchetype)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2016, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-with-the-hillary-email-scandal/744574/409 "2016-02-16T16:43:03Z")
> [@spifflog](#): > > If a government employee has unauthorized, unsecured, TS SCI material in their home, … …they have broken the law - egregiously and with callous indifference to National Security. ---
**Author:** ![steronz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steronz/32/11765_2.png) [@steronz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/steronz)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2016, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-with-the-hillary-email-scandal/744574/410 "2016-02-16T16:52:21Z")
> [@spifflog](#): > > She was doing the nation’s business. Those emails are property of the US government. They should be on a government server. I work for DoD. My emails are property of the government. I don’t have a choice of using my gmail account. Really? When I do contract work for the government I can use whatever email I want. When I’m in uniform and I send an email to a vendor asking for an update of a shipment, I guarantee you that whatever server is receiving joe@joesdiscountparts.biz hasn’t been through a full FISMA audit. Government employees do business over unsecure email with unaudited recipients _all the time_. And it’s worth point out that it’s SMTP. I’ll give some credit to intra-agency emails that might not leave the safe confines of a state department server, but anything between [hillary@state.gov](mailto:hillary@state.gov) and anyone@anywherebutstate.url is going to go over the _bloody internet_ on an bunch of unsecured mail relays that could very well be owned by absolutely anyone. > [@spifflog](#): > > If a government employee has unauthorized, unsecured, TS SCI material in their home, should there be any ramifications, or should they just be told not to do it again? As I’ve said time and time again, it absolutely depends. If I go out to wikileaks and pull some TS SCI slides down and post them here on the dope for your computer to cache, or send them to your private email account, what should happen to you? There are several issues here which aren’t really related and yet people keep trying to connect them in ways to make them more damaging. Internal audits and investigations. Hillary should not have used a private email account because it hides her email from state department or independent auditors and/or investigators. It’s bad for transparency, it’s bad for accountability, and it’s just a dumb idea. I think we can all agree on that. FOIA. Requests are handled by the owning agency, so if Hillary wanted to hide emails from a FOIA request, it matters not one whit whether or not it was on private or a government server. If she didn’t want to release it, she could claim it didn’t exist. The only time the private server would come into play is if her FOIA response were audited, but see above. Official diplomatic business. Email is inherently insecure if it’s not encrypted, and there’s not a very good system in place for encrypting email outside of an agency. If Hillary sending or receiving certain information from, say, a diplomat to her private server is bad, _then it’s just as bad to send that information to a government address._ Yes, the government address might have better security of data at rest, but it must be assumed that any unencrypted email that went out over the internet has potentially been intercepted, even (especially?) if one of the addresses had something juicy like @state.gov in it. The issue, then, isn’t whether or not Hillary was using a private email server, but whether or not they should have been using a classified email system or the diplomatic cable service instead. That’s entirely a judgement call and any violations would be a matter of policy, not law. Classified information If Hillary knowingly sent or received classified information on government owned unclassified networks, or directed others to do so, that would be very bad. The presence of a private email server changes that very little. It’d be like sending TS material via the USPS (which you can’t do, it needs to be couriered) to a private residence versus a government office (not a SCIF). The destination wouldn’t really matter at your trial; it might affect your sentencing _slightly_, but the prosecution is going to be mostly concerned with the fact that the TS was floating around in USPS trucks for a few days. That’s what I see here, conflation of two issues. We’ve all established, Clinton included, that using a private email address as the secretary of state is a really dumb idea for transparency and integrity reasons. That’s pretty much where the issue stops. If she mishandled classified information, and the information is blatant enough and the mishandling intentional enough, then I say throw the book at her. But at that point, the existence of a private email server doesn’t change anything, and continuing to bring it up just makes this look like another case of “throw everything at the Clintons and see what sticks.” ---
**Author:** ![UberArchetype](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/2bfe46/32.png) [@UberArchetype](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UberArchetype)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2016, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-with-the-hillary-email-scandal/744574/411 "2016-02-16T17:05:09Z")
> [@steronz](#): > > Really? When I do contract work for the government I can use whatever email I want. Not if it contains classified, you can’t. > [@steronz](#): > > And it’s worth point out that it’s SMTP. It’s also worth pointing out classified data traverses the Internet all the time - using NSA-approved encryption devices. Do you work in a classified environment? If not, you should be careful about these type comments. ---
**Author:** ![CarnalK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnalk/32/486_2.png) [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2016, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-with-the-hillary-email-scandal/744574/412 "2016-02-16T17:23:08Z")
> [@UberArchetype](#): > > May you should think about that next time you consider offering comments or opinions on topics with which you lack adequate experience or familiarity? Which comments of mine have offended your expertness? ---
**Author:** ![steronz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steronz/32/11765_2.png) [@steronz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/steronz)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2016, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-with-the-hillary-email-scandal/744574/413 "2016-02-16T18:01:46Z")
> [@UberArchetype](#): > > Not if it contains classified, you can’t. This is such a ridiculous non sequitur that I don’t even know what to say. It’s like if someone claimed you couldn’t use a private phone line to do business with the government, and I said of course you can, it happens all the time, and then in comes UberArchetype to say “Not if you’re discussing classified!” No fucking shit, thanks for the tip. > [@UberArchetype](#): > > It’s also worth pointing out classified data traverses the Internet all the time - using NSA-approved encryption devices. That’s actually not worth pointing out, because @state.gov traffic would never be encrypted that way. > [@UberArchetype](#): > > Do you work in a classified environment? If not, you should be careful about these type comments. Why? ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2016, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-with-the-hillary-email-scandal/744574/414 "2016-02-16T18:14:40Z")
> [@CarnalK](#): > > Which comments of mine have offended your expertness? An honorific like that is best capitalized, as in “Your Expertness”. ---
**Author:** ![UberArchetype](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/2bfe46/32.png) [@UberArchetype](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UberArchetype)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2016, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-with-the-hillary-email-scandal/744574/415 "2016-02-16T18:16:16Z")
> [@steronz](#): > > Why? Because you attempt to misrepresent with sweeping generalizations that are by definition, false. That’s why. ---
**Author:** ![UberArchetype](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/2bfe46/32.png) [@UberArchetype](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UberArchetype)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2016, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-with-the-hillary-email-scandal/744574/416 "2016-02-16T18:17:23Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > An honorific like that is best capitalized, as in “Your Expertness”. Jump on the bandwagon now - all aboaaard!! ---
**Author:** ![UberArchetype](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/2bfe46/32.png) [@UberArchetype](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UberArchetype)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2016, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-with-the-hillary-email-scandal/744574/417 "2016-02-16T18:18:36Z")
> [@steronz](#): > > No fucking shit, thanks for the tip.? You’re welcome! ---
**Author:** ![Superdude](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/superdude/32/13450_2.png) [@Superdude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superdude)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2016, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-with-the-hillary-email-scandal/744574/418 "2016-02-17T00:30:15Z")
> [@UberArchetype](#): > > Because you attempt to misrepresent with sweeping generalizations that are by definition, false. > > That’s why. Pot, meet kettle. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2016, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-with-the-hillary-email-scandal/744574/419 "2016-02-17T01:09:19Z")
**UberArchetype** , your posts over the last couple of days have been overflowing with accusations of ignorance and incompetence. You have stayed just inside the line of not launching personal insults at other posters. However, the sheer mass of such remarks is insulting in a way that threatens to derail the thread. We get it. You believe yourself to be the either the most qualified or the only poster in the thread qualified to discuss the technical issues involved. Fine. Now stick to posting (your views of) the facts and refrain from any more comments regarding the knowledge, experience, or intelligence of other posters, individually or collectively. Any more such cracks will be regarded as personal attacks and Modded accordingly. [/Moderating] ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2016, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-with-the-hillary-email-scandal/744574/420 "2016-02-17T02:03:37Z")
> [@steronz](#): > > Really? When I do contract work for the government I can use whatever email I want. When I’m in uniform and I send an email to a vendor asking for an update of a shipment, I guarantee you that whatever server is receiving joe@joesdiscountparts.biz hasn’t been through a full FISMA audit. Government employees do business over unsecure email with unaudited recipients _all the time_. yes, and the person you’re sending it to in the government must maintain that information. Not in their bathtub so they can give it a good scrubbing, but on a server that is secure and retrievable. But you knew that. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-with-the-hillary-email-scandal/744574.md?page=20)