Oh Laura

I just want to know, are you in the basement or has he given you a room upstairs?

State Department audit faults Clinton and past secretaries of state on email practices

An audit by the State Department’s inspector general is critical of Hillary Clinton and her predecessors for their handling of email:

Nice try.

Nah. Ain’t buying it.

No previous SOS has done what she has done.

It is not a FBI “security review”

Gee, what was in those 30K emails that Cheryl Mills deleted? I know, wedding planning and yoga. And supposedly many (1,000s of emails to the big dog ( who has stated publicly he has in all his time only used email 2 x.))

This HRC campaign staff is even less effective than the previous. Hello Mark Penn?

This will not go =well.

Onward we go.

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riverlover's picture

Call a spade a spade, unless that's now racist or sexist. Then call it a rose. Wink

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Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.

Steven D's picture

to keep their jobs.

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"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott

It is the media spin. The articles that I have read on this pretty much are 'yeah, this is critical to Hillary - but hey - both sides do it." Lesser of two evils and all of that...

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Democrats, we tried to warn you. How is that guilt and shame working out?

the full report, and the reddit megathread on the State Dept Audit.

State Dept briefing, on C-SPAN here: http://www.c-span.org/video/?410161-1/state-department-briefs-hillary-cl... [Mark Toner, speaking for the Dept., stated about 5 mins in that it was leaked. Their hand was forced. Much fodder for speculation.]

The full report: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2842429/ESP-16-03-Final.pdf

The megathread on the State Dept audit: https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/4l052h/megathread_state_depar...

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"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." --Jiddu Krishnamurti

The NYT article Hillary Clinton Is Criticized for Private Emails in State Dept. Review says that Powell also used private email "exclusively for day-to-day operations". Most of what I had read previously said that he only used it very occasionally . I think she does actually have some rationalization for it if Powell really did do the same thing. It doesn't let her off the hook for any of the other stuff associated with the private server, but she may really have thought that if he could do it, "so can I". Not quite the hubris of demanding something unprecedented, and not necessarily done to evade FOIA or to hide influence peddling. Still shockingly ignorant of the security implications to a degree that makes me think that her ability to understand the world we live in is limited.

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Haikukitty's picture

Powell used private email on a secure laptop. He used email run and protected by a huge company that can be subpeoned by the government. He had no power to permanently delete anything. He also copied his business email address so that there was a record on the government servers.

Hillary set up a SERVER in her house that housed the data. It was not kept or backed up anywhere else.

It isn't even CLOSE to the same thing.

Additionally, after Powell's time, they issued more stringent requirements and communicated them multiple times.

ETA: if the NYT says he used it exclusively, they are lying, the report explains he used a secure line to access a commercial email server for business with people OUTSIDE the department, while she exclusively used not only a private email but a private SERVER in her home:

Secretary Powell has acknowledged using a personal email account from a commercial Internet provider, which he accessed on a “private line” in his Department office. He further stated that he had two computers at his desk: “a secure State Department machine … used for secure material, and…a laptop [used] for email.”143 Neither the Secretary nor his representative could recall whether Secretary Powell owned the laptop or whether the Department provided it to him. However, the Secretary characterized the use of the laptop as his “unclassified system,” which was not connected to OpenNet. In his interview with OIG, Secretary Powell explained that, when he arrived at the Department, the email system in place only permitted communication among Department staff. He therefore requested that information technology staff install the private line so that he could use his personal account to communicate with people outside the Department.144 He described his email usage as “daily,” though OIG was unable to determine how many emails he actually sent and received during his tenure.

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suggesting that the word was lifted from the report. Did you read the article?

Of course they didn't do the same thing; however, we need an explanation of "exclusively".

BTW, at the time Powell was SoS, most of the email providers didn't even encrypt their webmail. I know that the reason I went with gmail at some point after 2008 was because they did. There is no assurance that Powell was any more immune to hacking than Clinton.

The report also shows massive gutlessness on the part of State's IT staff. But most of what I have read about the report falls short of really holding Clinton responsible, and dovetails with Clinton's own admission that her own server was bad judgement.

I see the report as perhaps a whitewash, compared to other surrounding issues. I would like to see some factual ino. Calling the NYT a liar for quoting the report is lame. And I need to read the IG report. Probably, so do you.

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Haikukitty's picture

But it actually doesn't matter if he did exclusively use his personal email account at AOL or not. Since he didn't set up a private server. They are completely different actions.

And they happened at different times - Powell before the new requirements came out, and Clinton after.

ETA: OK, you're right, they do use the phrase "Three officials exclusively used personal emails for day-to-day operations."

But in the text of the report that follows, Powell's own testimony does not reflect that. But regardless, the point still stands that having a private server in addition to a personal email. It's important to recognize the distinction, because is Clinton's case she had 100% control over the data, but in Powell's case he was using the AOL servers, and thus did not have the ability to delete or modify the server.

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Clinton used her personal Blackberry; Powell installed his personal computer. Neither was allowed at the respective times they were done. In both cases, encrypted communications seem to have been required, regardless of whether they were transmitting classified information, and they were both warned about the danger of unencrypted email transmission. Both seem to have ignored the warning, but I think there's a chance that Clinton may have actually had encrypted email transmission- it would depend on which email agent she was using on her Blackberry.

Bottomline is that Powell and Clinton both ignored the guidelines and regs, or somehow rationalized that they were not violating them. The fact that Clinton is just as guilty as Powell does not make her innocent. The thing that has disgusted me about this whole email server business is how indicative it was of a completely narcissistic person with an extreme level of power, and willing and able to just do whatever the fuck she wants. I don't want someone like that to be President, and I will take Trump over her, because I don't think he has a record of abuse of power as bad as hers. Not remotely.

Nevertheless, I would like to know if anyone told her directly: "Your server is prohibited for official emails." None of this passive voice shit like, "It is prohibited to blahblahblah" which allows deniability, however implausible. Did someone tell her NO and she did it anyway?

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edg's picture

Your comments are kind of whitewashing the whole episode as no big deal and It's Ok If You're Hillary. Perhaps you don't have a technical background. But that doesn't excuse not bothering to learn a bit about the issues before commenting. Here's a synopsis:

Powell - used a secure State Department computer for internal communications. Used a commercial email account for external communication with those not on the department's email system.

Clinton - set up her own computer in her home and used a non-secure email account for all communications.

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It says he used his personal email "exclusively". This was my original point- I was of the understanding before this report that he only used personal email intermittently, while Clinton claimed she was doing the same thing Powell had done. She appears to have been not lying, according to the IG. So the question is, is the IG report a coverup or a whitewash?

As I said, I think it is more probable that Powell used unencrypted communications to his AOL account than Clinton did with her Blackberry (based on the technology of the time), although the AOL server might have been more secure.

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Hawkfish's picture

Powell used an AOL account occasionally. Clinton used a whole damn server (with the capacity that implies). The only good thing I would say is that it was physically secured in a house guarded the the Secret Service...

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We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg

https://www.reddit.com/r/Kossacks_for_Sanders/comments/4l24lb/jake_tappe...

It's bad. The question is whether the Clintons and their corporate sponsors can control the media enough to shut this down. If I had to guess, I'd say no, they can't, but it will be a drawn-out process. The intelligence community takes this seriously: https://consortiumnews.com/2016/05/23/intel-vets-urge-fast-report-on-cli...

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"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." --Jiddu Krishnamurti

Bollox Ref's picture

Clinton's set up was light years beyond what Colin Powell was doing.

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Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.