Really. Really? This is what we’re hanging out hat on now in the 30+ year anti-Clinton saga.
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Luck truly has no part in this discussion. The Republicans have been imploding for years, failing to recognize the Faustian bargain they made with the religious right in 1980. It’s no longer the center will not hold for our Republican friends; it’s that the status quo will no longer suffice. To be sure, I’m no Clinton apologist, but she has devoted her life to public service and endured misogyny the likes of which none of us can possibly imagine to get here. To imply this is luck is reductionist on crack.
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It is a thing that nobody handling classified information should ever do. The laws regarding the handling of classified information were not written to harass Hillary Clinton. Nor has she done anything to merit exemption to those laws. They are laws, very specific in application, and anyone tasked with the handling of classified materials is required to know the basics of them before a security clearance is issued. All of the laws regarding the handling of such information can be distilled down to “Do not, under any circumstances, allow sensitive or classified information to be passed to those not specifically authorized to view it”.
People have lost their jobs for stepping out of their office for two seconds, while a folder containing classified information was on their desk. It did not matter that the other person waiting in the office did not open the folder, or that the office was on a US warship at sea, or that the person left in the office with the folder was also a Naval officer. It was a lapse of security, and a firing offense. That is how the rules are enforced for the rest of us.
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Where was all this concern over state secrets when they outed Valerie Plame?
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The FBI found that she did nothing wrong. Your point?
Their criticism was pretty much akin to those reports that come out every year giving most government agencies a D to an F on computer security. Well gee, OK, mistakes were made. So what?
By the way, have you ever read any of those New York Times articles on Snowden? Congratulations, you just received classified information. On your computer no less.
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Well, there is one other thing to care about – the fact that nothing illegal was done and there is no scandal there.
Sort of like the Rose law firm, Whitewater, dress-gate, the death of Vince Foster, etc etc etc etc
At some point, don’t you have to stop wondering what is wrong with Clinton and start wondering what is wrong with everyone else?
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I have to say that despite some disagreements amongst commenters, this is about the most civil discussion I’ve seen regarding the email issue. Reading the comments at Boing Boing is so much more refreshing than anywhere else.
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No. The FBI refused to prosecute because there was no precedent. There is a big difference. The FBI clearly stated that clasified information was improperly handled. You can go ahead and consider that a “red herring” in relation to the server, The problem is it is an issue unto itself. T
he FBI considered the handling of Classified material to be extremely careless, and Clinton basically threw her staff under the bus saying she left it up to them to make classification decisions. The problem is that everyone who handles classified information is supposed to be accountable for how it is handled. No one gets that sort of out. Well, until now apparently.
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frothing?
"the FBI found that she did nothing wrong?"
If you are not willing to swear that you will abide by the laws regarding classified materials, you don’t get the clearance. Or that is how it works for the little people.
The Snowden analogy does not apply. If you do not understand why, then you probably have a poor grasp of the subject matter. I am sure that you have valuable contributions to make in other subjects, so there is no slight intended.
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Established by the Greeks around 600bce.
Doesn’t anybody give a fuck about evading FOI?
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Except for the 30,000 or so that she had deleted before turning them over. It was always about keeping secrets. She knew what she was doing. To pretend otherwise is just lying to yourself.
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Yes. If you read the comments here before yours you would see quite few people “giving a fuck” about it. The rebuttals and pushback are coming from reflexive Clinton partisans and from a few high-strung souls who truly believe it’s worth saying anything to defeat Trump.
The virulence of the right wing’s hatred for Hillary Clinton paradoxically insulates her from legitimate criticism. All the ball cap wearing yahoos howling for her head over Benghazi!!! ™ were and are very convenient for the Clinton political machine.
Playing fast and loose with data retention rules is a symptom of Clinton-style elitism, but it’s fairly small change. Her handling of the private email server issue pales in comparison to say, her well-remunerated ‘relationship’ with the nation’s financial elite or the special ‘access’ accorded major donors to the Clinton Foundation. Her blase attitude about it is a good indicator of her contempt for the average citizen. Unfortunately, her opponent is a super-freak who treats dishing out contempt to little people as a badge of power. Hillary’s majestic, mildly exasperated disregard for us all looks… civilized by comparison.
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What most people don’t realize is that she kept the emails on a “locker room” server, so its actually OK.
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Sorry, but you’re wrong. As an IT geek, I’d add that government IT has a reputation for being many years behind. Also of note is that Blackberry was the gold standard for mobile security at the time due to the encryption, etc… This came at the price of being tied to the Blackberry mail servers which were required. You had to forward your Blackberry account mail to your preferred mail account and its highly likely that government systems didn’t allow for the configuration necessary to use a Blackberry meaning that they didn’t allow users setup a forwarding rule. This was a quite common security restriction.
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Try decafe perhaps. If she was emailing government mail servers, it’s easy to assume that mail is somewhere on a government system. Thus, no FOIA evasion intended. Sorry, I used logic.
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It’s mind-boggling how antiquated and ass-backwards State’s technology is. I think they’re still using the computers from War Games.
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I was speaking more towards the general attitude of employees, but their tech doesn’t seem much better.
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Great post!
Until a few years ago I worked in a military/aerospace environment and it was absolutely forbidden to access any outside email server. They do this so all email goes through their server, and is checked for malware, and filtered for tags marking the type of content. Thats the rule and if you don’t like it, don’t work there.
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