How a poorly explained mistake continues to threaten the political career of Hillary Clinton

Uh… “The emails were made available in the form of thousands of PDFs by the US State Department as a result of a Freedom of Information Act request.”

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In terms of consequences, I’ve seen people get fired and sued for being this incompetent. That includes at least one non-tech executive who hired a “sysadmin” whose laziness and sloppiness led to a data breach that exposed confidential corporate information.

Meanwhile, despite her contribution to a breach that exposed classified documents I’m sure Huma Abedin will get a prime position in the Clinton II administration (which will likely find a place for Bryan Pagliano, too).

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No, she carefully deleted her “personal” emails before handing out what was left. It’s in the article. Whether you think they were really personal and irrelevant or not, that’s completely open to speculation. GWB’s mails were very likely full of bad stuff; HRC might have been. The difference, from the street, is not that big: powerful people act how they well damn please, and screw the rules.

Article says one in three, which is hardly “vast majority”. You should probably read it better.

You can read that mercifully (“oh, she really tried to keep things clean!”) or in a much more damning way: she was extremely conscious of what she was using to say what at any given time, and studiously avoided official channels for the really bad stuff - which might well have been in those “personal” emails that were deleted.

The difference is basically whether you choose to believe her “public position” or not.

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I think that’s the primary thing about politicians, they need to be two faced enough so that you can look at them in a positive light if you want to. That being said, you don’t need to like a candidate to vote for them. Maybe the masses feel like they need that. Maybe it’s more realistic to say, it’s important to hold your nose and vote for the crook. But I guess you know, Hillary is totally going to fight for the environment, freedom of expression, transparency, and all the Democratic party platform issues. Nothing at all to worry about, everything is great.

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Hm, ok. Fair enough.

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She still deleted stuff. What was in those emails, we’ll never know; so we can’t objectively say she “did her best to help” anyone but herself.

I see no reason to think that, knowing the difference between official and non-official channels, her using a private server to conduct public-related business was not intentional. IMHO, she meant to keep some conversations away from FOIA. Whether some of those were classified or not, it’s an aggravating circumstance, and really just an accident bound to happen: when you make using your own servers common practice, inevitably other people will assume that it’s okay – you are in charge, so you are also supposed to set those expectations. GWB set terrible expectations and Hillary went right along. Great.

You seem to think that my problem is that she “messed up”. No. My problem is that she made a clear choice to bypass the rules - those same rules she will merciless enforce once in office.

yeah, of course; but that’s like saying you can choose between a Big Mac and a Whopper: one tastes better, but they’re both unhealthy.

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Heh. I keep thinking of the seemingly intelligent Clinton supporters I know who refuse to acknowledge her deeply dangerous downsides as being just like this obstinately optimistic doggie. They’re actually kind of cute, you know?

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I’ve seen people get burned for as much. I’ve seen people not have any consequence besides a warning for doing worse. The main reason the severity lowers in my eyes is that this is SOP, not only for her preceding Sec. States who did the same and even gave her advice, but in Washington where it’s really common. That doesn’t excuse it, but does help explain why it could be seen more as working around an unreliable IT infrastructure that actively blocked her workflow (something I’m guilty of and feel no guilt about) than a deliberate malicious violation of a very serious rule. It is a rule violation, but if we see her prosecuted, we should apply those standards consistently and decry/prosecute the thousands of others doing the same. If that standard was applied, I’d be okay with it, but selective outrage at one violator while giving the rest a pass isn’t fair/just.

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I still don’t excuse it. This is sensitive material that belongs to the government and people of the United States. If she felt the State Dept’s IT infrastructure was that difficult to work with or insecure, as Secretary she could have started a reform initiative so that government documents could be properly handled on department servers and appointed a competent staffer who takes IT seriously to head things up – that’s real leadership.

In the interim it would have even been OK to run a private server, but for goodness sake hire someone based on tech skills rather than sycophancy and host it on a proper data centre machine rather than on Bill’s old computer in the rec room.

As I said above, I don’t think Clinton should be prosecuted for this. I do think that Huma Abedin and the so-called tech experts involved in this mess should have no place in her administration.

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She didn’t carefully delete, but handed the job over to her attorneys. This may go against my position supporting Clinton, because they just skimmed subject lines to do their deleting. It was pretty weak way to do it.
I’ll give you the one in three. The State Department report said it was higher.
But it was not her or her political people doing it. it was the lawyers responding to a legal request.
The way you read the last one shows some real cynicism. "She used the proper secure channels whenever she discussed or sent classified information, and that following of proper protocol means she was bad!"
And your use of “public position” in scare quotes says volumes.

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To be fair, he might subscribe to David Icke’s newsletter and believe she’s a reptillian.

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Well well. Boing Boing actually put up an article with questionable acts about Hillary?? Email?? Oh My!! She has such a harrrd time explaining her email mistake… Ohhhhh…

Are you really posting this garbage?

A mistake? Whoa baby… Let me tell you 1 simple fact.

The U.S. is in a heap of some very nasty smelling garbage for the next 4 years… If we are lucky…

This garbage heap smell permeates from both our distinguished and disgraced candidates.

But here is 1 last thing…

Hillary’s garbage has been around sooooo much longer and stinks soooooo sooooooo much more…

Even James Bond thought that.

Thought what?

That doesn’t strike me as being the case at hand, especially in a shooting war with China. China doesn’t need HRC’s email, they’ve got Mirai and any number of other internet-related technologies to make American life more difficult. And China isn’t exactly seen as a truthful international partner, either, so should they be connected to any info-dump, it’s likely the info is seen as suspect to begin with–take note of #3 below:

(Source)

Granted, the info doesn’t have to come from China (or be seen as coming from China), but connecting China to such an info dump would certainly harm the perceived authenticity of the info to a great degree.

Besides, Assange has made it quite clear that he’s out for HRC’s skin–if he’s got damaging information, then it would already be out there (not to mention that the worst that’s been found so far is a few political operatives making bad jokes and hot takes about their opponents, potential or otherwise). HRC has had 30+ years of being watched like a hawk–I can’t see there being a great deal of dirty laundry left to be found in that regard.

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You’ll have to watch The Living Daylights. I don’t want to spoil it.

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Would you say that you’re disappointed in BoingBoing?

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I knew there was a reason I didn’t like James Bond.

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Second largest city in Libya, home of Libya’s parliament, provisional capital, etc.

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