How Hillary Clinton Exposed Her Emails To Foreign Spies… In Order To Hide Them From The American Public
from the how-hard-is-it-to-just-use-the-government's-email dept
So the whole Hillary Clinton email story is getting worse and worse for Clinton. We already noted that there was no way she couldn’t have known that she had to use government email systems for government work, as there was a big scandal from the previous administration using private emails and within the early Obama administration as well. This morning we discovered that Clinton also gave clintonemail.com email addresses to staffers, which undermines the argument made by Hillary’s spokesperson that it was okay for her to use her own email address because any emails with staffers would still be archived by the State Department thanks to their use of state.gov emails. But that’s clearly not the case when she’s just emailing others with the private email addresses.
As we noted yesterday, there are two separate key issues here, neither of which look good for Clinton. First, is the security question. There’s no question at all that as Secretary of State she dealt with all sorts of important, confidential and classified information. Doing that on your own email server seems like a pretty big target for foreign intelligence. In fact, Gawker points out, correctly, that Hillary’s private email address was actually revealed a few years ago when the hacker “Guccifer” revealed the inbox of former Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal. So it was known years ago that Clinton used a private email account, and you have to think it was targeted.
Anonymous State Department “cybersecurity” officials are apparently shoving each other aside to leak to the press that they warned Clinton that what she was doing was dangerous, but couldn’t convince her staff to do otherwise:
?We tried,? an unnamed current employee told Al Jazeera. ?We told people in her office that it wasn’t a good idea. They were so uninterested that I doubt the secretary was ever informed.?
The AP has a somewhat weird and slightly confused article detailing the setup of the email system, but seems to imply things that aren’t clearly true.
It was unclear whom Clinton hired to set up or maintain her private email server, which the AP traced to a mysterious identity, Eric Hoteham. That name does not appear in public records databases, campaign contribution records or Internet background searches. Hoteham was listed as the customer at Clinton’s $1.7 million home on Old House Lane in Chappaqua in records registering the Internet address for her email server since August 2010.
The Hoteham personality also is associated with a separate email server, presidentclinton.com, and a non-functioning website, wjcoffice.com, all linked to the same residential Internet account as Mrs. Clinton’s email server. The former president’s full name is William Jefferson Clinton.
While Eric Hoteham may be a mysterious non-entity, as Julian Sanchez points out, an early Clinton staffer was named Eric Hothem. Of course, Stanford cybersecurity guru Jonthan Mayer also notes that Hillary’s old home server is still online and running Windows Server 2008 R2.
In November 2012, without explanation, Clinton’s private email account was reconfigured to use Google’s servers as a backup in case her own personal email server failed, according to Internet records. That is significant because Clinton publicly supported Google’s accusations in June 2011 that China’s government had tried to break into the Google mail accounts of senior U.S. government officials. It was one of the first instances of a major American corporation openly accusing a foreign government of hacking.
Then, in July 2013, five months after she resigned as secretary of state, Clinton’s private email server was reconfigured again to use a Denver-based commercial email provider, MX Logic, which is now owned by McAfee Inc., a top Internet security company.
That likely means the email was much more secure after July of 2013, but it certainly raises questions about how secure it was for years before that.
Though, we do know that it was secure from one thing: FOIA requests. That is the second of the two big issues raised by this whole thing. By using her own email setup, she was clearly able to hide important documents from FOIA requests. In fact, as Gawker notes, her staff’s defense of the use of her private email, actually now confirms emails as legit that the State Department denied existed back when Gawker made a FOIA request years ago.
That’s because following that Guccifer hack, Gawker filed a FOIA for those emails and was told they don’t exist. Yet, now Clinton staffers point to that old Gawker article to suggest that the private email address is “old news,” thus confirming that the emails were legit, even though the State Department denied them.
The Clinton camp?s claims about the email account being above-board is also contradicted by the State Department?s response to Gawker?s inquires two years ago. After we published the story about Blumenthal?s correspondence with Clinton, we filed a FOIA request with the agency for all correspondence to date between Hillary Clinton and Sidney Blumenthal, specifically including any messages to or from the hdr22@clintonemail.com account. The screenshots and other documents released by Guccifer?which have now been validated by Clinton?s spokesman?confirmed that such messages existed.
But the State Department replied to our request by saying that, after an extensive search, it could find no records responsive to our request. That is not to say that they found the emails and refused to release them?it is conceivable, after all, that the State Department might have attempted to deny the release of the Clinton-Blumenthal correspondence on grounds of national security or Blumenthal?s own privacy. Instead, the State Department confirmed that it didn?t have the emails at all.
Which is exactly why Clinton used a non-State Department email server to conduct her official business.
According to the NY Times, the State Department says that it won’t go back to correct the FOIA requests that it responded to in the past, saying that such records didn’t exist. Instead, it will only now search the emails that have been turned over by Clinton’s staff. That is another 50,000 emails, but no one knows what emails the staff removed or refused to turn over.
Either way, there are two huge problems here. Clinton likely exposed her emails to foreign spies, while keeping them away from the American public.
Filed Under: clintonemail, email, foia, hillary clinton, security, transparency
Comments on “How Hillary Clinton Exposed Her Emails To Foreign Spies… In Order To Hide Them From The American Public”
grammar bugaboo
Please do not begin sentences with “so”! I’m hoping that youth can be brought up to use English properly, which is getting quite difficult with this bizarre usage virus going around… especially prevalent amongst academics & intellectuals, interestingly. (BTW, Harry Shearer has done a great job in sampling this phenomenon in his weekly “Le Show” — surely the most censored (as in taken-off-air) NPR show ever.)
Other than that, thanks for some great, needed reporting as usual!
Re: grammar bugaboo
Longtime listener of Harry Shearer’s Le Show. You can stream or download it here:
http://wwno.org/programs/le-show
On the one hand, many of his bits, including News from Outside the Bubble, News of the Warm, Apologies of the Week, Tales of Airport Security, and his comedic sketches are excellent. On the other hand, I find many others tired or way off the mark, including the aforementioned “So They Say” bit.
Plus, I was really taken aback recently when I heard him criticizing the use of nitrogen gas, of all things, in a chemical plant, insinuating that it’s toxic. Because of that I just decided to maybe not be such a dedicated listener any more. But if you can separate the wheat from the chaff, you’ll get some good wheat.
YMMV
Re: Re: grammar bugaboo
That sounds more like an Onion piece… “Scientists discover that 78% of the air in a chemical plant is Nitrogen!”
I’ve found Le Show to be a mixed bag, and all rehash. So I prefer to get my facts from the same sources, and sidestep the negative vitriol passed off as comedy.
I hope you see what I did there 😉
Re: grammar bugaboo
If the context is informal enough that “BTW” is appropriate, it’s probably okay to start a sentence with “so”.
Same for using an ampersand in place of “and” when you’re not quoting a proper name.
Re: grammar bugaboo
Anyone who gets to use (or perhaps even coin?) words such as “bullshittery” should have every right to begin a sentence using “so” — proper English be damned.
Re: grammar bugaboo
So go and fuck yourself for telling me how to write. I am a College graduate and if I choose to start my sentences with a So – So I will Mutha Fucka
Re: grammar bugaboo
SO BIG DEAL
Re: grammar bugaboo
Forsooth, thou hast struck thine nail on the head! The honourable English language, unmutable and nice, must be preserved!
So… the grammar you used in writing your post fails against multiple modern style guides, and yet you refuse to accept a turn of phrase that’s been common parlance for over fifty years? Say it ain’t so!
I’ll agree that it’s missing the ellipsis, but then you used an ampersand where the full written “and” was more appropriate, and ended that sentence with a preposition, and then followed THAT up by starting a bracketed clause AFTER the period, re-using curved braces inside curved braces, and then tossing a period inside the closure as if your bracketed clause was, in fact, its own sentence and not the clause the braces indicate it should be.
Of all these things, missing an ellipsis seems pretty forgivable, and hardly worth ranting about, especially in the context of a blog.
Re: Re: grammar bugaboo
Over a century, in fact.
Re: Re: grammar bugaboo
Though, I’d like to point out that the first parenthetical in his post follows a full stop, and encapsulates a discrete sentence. In informal grammar, this indicates an aside, a thought tangentially related to the current topic, but not fitting in the paragraph flow. (Yes, in case you were wondering, I am enjoying myself.) It is perfectly valid, though, again, less than formal.
Re: grammar bugaboo
It’s acceptable semi-formal grammar, though “So” should most correctly be followed by a comma, as it is being used as an opening interjection.
“So” as a magnifier is what annoys me: “This is so annoying.”
So, it appears that the logomachists are out in force today.
Re: Give it a more classical feel:
Search for “So, ” (case sensitive). Replace with “And it came to pass “
Re: grammar bugaboo
It’s about communication, not BS rules. It’s fine to start a sentence any way you want and even not use a period, if it communicates what you are trying to convey
Re: grammar bugaboo
get a life
Re: grammar bugaboo
So, the butthurt of grammar nazis continues to be sweet music to my ears.
Re: grammar bugaboo
So maybe you could start with the praise and end with the unneeded criticism? But it looks like you needed an entire paragraph to express your hatred of the use of “so” at the beginning of a sentence, so maybe you can’t be bothered with human courtesies. So maybe just don’t comment at all?
Re: grammar bugaboo
If you’re to get so picky about beginning a sentence with “so” please be advised that there’s no such word as “interestingly”. Either.
Re: Re: grammar bugaboo
If you’re to get so picky about beginning a sentence with “so” please be advised that there’s no such word as “interestingly”.
Interestingly, that’s not true.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/interestingly
Same cell
She will just be put in the same cell as Petraeus.
Oh….wait….!
I came to the comments to read someone registered D trying to defend the indefensible and bad behaviour of Mrs. Clinton. Also read the comments from someone registered R who is taking a position based on right vs left partisanship instead of right vs wrong ethics.
Re: Re:
Get with the program – it’s all about Team Red or Team Blue. Right or wrong is irrelevant. Even here.
Well, dang it.
I was going to vote for her just so I could see the reactions of the Tea Party. That would be comedy material for the next 4 years.
“Her birth cert it fake too!”
Re: Re:
She’s really Obama’s love child. Oh wait….
Re: Re: Re:
She’s really Obama’s love child.
That doesn’t sound right.
…
Got it!
She’s really Obama’s hate child.
Can we please wait for someone competent to show up before we elect the first female US president? I want to see that president do an outstanding job so MRAs and such won’t have a leg to stand on when they claim a woman shouldn’t be president.
Re: Re:
Exactly. For example, Elizabeth Warren would make a fine President. But Hillary Clinton would be horrible, not because she’s a woman but because she’s simply a bad person and a bad leader.
Re: Re: Re:
I don’t know if Warren would make a fine President. However, I feel assured that she would make a much better President than Hilary.
Re: Re:
“…so MRAs and such won’t have a leg to stand on when they claim a woman shouldn’t be president.”
Make sure to keep that strawman away from open flames…
Re: Re: Re:
seriously
Re: Re:
Good idea. We haven’t done so in Germany and look what it’s gotten us: a Kanzlerin who dares to publicly state that the Internet (15+ years in) is a new arena for everyone.
Re: Re: Re:
Arrgh!!! Split infinitive!!!
Re: Re:
Can we please wait for someone competent to show up before we elect the first female US president?
I’m not sure competence is the problem here so much as ethics.
Re: Re: Competence among politicians
If competence were a prerequisite for someone getting into office we’d have an empty chair decades at a time.
And if we’re going to wait on electing female presidents until we get a good one, I will gladly wait before electing a male president until we can get a good one.
If I understand this article correctly, the security flaws that “Exposed Her Emails To Foreign Spies” include using her own server (probably insecure but we don’t know that for a fact) and using off-site backups (also probably insecure but we don’t know that for a fact either). Did I miss anything?
Re: Re:
Email itself is highly insecure. The important thing is whether emails sent between government officials are encrypted, or just naked plain text like normal email?
And if sent in plain text, it’s not inconceivable that countries like China or Russia might have had some noses to the ground sniffing it up. The Snowden revelations gave the world an extraordinarily detailed how-to book on digital snooping, so of course other countries are now going to be copying some of those NSA methods even if they were not previously.
While all this is likely true, I don’t think many people will really care about this ‘scandal’, other then people who already hate Hillary and already won’t vote for her.
I mean, did you know that Mitt Romney and his entire staff bought their work computers before Romney left office as governor of Massachusetts? It was for the same reason, to keep records from the public, and it was just as illegal under Massachusetts state law.
Yet did you hear ANYONE from either party ever attack Romney for it the two times he ran for president? Nope. Most people are probably not even aware that this happened.
Re: Re:
cool partisan nonsense, bro.
Re: Re: Re:
Not if he can prove it.
So what?????
Of all the political scandals in the world over the years this is such a non-story. We already know how foreign spies, and even our own, access anything they want anyway. We also know that ALL politicians, gov’t officials, keep as much as possible out of the public eye. Do you really think she’s alone in all of this? This is a total non-story that will be forgotten in 3 months time!!
Re: So what?????
More than half of them.
“people who already hate Hillary and already won’t vote for her.”
This country needs a second Clinton president as much as it needed a second (or perhaps a third) Bush. The Constitution’s ban on 3rd presidential desparately terms needs to be extended to close family members — and hopefully before 2016, when the likely presidential election will be between Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton. Or do some people favor bringing back the Monarchy?
And yes, people who want to hold government officials (of all stripes) for their wrongdoings will always be branded as partisan haters … or worse (sometimes much worse).
Re: I still opt for a SS# lottery.
We randomly choose a person and the first one that is able minded and bodied and over 35 is drafted into the white house.
Can’t do worse than the all the Lannister kids that we keep being given.
She has not proven herself to possess any integrity or leadership capabilities in any capacity to be of service to this country. Good luck in 2016 as she’s lost already with her track record.
Its too bad it probably wont, but it would be nice if this blew up enough to cost her the presidency. If that was the case then maybe government officials would be scared enough to follow the archive rules if it not following them could cost an election.
It’s good to know that only one person is being vilified for this practice. They have even (incorrectly) claimed that laws were broken. Because if every taxpayer teet sucker in DC were scrutinized for this practice then there might actually be a scandal or something like it.
Let it go, Mike...
This is a non-story.
“But maybe Clinton’s approach was more secure than using the government’s e-mail. During Clinton’s second year on the job in 2010, WikiLeaks posted online several thousand state.gov e-mails. None were from the clintonemail.com handle.”
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/03/hillary-clinton-ran-private-e-mail-system-while-us-secretary-of-state/
Re: Let it go, Mike...
I think this is a real story for two reasons:
1) It’s really freaking scary in an intelligence- / surveillance-minded civilization that our nation’s top administrative offices can’t get their email system in order.
2) It’s really freaking scary that the office of a public agent is more interested in securing its communication from the public by way of legitimate channels than securing it from foreign threats by way of illegitimate ones.
The first can be attributed to incompetence, which is yet another recent blow to our democratic process as a means to keep tyrants out of power. The second raises questions of the office’s interest in serving the public. When she’s hiding her actions from people who have a right to know, isn’t that more or less an indication of subversion?
Re: Let it go, Mike...
This is a non-story.
How so?
“But maybe Clinton’s approach was more secure than using the government’s e-mail. During Clinton’s second year on the job in 2010, WikiLeaks posted online several thousand state.gov e-mails. None were from the clintonemail.com handle.”
So because that leak didn’t include her emails, it proves her emails were secure? That’s hilarious.
Re: Re: Let it go, Mike...
Like this rock in my hand is a proven deterrent against tiger attacks because I’ve never been attacked by a tiger. Not even once.
Re: Re: Let it go, Mike...
It’s a non-story because she’s not the only one and 3 months from now nobody is going to care about any of this.
No, it doesn’t prove anything about her email security in itself, but they were more secure in the fact that they were in a place that was much less of a target than a official gov’t system.
What does it matter Hilary has shown complete contempt for her fellow Americans from day one.
But lest we forget criticizing her is sexist. Watch as she uses that victim card every time someone exposes her crimes and mistakes
Re: Sexism is still an issue.
I’m sorry, but that’s a card that Hillary gets to use. When she was campaigning, it would have been appropriate for them to criticize her lack of scruples. They didn’t and instead criticized her lack of penis.
If you’re running for office, personally I could care less whether or not you have a penis. But some scruples would be nice.
Just because she’s a 21st century politician doesn’t make it less wrong when sexism guns are brought to bear in her direction.
This is just one more negative for the GOP to use against Hillary, and perhaps Hillary would be a bad president, but what worries me is what happens when the Republicans control Congress, the Presidency, the Supreme Court, and majority of state governors? There’s something to be said for the checks and balances of multi-party government. (And yes I would be raising the same concerns if the Dems were in control.)
Re: Re:
We actually need a GOP All The Things government in all branches because it’s the only cure for Partisan Nitwit Disease. When there aren’t any Dems to blame, who will they bash? I’m half expecting a witch hunt followed by “Nobody expects the US Inquisition!” Pose
Yes indeed, a good strong dose of political chemotherapy might just break the stranglehold the two main parties have on the country. Shame it’ll wreck the economy, but you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs, and you sure as hell can’t fix stupid.
No, I’m not looking forward to it but that’s where we’re headed.
Re: Who would make a good president? Or an adequate president?
I think the presidential elections are at this point moot. Sure, it will affect the agenda for their term regarding some controversial issues, but those issues are trivial in contrast to the ones we cannot change.
I’m pretty sure the average American doesn’t want intelligence agencies spying on their communications. Even at risk of a terrorist infestation.
I’m pretty sure the average American doesn’t want the US to have policies that condone torture, much less actually implement a torture program.
I’m pretty sure the average American doesn’t want the police, the Department of Justice, an awful lot of US agents and elected representatives to be above the law, where they aren’t even tried for crimes that would send the rest of us to prison for life.
No president is going to change these. No referendum is going to change these. No elected representative is going to change these.
Who cares about foreign spies? They're on the payroll.
The Adversary = The US Public
What could be clearer than that. 🙂
—-
News Cycle
Clinton aside – and i’m glad this is being covered – the news cycle is playing us all like a fiddle. Can any of you see how coordinated this and stories like it are across the entire journalism spectrum?
Someone is in control of a big leash of media attack dogs to be released whenever they choose on whoever they deem worthy. This week it’s Clinton, a few weeks ago it was Brian Williams. Who will it be next?
The fiddle plays on.
It would be if I paid attention to mainstream US news, maybe.
But yes, news sources get to not only decide what to cover, but its priority and spin, and that’s too much power I’d want to give to any mainstream news source.
To be fair, it does mean that I sometimes qualify as living under a rock when I completely miss the zeitgeist on Oscar snubs or Left Sharks or who played against who in the Superbowl. Frankly, it’d be hard for me to care less anyway.
It’s possible that I’m a rarity in this regard, but given our accessibility to the internet (which is in some places more available than cable channels), I’d hope that there’s a significant subculture of people choosing news sources off the web, rather than the standard channels 2, 4 and 7 defaults.
Hillary Clinton' Secret Emails
This is another case of the cat eating the canary and trying to dress it up like a dog did it! Actually, I hope this scandal will cinch the Hillary Clinton bid for president!
Well, given....
a)That the NSA almost certainly has all the official mail system mails in its database and
b)The NSA apparently has no issues with sharing that database with “five eyes” partners
I would think that odds are good that foreign spies have better access to the official system than this private one…