Just wanted to put a quick follow up to BettyC’s breaking news post on Director Comey’s press conference and statement pertaining to the FBI’s review of Secretary Clinton’s email server.
I want to highlight two sections that I think really get to the nub of the statement. They basically provide something for everyone to take away. If you don’t like Secretary Clinton or the Obama Administration item 1 is for you. If you think this has all been much ado about nothing, then the first part of item 1 and all of item 2 is for you.
- The allocation of responsibility as a warning and potential deterrent:
Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.
None of these e-mails should have been on any kind of unclassified system, but their presence is especially concerning because all of these e-mails were housed on unclassified personal servers not even supported by full-time security staff, like those found at Departments and Agencies of the U.S. Government—or even with a commercial service like Gmail.
While not the focus of our investigation, we also developed evidence that the security culture of the State Department in general, and with respect to use of unclassified e-mail systems in particular, was generally lacking in the kind of care for classified information found elsewhere in the government.
2. Why the recommendation not to prosecute is being made:
Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case. Prosecutors necessarily weigh a number of factors before bringing charges. There are obvious considerations, like the strength of the evidence, especially regarding intent. Responsible decisions also consider the context of a person’s actions, and how similar situations have been handled in the past.
In looking back at our investigations into mishandling or removal of classified information, we cannot find a case that would support bringing criminal charges on these facts. All the cases prosecuted involved some combination of: clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information; or vast quantities of materials exposed in such a way as to support an inference of intentional misconduct; or indications of disloyalty to the United States; or efforts to obstruct justice. We do not see those things here.
To be clear, this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences. To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions. But that is not what we are deciding now.
As a result, although the Department of Justice makes final decisions on matters like this, we are expressing to Justice our view that no charges are appropriate in this case.
Here’s the video of the press conference:
And here’s the full transcript of Director Comey’s statement (h/t: Charles Johnson – the sane and normal one – at Little Green Footballs for the link):
Statement by FBI Director James B. Comey on the Investigation of Secretary Hillary Clinton’s Use of a Personal E-Mail System
Washington, D.C.July 05, 2016
Remarks prepared for delivery at press briefing.
Good morning. I’m here to give you an update on the FBI’s investigation of Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal e-mail system during her time as Secretary of State.
After a tremendous amount of work over the last year, the FBI is completing its investigation and referring the case to the Department of Justice for a prosecutive decision. What I would like to do today is tell you three things: what we did; what we found; and what we are recommending to the Department of Justice.
This will be an unusual statement in at least a couple ways. First, I am going to include more detail about our process than I ordinarily would, because I think the American people deserve those details in a case of intense public interest. Second, I have not coordinated or reviewed this statement in any way with the Department of Justice or any other part of the government. They do not know what I am about to say.
I want to start by thanking the FBI employees who did remarkable work in this case. Once you have a better sense of how much we have done, you will understand why I am so grateful and proud of their efforts.
So, first, what we have done:
The investigation began as a referral from the Intelligence Community Inspector General in connection with Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal e-mail server during her time as Secretary of State. The referral focused on whether classified information was transmitted on that personal system.
Our investigation looked at whether there is evidence classified information was improperly stored or transmitted on that personal system, in violation of a federal statute making it a felony to mishandle classified information either intentionally or in a grossly negligent way, or a second statute making it a misdemeanor to knowingly remove classified information from appropriate systems or storage facilities.
Consistent with our counterintelligence responsibilities, we have also investigated to determine whether there is evidence of computer intrusion in connection with the personal e-mail server by any foreign power, or other hostile actors.
I have so far used the singular term, “e-mail server,” in describing the referral that began our investigation. It turns out to have been more complicated than that. Secretary Clinton used several different servers and administrators of those servers during her four years at the State Department, and used numerous mobile devices to view and send e-mail on that personal domain. As new servers and equipment were employed, older servers were taken out of service, stored, and decommissioned in various ways. Piecing all of that back together—to gain as full an understanding as possible of the ways in which personal e-mail was used for government work—has been a painstaking undertaking, requiring thousands of hours of effort.
For example, when one of Secretary Clinton’s original personal servers was decommissioned in 2013, the e-mail software was removed. Doing that didn’t remove the e-mail content, but it was like removing the frame from a huge finished jigsaw puzzle and dumping the pieces on the floor. The effect was that millions of e-mail fragments end up unsorted in the server’s unused—or “slack”—space. We searched through all of it to see what was there, and what parts of the puzzle could be put back together.
FBI investigators have also read all of the approximately 30,000 e-mails provided by Secretary Clinton to the State Department in December 2014. Where an e-mail was assessed as possibly containing classified information, the FBI referred the e-mail to any U.S. government agency that was a likely “owner” of information in the e-mail, so that agency could make a determination as to whether the e-mail contained classified information at the time it was sent or received, or whether there was reason to classify the e-mail now, even if its content was not classified at the time it was sent (that is the process sometimes referred to as “up-classifying”).
From the group of 30,000 e-mails returned to the State Department, 110 e-mails in 52 e-mail chains have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received. Eight of those chains contained information that was Top Secret at the time they were sent; 36 chains contained Secret information at the time; and eight contained Confidential information, which is the lowest level of classification. Separate from those, about 2,000 additional e-mails were “up-classified” to make them Confidential; the information in those had not been classified at the time the e-mails were sent.
The FBI also discovered several thousand work-related e-mails that were not in the group of 30,000 that were returned by Secretary Clinton to State in 2014. We found those additional e-mails in a variety of ways. Some had been deleted over the years and we found traces of them on devices that supported or were connected to the private e-mail domain. Others we found by reviewing the archived government e-mail accounts of people who had been government employees at the same time as Secretary Clinton, including high-ranking officials at other agencies, people with whom a Secretary of State might naturally correspond.
This helped us recover work-related e-mails that were not among the 30,000 produced to State. Still others we recovered from the laborious review of the millions of e-mail fragments dumped into the slack space of the server decommissioned in 2013.
With respect to the thousands of e-mails we found that were not among those produced to State, agencies have concluded that three of those were classified at the time they were sent or received, one at the Secret level and two at the Confidential level. There were no additional Top Secret e-mails found. Finally, none of those we found have since been “up-classified.”
I should add here that we found no evidence that any of the additional work-related e-mails were intentionally deleted in an effort to conceal them. Our assessment is that, like many e-mail users, Secretary Clinton periodically deleted e-mails or e-mails were purged from the system when devices were changed. Because she was not using a government account—or even a commercial account like Gmail—there was no archiving at all of her e-mails, so it is not surprising that we discovered e-mails that were not on Secretary Clinton’s system in 2014, when she produced the 30,000 e-mails to the State Department.
It could also be that some of the additional work-related e-mails we recovered were among those deleted as “personal” by Secretary Clinton’s lawyers when they reviewed and sorted her e-mails for production in 2014.
The lawyers doing the sorting for Secretary Clinton in 2014 did not individually read the content of all of her e-mails, as we did for those available to us; instead, they relied on header information and used search terms to try to find all work-related e-mails among the reportedly more than 60,000 total e-mails remaining on Secretary Clinton’s personal system in 2014. It is highly likely their search terms missed some work-related e-mails, and that we later found them, for example, in the mailboxes of other officials or in the slack space of a server.
It is also likely that there are other work-related e-mails that they did not produce to State and that we did not find elsewhere, and that are now gone because they deleted all e-mails they did not return to State, and the lawyers cleaned their devices in such a way as to preclude complete forensic recovery.
We have conducted interviews and done technical examination to attempt to understand how that sorting was done by her attorneys. Although we do not have complete visibility because we are not able to fully reconstruct the electronic record of that sorting, we believe our investigation has been sufficient to give us reasonable confidence there was no intentional misconduct in connection with that sorting effort.
And, of course, in addition to our technical work, we interviewed many people, from those involved in setting up and maintaining the various iterations of Secretary Clinton’s personal server, to staff members with whom she corresponded on e-mail, to those involved in the e-mail production to State, and finally, Secretary Clinton herself.
Last, we have done extensive work to understand what indications there might be of compromise by hostile actors in connection with the personal e-mail operation.
That’s what we have done. Now let me tell you what we found:
Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.
For example, seven e-mail chains concern matters that were classified at the Top Secret/Special Access Program level when they were sent and received. These chains involved Secretary Clinton both sending e-mails about those matters and receiving e-mails from others about the same matters. There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position, or in the position of those government employees with whom she was corresponding about these matters, should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation. In addition to this highly sensitive information, we also found information that was properly classified as Secret by the U.S. Intelligence Community at the time it was discussed on e-mail (that is, excluding the later “up-classified” e-mails).
None of these e-mails should have been on any kind of unclassified system, but their presence is especially concerning because all of these e-mails were housed on unclassified personal servers not even supported by full-time security staff, like those found at Departments and Agencies of the U.S. Government—or even with a commercial service like Gmail.
Separately, it is important to say something about the marking of classified information. Only a very small number of the e-mails containing classified information bore markings indicating the presence of classified information. But even if information is not marked “classified” in an e-mail, participants who know or should know that the subject matter is classified are still obligated to protect it.
While not the focus of our investigation, we also developed evidence that the security culture of the State Department in general, and with respect to use of unclassified e-mail systems in particular, was generally lacking in the kind of care for classified information found elsewhere in the government.
With respect to potential computer intrusion by hostile actors, we did not find direct evidence that Secretary Clinton’s personal e-mail domain, in its various configurations since 2009, was successfully hacked. But, given the nature of the system and of the actors potentially involved, we assess that we would be unlikely to see such direct evidence. We do assess that hostile actors gained access to the private commercial e-mail accounts of people with whom Secretary Clinton was in regular contact from her personal account. We also assess that Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal e-mail domain was both known by a large number of people and readily apparent. She also used her personal e-mail extensively while outside the United States, including sending and receiving work-related e-mails in the territory of sophisticated adversaries. Given that combination of factors, we assess it is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton’s personal e-mail account.
So that’s what we found. Finally, with respect to our recommendation to the Department of Justice:
In our system, the prosecutors make the decisions about whether charges are appropriate based on evidence the FBI has helped collect. Although we don’t normally make public our recommendations to the prosecutors, we frequently make recommendations and engage in productive conversations with prosecutors about what resolution may be appropriate, given the evidence. In this case, given the importance of the matter, I think unusual transparency is in order.
Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case. Prosecutors necessarily weigh a number of factors before bringing charges. There are obvious considerations, like the strength of the evidence, especially regarding intent. Responsible decisions also consider the context of a person’s actions, and how similar situations have been handled in the past.
In looking back at our investigations into mishandling or removal of classified information, we cannot find a case that would support bringing criminal charges on these facts. All the cases prosecuted involved some combination of: clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information; or vast quantities of materials exposed in such a way as to support an inference of intentional misconduct; or indications of disloyalty to the United States; or efforts to obstruct justice. We do not see those things here.
To be clear, this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences. To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions. But that is not what we are deciding now.
As a result, although the Department of Justice makes final decisions on matters like this, we are expressing to Justice our view that no charges are appropriate in this case.
I know there will be intense public debate in the wake of this recommendation, as there was throughout this investigation. What I can assure the American people is that this investigation was done competently, honestly, and independently. No outside influence of any kind was brought to bear.
I know there were many opinions expressed by people who were not part of the investigation—including people in government—but none of that mattered to us. Opinions are irrelevant, and they were all uninformed by insight into our investigation, because we did the investigation the right way. Only facts matter, and the FBI found them here in an entirely apolitical and professional way. I couldn’t be prouder to be part of this organization.
Elizabelle
Thanks. Look forward to a thread about the joint Hillary-Obama appearance later today. Bummed that this is going to take all the air out of the room.
Adam L Silverman
@Elizabelle: Apparently Trump has a rally in NC tonight where he’s supposed to lambast whatever the President and Secretary Clinton do earlier in the day.
Corner Stone
This is what the Director, FBI thinks is prudent to baldly state with no actual proof?
Corner Stone
@Elizabelle:
Eh, Obama’s going to get something good in and that will make a few talking head segments.
ET
Let the freak-out begin.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@Elizabelle: I think the opposite. This was the last bit of unfinished business HRC needed cleared before the convention and true general election. Now that Benghazi and Emailghazi have fizzled out it’s just the usual anti-Clinton bullshit that normal people have learned to tune out to a certain degree.
I know, I know, Bernie Sanders is still out there trying to return soup at a deli but no one is really paying attention to him anyway.
Forward!
Chyron HR
So Bernie gets to be President now, right?
Betty Cracker
So, will Clinton give a statement / hold a press conference to address this? My guess is she does so before the week is out.
CONGRATULATIONS!
Benghazi Foster Whitewater Lewinski BLOWJOB
Repeat until Republican is elected.
Corner Stone
@Betty Cracker:
I hope when she does she brings her version of Luther.
Adam L Silverman
@Corner Stone: He’s a career GOP lawyer. Somethings are genetic.
Cermet
The matter, from a criminal perspective, is closed. The thugs need to move on to blow more gas out of their mouths (aka their a$$holes)
Adam L Silverman
@Betty Cracker: It’ll break one of two ways. She does a dedicated presser on it, where she accepts the blame that they could’ve been more careful and then puts it behind her or it comes up briefly today at the rally and then she puts it behind her. I don’t know the odds of one or the other. I’m sure the political press wants the former. I think they’re likely going to have to live with the latter.
LAO
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford:
My new favorite line. LOL!
dmsilev
@Corner Stone: Which Luther? Nailing theses to church door guy, Lex, or the anger-translator? Because any of those could work.
catclub
@Corner Stone: I would judge that another way to put that is:
“We were unable to find any actual evidence that hostile actors gained access to the email servers under discussion here. ”
I think you are upset about a pro-forma statement.
Corner Stone
@LAO: Everyone knows you can’t send back soup at a deli.
Trollhattan
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
2060 sounds good. I’ll be daid and maybe the Republicans will acquire sanity.
Corner Stone
@dmsilev: Well, I was aiming at the bald angry black guy Luther. But, actually, Luther Vandross would be accepted. As well as Idris Elba’s Luther.
LAO
@Corner Stone: I know, I know but the truth is that I, New York Jew that I am, HATED Seinfeld. SAD!
Corner Stone
@catclub: I’m not happy with the head of the FBI taking artistic license to smear HRC as far as he can without showing any actual anything to get there.
Trollhattan
Anybody know whether Comey held a fluffy white cat in his lap while quizzing Hillary last weekend?
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@LAO: It’s a line from George Constanza when he’s describing the state of the ocean as he was attempting to save the beached whale from the effects of Kramer’s golf ball.
catclub
I thought this was amusing:
… and we are going to weight that evidence for the prosecutors, rather than let them do it.
Corner Stone
@LAO: The sea was angry that day, my friends!
LAO
@catclub: FWIW, Comey was a career prosecutor prior his appointment as FBI Director. Also, I have noticed that he enjoys the spotlight.
Trollhattan
@Corner Stone:
A marine biologist?!? You know I always wanted to pretend to be an architect!
eemom
In the last sentence of your second paragraph above, didn’t you mean “the LAST part of item 1 is for you”?
Corner Stone
@Trollhattan: Why stop there? Why be just an architect, Steven?
You know, you’re right! I always wanted to be more than an architect. Maybe a city planner!
amk
Digby
stop your bedwetting, dems.
justawriter
I frequent a list with a lot of Trey Gowdy wannabees and after six months of plotting the Hillary episode of OITNB all of a sudden they are all “None of us ever said she would be indicted because we knew the fix was in.” I’m too tired to slog through hundreds of posts to find the words to throw back in their faces, though.
Emma
@srv: I’m sure the Republicans won’t. And they will be as popular as they were in the aftermath of the first Clinton impeachment. And this time there are more high-profile democrats willing to kick their arses.
Frankensteinbeck
@Corner Stone:
I would take Lex Luthor. That guy would HATE Trump and destroy Donald with a sadistic thoroughness even we could scarcely imagine.
schrodinger's cat
Its time to move on.
japa21
Notice all the “potential”, “it is possible” weasel words being used. No evidence to support that anything happened, but the potential is there.
I once was foreman of a jury hearing a driving under the influence case where the driver blew a .19. The defending attorney got the police officer to admit that, because the driver was wearing dentures, there is the potential that a reading could be higher than what was actual. When final arguments came around, the defense attorney used the phrase, “The officer admitted that because the driver was wearing dentures the results of the test WERE inaccurate.”
That is how some of this will be presented and Comey is aware of that.
BTW, the driver was found not guilty of blowing a .19 but was guilty of DUI. Also turns out she had been found guilty of that twice previously.
Corner Stone
Good Lordt, Kelly O’Donnell. Where have you been all my life?
Gin & Tonic
As someone who has run an enterprise-level e-mail system and thus interacted with other systems/admins, I can assure everyone that having “full-time security staff” and actually having a secure system are not always congruent.
quakerinabasement
Comey’s description of the investigation process:
So the FBI looks at an email and says, “I dunno. Maybe classified. Let’s ask the CIA.” and the CIA says, “Oh, yes. Absolutely. Totally classified.” But we don’t get to know if the emailed information in question was delivered in a briefing from the CIA or gleaned from an article in the Washington Post. Because Top Secret! And “110 emails in 52 email chains?” That means somebody sent an email that said , and then somebody else replied to it.
This is some weakass booolsheet.
Gin & Tonic
@Corner Stone: New crush?
germy shoemangler
Now the RWNJs are making a stink about the POTUS using Air Force One to campaign for the Hildebeast.
“Taxpayer dollars!!!”
Davis X. Machina
@amk: And this from Digby, who has no use for either Clinton…
Trollhattan
@justawriter: Nearly President Gowdy is looking a lot like an Interstate 80 windshield bug these days; she’s that eeeeevil.
Barb2
Thinkprogress explains why the private email was necessary. Also private email is being used by many others who must have timely contact with . . . oh like people in the field. The fault is the stupid official email system.
Bottom line the GOP hates Hillary – Clinton Derangement Syndrome. Mention Clinton and the idiot GOP’s eyes will bug out and the veins on their necks will bulge and they start spitting out propaganda. No high level thinking. Bernie bots respond in the same way. The cult of Clinton haters. No way to reason with cult members.
Cheney outed Valerie Plume (sp?) – that was on purpose to get at her husband.
Damned right-wing nut jobs.
Grumpy Code Monkey
Okay, first the disclaimers – I am voting for Hillary (and every other goddamned Democrat I’m allowed to) in November. I was a Clinton delegate at the Texas State Democratic Convention. Of the choices we have available to us, she is by far the most qualified to hold the office. Trump would be a disaster to eclipse everything we’ve ever gone through short of the Civil War. So yeah, I’m With Her, all that jazz.
Having said all that…
This is not a nothingburger. This is not a “no harm, no foul” situation. The only positive result of this investigation is a decision by the FBI to not recommend charges be brought, and that’s only because there isn’t conclusive evidence of intent. It’s a weak case; that’s not the same as no case.
Just because there’s no indictment doesn’t mean Clinton was cleared of anything. She fucked this up. Badly. This cluster is the result of decisions she made while SoS, and offers a preview of how she’d manage as President, and I’m not liking what I see.
This bugs the fuck out of me, and it should bug the fuck out of the rest of you as well. I already have problems with the dynastic aspects of her candidacy, and this doesn’t give me the warm fuzzies. This is exactly how Democrats fuck themselves over. This just gives the RWNJs that much more ammunition.
Breath a sigh of relief if you want, but “we’re not bringing charges because it’s a minor-enough case to not be worth the effort” is a long way from vindication.
? Martin
@Corner Stone: That’s a rational statement. Because she didn’t use government infrastructure, their ability to go through the other infrastructure to detect an intrusion is lacking. Typically you won’t detect an intrusion on the system being attacked (particularly if the attacker is good) – you’ll detect it through an upstream router showing unusual traffic and so on. Those systems would typically be heavily logged and you could go back through that information to check for a breach. Because government wasn’t running the system, they lack access to all of the other bits and pieces that they could check to see if she was breached or not.
Data security needs to use a different standard for proof. Absence of evidence isn’t enough, because the whole point of a malicious attack is to cover up your evidence. But in IT, there are enough layers and data gathering that you can likely assemble a reliable picture of access to a system going back some reasonable period of time. If you cannot assemble that picture, that alone is a failure. It’s not like other investigation areas where it’s reasonably impossible to recreate events that weren’t (or even were) witnessed. Put another way, the FBI ought to be able to determine if a breach took place or not to a reasonable degree, but because Clinton didn’t use State infrastructure, they can’t even do that determination.
I’ll add that there’s a certain bit of hindsight to this. What we expect to do in 2016 is quite a bit higher than what we expected to do in 2008, so the statement is slightly disingenuous, and in light of the other massive breaches inside Fed, it’s somewhat comical that the FBI believes that whatever theoretical approach they mandate could have been met by anyone including the intelligence agencies (how many US agents were burned when their payroll data was stolen?)
So, his statement is what should be expected and is reasonable to say, but in the context of the overall clusterfuck of federal IT, particularly at the time, it’s hard for me to suggest that her communication would have been any better of with State or any other federal agency, so the statement would probably apply to everything in govt IT at the time. Perhaps from that perspective he shouldn’t have said it.
Corner Stone
I think we’re going to find out in coming days that “extremely carelessly” is now also a treasonous offense, or at least 30 years in the hole.
Corner Stone
@Grumpy Code Monkey: Nothingburger.
Omnes Omnibus
@Grumpy Code Monkey: I am going to call bullshit on this.
Bex
@dmsilev: You forgot Idris Elba.
Edit: Never mind, Corner Stone beat me to it.
schrodinger's cat
@Corner Stone: Art Vandelay?
raven
@Grumpy Code Monkey: What’s the difference? The fucking right-wing assholes would think and say exactly what they are now.
Miss Bianca
@LAO: Midwestern goy agrees: I thought “Seinfeld” sucked, and I was always mystified as to the source of its apparent appeal.
Hungry Joe
To the RWNJs and the Anybody But Hilary squad, either Hilz is found to be guilty as hell (of something or other) or the system is rigged; there are no other possibilities. They were going to be, and will forever be howling at the moon and on the teevee no matter what ruling comes down, no matter what happens, no matter who says or does what.
Adam L Silverman
@LAO: I have repeatedly stated that just because you were the most honorable of the Deputy AGs and political appointees at the DOJ HQ in the Bush 43 Administration does not make you a paragon of virtue. If President Obama really felt he had to appoint a career DOJ prosecutor who was also a Republican, he should have gone with Patrick Fitzgerald or David Iglesias.
Corner Stone
@schrodinger’s cat: And you want to be my latex salesman? Heh.
Elizabelle
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford: Forward!
FlipYrWhig
@Grumpy Code Monkey:
This is the part I’m not following. The rest of your post is your judgment about computer stuff, I take it. Fine. What in the story makes it characteristic of “how Democrats fuck themselves over”?
Miss Bianca
@Omnes Omnibus: bullshit burger? Would that be like Moose Turd Pie?
Adam L Silverman
@eemom: Nope, I meant the first part.
Don’t make me go all Humpty Dumpty on you and then fall of a wall!//
jacy
@Corner Stone:
Reading your comment, I only pictured John Luther (Idris Elba), preferably throwing someone off a balcony, out a window, or off the roof of ratty council flats……
Comrade Jake
@Grumpy Code Monkey: you’re grumpy. We get it.
I think it’s as close to a nothingburger as we could have expected, given everything that we know. The case and the FBI decision will likely not change a single person’s mind about HRC.
As to the extent that it signals how she’ll be as a POTUS… meh. She’s going to have more than her fair share of problems/issues in the White House. Everybody knows this. There’s not a whole lot that can be done about it.
Quinerly
@Grumpy Code Monkey:
I tend to agree. Great points. And I would add that I have never been a Bernie supporter.
germy shoemangler
@Grumpy Code Monkey: they’re chewing on that over at LGM
My opinion? Nothingburger.
LAO
@Adam L Silverman: Agreed. Patrick Fitzgerald would have been my pick.
Adam L Silverman
@Corner Stone: Married to J David Ake for a good chunk of it!
Roger Moore
@Gin & Tonic:
Not to mention that using plenty of those commercial services read all the mail that’s going through them. Gmail loves to read everyone’s email, both so they can decide if it’s spam and so they can try to sell ads more effectively. The idea that it would be more secure because it has dedicated admins even though it would guarantee that an unwanted third party would be reading everything is a sign that people have just given up thinking about email service providers reading all their stuff.
Adam L Silverman
@Gin & Tonic: And that those full time secured government servers have been repeatedly hacked, which is why I’ve got lifetime, free (as in we’re all as tax payers paying for it) identity theft monitoring courtesy of Uncle Sam.
BR
@Grumpy Code Monkey:
Um, I’m far from a Clinton fan (nor am I a Sanders fan), but I don’t agree. I don’t think she’s going to be as no-drama and scandal-free as Obama, but basically nobody is. Obama was one of a kind. I’m expecting Hillary to be about as good of a president as Bill. That is, an average Democratic president, which in the history of the last many decades is leaps and bounds better than the alternative, a GOP president. I don’t say that lightly — my actual political views are to the left of Bernie, but I’d rather Hillary rather than anyone else running now. If I had a choice I’d want a third term for Obama, but that can’t happen.
germy shoemangler
LGM comment:
Mike E
@Corner Stone: Good Lordt is right, holler
Adam L Silverman
@Miss Bianca: Taking a 90 minute stand up routine and turning it into a 10 year long series is not must see tv.
germy shoemangler
@Adam L Silverman:
At first I thought you were talking about Trey Gowdy.
Adam L Silverman
@LAO: I still think he’d make either a great AG or SEC Director of CFPB Director. Put him someplace where he could do the most good for the country.
LAO
@germy shoemangler: It works for either, I think.
Emma
@Miss Bianca: Bless you! Really, I have been mystified as to his appeal from the git go. My usual answer when berated about this is that I don’t have an American sense of humor. Which I don’t. Most sitcoms are just annoying or disgusting to me.
Adam L Silverman
@germy shoemangler: If the shoe fits…
schrodinger's cat
I loved Seinfeld. Do I have to turn in my Tunch blog membership now?
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman: I’d go so far as to call it “must not see TV”, myself…
Bobby Thomson
@Corner Stone: meh. We KNOW it would have been hacked on the DOS server.
Corner Stone
@schrodinger’s cat:
Back when men were men, women were women, and Must See TV existed, Seinfeld salved a wounded nation’s soul. I feel bad for people who missed it or didn’t get it at the time.
rikyrah
Knock yourselves out, Hillary Stans.
Will not defend unforced errors.
She didn’t follow the President’s directive on emails. She set herself up for this.
Roger Moore
@Adam L Silverman:
Mangle it.
schrodinger's cat
@Corner Stone: What this era needs is a Corner Stone show.
Miss Bianca
@schrodinger’s cat: No, because gggggggggggggggggggggggggg
as you can see from the above, cats have a very weird sense of humor. They think walking on the keyboard is hilarious, so Tunch probably wouldn’t have a problem with your Seinfeld thing.
WJS
@rikyrah: Your wah-mbulance will be here shortly to remind you that she had the authority to declassify whatever the fuck she wanted because she was the Secretary of State, and often did, and she’s not going to jail for that, so, you know…
Corner Stone
@rikyrah:
Could you please cite what you’re referring to here? Thanks.
Patricia Kayden
@Elizabelle: Yes, that will be nice. I expect great things from President Obama as he campaigns on Secretary Clinton’s behalf this Summer. This should rally anyone on the fence about sitting out the election if they want the next President to move POTUS’ agenda forward.
Corner Stone
Ohhhh, fuchsia! Thank you, FSM!
Bobby Thomson
@LAO: yes, it was. Classic naked emperor.
Corner Stone
Brian Williams is on the scene speaking to Mrs. Greenspan. Please gather your rat sized condoms, as needed.
Miss Bianca
OK, in semi-seriousness, it seems that government email servers actually are no safer, and in some cases might not have been *as* safe, in addition to being far less efficient. And that some of this stuff got retroactively classified. So…with the worst will in the world, I can’t see what the HUGE DEAL is.
And, in the interests of actually, oh, you know, getting her job done in a timely manner, what, exactly, what Sec. Clinton supposed to have done? Or done differently?
WJS
@Miss Bianca: Seinfeld is proof that people can buy into the myth of their own sophistication when they’re really just assholes who can’t get along with other people.
Adam L Silverman
@schrodinger’s cat: No, the beauty of it all is you can like it and watch it all you want and some of us can not like it.
Poopyman
@germy shoemangler:
It was still an unclassified system. Putting classified data on it was still a no-no, which is why the FBI was evaluating the content for classified data.
On classified systems everything is (or should be) header and portion marked. No such luxury on do-it-yourself systems.
Technocrat
@Miss Bianca:
Sorry Miss Bianca’s cat, but you’re completely wrong on this. Just way out in left field.
schrodinger's cat
@Miss Bianca: Did you see my link above. Kangana Ranaut is my latest girl crush. Girl is killing it in that song. She has dumped her husband, but is not completely over him. The hurt, the determination, putting on a brave face. Her is awesome. Love all her outfits in the number too.
She basically transforms herself every movie. She is chameleon. Totally different in this movie (Tanu Weds Manu, Returns) than Queen.
Poopyman
@germy shoemangler: Goudy’s routine wouldn’t last 90 seconds before The Sandman pulled him offstage.
LAO
@Corner Stone: LOL. I will admit to occasionally finding it funny — but on the whole I hated Seinfeld. I’m pleased to see that others agree with me, makes me feel less lonely.
WJS
@Miss Bianca: She wanted to use her BlackBerry. The State Department didn’t have the IT infrastructure to give her a secured BlackBerry. They set up a server in her home, which was under Secret Service protection, and they thought they were complying with the rules. They weren’t. They did this because she did not know how to use E-mail on a computer. This was another case where an old person wasn’t savvy about E-mail. The government has no cure for this, other than the gradual dying off of everyone who was born before E-mail was invented. The end.
germy shoemangler
@Corner Stone:
Does Mrs. Greenspan’s husband still wear his Ayn Rand medallion? Or was that a youthful affectation?
schrodinger's cat
@LAO: The first and last seasons were kinda meh.
Poopyman
@WJS:
Not even fucking close.
Patricia Kayden
@Adam L Silverman: Isn’t that all Trump ever does — insult his opponents until they submit and engage in juvenile name calling? It’s not as if he has any real policies to advance beyond silliness like “build the wall” and “ban the Muslims”.
RandomMonster
@Adam L Silverman:
You have this so utterly wrong. Seinfeld’s standup routine had very little to do with the show or its success. What made it great was the comic talent of the cast — and by that I mean the actors other than Jerry Seinfeld himself. Also, the writers were bold enough to treat certain themes in ways that were novel for the time (e.g., no other show was going to do something as crazy as the ‘masturbation contest’).
Trollhattan
@germy shoemangler:
Total horndog back in the day on account of her exotic good looks and fashion sense. Hubba-hubba.
WJS
@Poopyman: Except that’s not what happened. They were discussing work matters. She had the authority to de-classify anything she was working on. She was trying to GET SHIT DONE. The Republicans have butt hurt about this woman because SHE GETS SHIT DONE. And she was using her E-mail to GET SHIT DONE and the material turned out to have been classified. She was the Secretary of State, not an IT peon or a low level analyst talking about work on their Gmail. And she was trying to GET SHIT DONE. What would you have her do? Not GET SHIT DONE? Because you’d find a way to investigate her for that, too.
Cacti
So at this point, we’ve had the presumptive Democratic nominee vetted by a Congressional committee and the FBI, who couldn’t pin anything on her.
Meanwhile the presumptive Republican nominee and the socialist crank who lost the Dem race haven’t even managed to produce their tax information.
Seems like one candidate is getting a lot more scrutiny for some unknown reason (wink wink).
germy shoemangler
@Poopyman:
I see goudy as more of a prop comic than an observational humorist. He could smash watermelons with a sledge hammer or put a surgical glove over his head and blow it up with his nose.
WJS
@Poopyman: Wrong. The Secretary of State has declassification authority. Everyone knows that. Try harder.
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2015/09/11/3700451/demystifying-classified-material/
Poopyman
@RandomMonster: “Masturbation contest”? Wasn’t that a Baud! fundraiser?
Corner Stone
@RandomMonster: “I’m out!”
chopper
@Grumpy Code Monkey:
a double nothingburger with extra cheese is still a nothingburger.
Adam L Silverman
@Miss Bianca: There are several issues here. 1) The Unclassified servers seem to be more vulnerable, but you have to remember there is a concerted effort, 24/7, but numerous state and non-state actors (not the thespian kind…) to hack those systems. So they are constantly being probed and prodded by folks looking for access. 2) Every cabinet secretary and their primary deputies, that have to be reachable 24/7 should have smartphones and/or tablet devices similar to that set up for the President that allow them to access both the unclassified and secret level emails. One of the things that came out of this is that the NSA refused to set one of these up for Secretary Clinton and this had the appearance of an Interagency turf war. What they wanted to give her was unwieldy and simply unacceptable. That’s the simply reality. Apparently a good chunk of the classified emails were between Ambassador Pakistan and Secretary Clinton over the Christmas holidays one year when one party or the other did not have accessed to classified systems for messaging. That should never be the case. In the 21st Century the Interagency has to do much better in getting appropriate, usable technology into the hands of the primaries and deputies and into the hands of our civilian and military leadership forward so they can communicate with each other, over the appropriate networks, as needed 24/7.
RandomMonster
@Poopyman: Well, on the show it was a contest to refrain from masturbation, so maybe they aren’t thematically linked.
germy shoemangler
I’m not a big Seinfeld fan.
That said, I admire the rule he and Larry David set up for the show: No Hugging and No Learning.
Nowadays, every stupid sitcom still has people hugging and learning.
WJS
@Adam L Silverman: Thank you for that. Nothing else needs to be said.
Trollhattan
@RandomMonster:
Yup, it took two or three seasons for character development and the cast to gel, after which it had the inertia to make “a show about nothing” work on its own merits. What kept it fresh was continual introduction of new characters to play off the leads, most aptly illustrated by George’s parents. My God.
Bears noting that JL Dreyfus is absolutely slaying in “Veep”–probably the most talented of the entire “Seinfeld” cast.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
Air Force One lands in North Carolina.
President and Hillz on way to rally.
(photo)
Miss Bianca
@WJS: No, I am taking “Seinfeld” as proof that one half of the world truly cannot fathom the pleasures, tastes and proclivities of the other half.
@schrodinger’s cat: Oh, I’ll check it out!
shell
How many calories in a nothingburger?
FlipYrWhig
@shell: Surprisingly many, because it’s stuffed with fillers.
Cacti
@LAO:
Similar feelings here. Didn’t hate the show, but most of the time found it not especially funny. A handful of episodes were true howlers, like the bubble boy/trivial pursuit one, but those tended to be the exception.
RandomMonster
@Trollhattan:
TOTALLY agree.
Miss Bianca
@Trollhattan: Why, why, did I click on that? Now i’ll have nightmares of being pursued by rail-thin, fierce-googly-eyed ideologues waving cigarette holders at me and demanding to know when I am going to accept John Galt as my personal savior…AAGH!
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
Pretty Big fucking crowd at NC
(photo #1)
(photo #2)
Cacti
@germy shoemangler:
OTOH, I can’t stand Seinfeld/David’s most enduring contribution to prime time television (dramatic and comedic):
It seems like every damned show now has a token quirky/offbeat character whose only function seems to be “look at how quirky and offbeat I am!”. Boooooo! Hiss!
FlipYrWhig
@Cacti: THESE PRETZELS ARE MAKING ME THIRSTY!
Adam L Silverman
@WJS: You’re welcome. And don’t hold your breath waiting on nothing else to be said.
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman: Ah, thank you. So, why isn’t the NSA being raked over the coals for this, then? Seems like it’s much more their fault than hers. Oh, wait, what am I saying? Having endless internecine turf wars means never having to say you’re sorry, right?
eemom
@Adam L Silverman:
Don’t mean to quibble, and it’s your post. I just thought the last paragraph
is helpful for Hillary in that it points to a systemic problem within the State Department “culture”, which tends to deflect blame from her individually (and is bolstered by the IG’s findings about Colin Powell). The first paragraph, which says there isn’t enough evidence but also uses those loaded words “extremely careless” that are going to be blasted in our face in republitard TV ads ad nauseum between now and November, not so much. But whatevs.
Bailey
@Grumpy Code Monkey:
Yes. This.
I disagree entirely with OP’s designation that the results should make someone fall into one of two categories. It is okay to support HRC but still acknowledge that she and her team committed some huge errors, the rationale of which suggests she was unable to unwilling to separate her work from the Clinton Foundation.
That she was not going to be indicted has been painfully obvious, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t do anything wrong and that her judgement on this was whack.
Trollhattan
@Miss Bianca:
I am SO sorry! [stares guiltily at shoetops, very nice Wall Street loafers BTW]
FlipYrWhig
@Cacti: Uh, there were Wacky Neighbors long before Seinfeld. If anything Kramer is a joke about how well-worn a sitcom device it already was.
D58826
@germy shoemangler:
1. her name is Clinton. 2. she continued to exist. That’s all the goopers (and now deadend berniebros) need to gin up a ‘scandal.’
FlipYrWhig
@Bailey:
????
Adam L Silverman
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: Just put up the live feed. I’ll do one for the Trumpapalooza tonight if there is one. Equal time, both sides, magic balance something or other, and all that.
NotMax
@Miss Bianca
Also was one of those who scratched the noggin about the program until something dawned on me. To wit, that those were not adults on the screen but rather 12-year-olds in adult bodies, trying to pass as adults in the world.
Once viewed through that prism things clicked into place and the show worked as light entertainment (well, except for the execrable finale, which nothing could redeem).
Cacti
@FlipYrWhig:
And out comes the most reliable trope of the Seinfeld fans to non-fans: “You’re just not clever enough to understand how subtle and brilliant it is.”
FlipYrWhig
@NotMax: But the finale is expressly about how if you had to deal with these people in the actual world you’d think they were terrible and want to be rid of them.
Gin & Tonic
@Trollhattan:
Jerry Stiller could be funny reading the phone book. Too bad his son isn’t half the talent.
Tee
@WJS: My 83 year old father would disagree. He is more active on email, facebook, twitter etc than his grandsons! He has a bunch of friends from his childhood (also in their 80’s). They just have to have an open mind and a willingness to learn
Miss Bianca
@Bailey: I knew it was just a matter of time before someone brought up the Clinton Foundation…whether or not it makes any sense at all to do so…
Adam L Silverman
@Miss Bianca: They’re the Interagency proponent for this type of tech. And each portion of the Interagency, and especially the Intel Community, fights very hard to maintain its prerogatives.
It got a fair amount of coverage once it finally came out in the news, but a lot of it was from the tech media:
https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=the+smartphone+that+NSA+wanted+to+give+hillary+clinton
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/emails-show-nsa-rejected-hillary-clinton-request-for-secure-smartphone/
http://www.zdnet.com/article/nsa-wanted-hillary-clinton-to-use-this-secure-windows-phone/
https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/03/17/2242233/emails-show-nsa-rejected-hillary-clintons-request-for-secure-smartphone
http://www.extremetech.com/mobile/225058-the-nsa-wanted-hillary-clinton-to-use-this-crazy-secured-windows-ce-phone
http://www.mediaite.com/online/clinton-emailed-from-unsecure-phone-because-nsa-denied-her-request-for-a-better-one/
http://lawnewz.com/high-profile/we-now-know-more-about-why-clinton-set-up-private-server-and-its-sketchyy/
http://mashable.com/2016/03/17/clinton-nsa-blackberry/#CM34ZTa0_aq6
JerryN
@Gin & Tonic: Not arguing about Jerry or Ben, but Anne was even better.
Adam L Silverman
@eemom: No worries on this end. I didn’t think you were quibbling.
Reggie Mantle
@Grumpy Code Monkey:
That is a lucid, intelligent, well thought out objection.
But grab an umbrella, the poo flinging is about to begin.
WJS
@eemom: Yeah, but that tells me that Comey really wanted to ask the Grand Jury to indict her because that’s who he is. Comey is mindful of the fact that his agency has screwed up two major counterterrorism cases–San Bernadino and Orlando. The agency probably should have been able to prevent the radicalized couple in California from doing what they did and they should have been able to stop the Orlando gunman as well. They failed. He doesn’t have the clout to ask the Grand Jury for anything because his own record is so dismal. His press conference was more about him grumbling about his vastly diminished influence than anything to do with the facts of what Hillary’s IT guy did to give her a fucking BlackBerry.
FlipYrWhig
@Cacti: Did I say it was subtle? I did not. But saying that Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David’s contribution to sitcom-dom was the character who was only wacky… that’s totally baseless. Maynard G. Krebs? Lenny and Squiggy? Mork?
WJS
@Tee: Young people don’t use E-mail because they have fifteen better alternatives.
Adam L Silverman
@Gin & Tonic: This I agree with 100%!
shell
How do you pronounce Eid?
D58826
@LAO: If it hasn’t already been mentioned he work for the STAR inquisition in the mid 90’s. ;
Grumpy Code Monkey
@FlipYrWhig: What I mean is, far too many Democrats score own goals; they make stupid mistakes that give their critics a leg up. Usually, it’s the inability of a male Democratic politician to keep his dick in his pants. In this particular case, it’s using a homegrown email server that is a) outside of federal oversight, b) not cleared to handle classified material, and c) winding up with classified material on it anyway. No, this isn’t Watergate, it’s just another example of entitled executive syndrome that every IT worker has had to deal with since IT was a thing. And in most cases it wouldn’t be an issue, but for the fact that somehow classified material did wind up on this server.
I understand that .gov IT is stuck in the Holocene, and that it’s goddamned hard to be responsive when you have to run to the SCIF everytime somebody sneezes. I really, truly get that, and Adam’s comment above is spot on; everybody’s looking for shortcuts, everybody is incentivized to work around the system.
This was still a stupid thing to do. At least with gmail everything gets backed up. The key word I take from the statement is “careless”; that’s exactly what bugs me about it.
Bailey
@FlipYrWhig:
Her publicly stated rationale was always absurdly weak: 1.) she didn’t want to carry two phones 2.) when turning over emails to State, she absolutely could not have a mix of the personal and the professional. All of which could have been avoided had she, you know, followed the protocol and not had both her personal and professional emails on the same personal server in her home that was networked with Bill Clinton’s work.
Additionally, the fact that HRC’s closest aide was working double time both for her and for work done by the foundation clouds the issue.
She obviously avoided indictment, rightfully so, but the public trust in her will not be easily repaired.
Reggie Mantle
@Poopyman:
Hillary can do no wrong, because if she does it, it isn’t wrong.
schrodinger's cat
@Trollhattan: Serenity now! Uncle Leo, Newman, Babu, Soup Nazi, Jerry’s parents. Lots of talent on that show…
Peale
@Miss Bianca: I believe she’s supposed to state that Huma Abedin is a scary muslim extremist close to the levers of power, or something.
Adam L Silverman
@shell: Eed. Basically double the sharp “e” sound like in cheese.
Cacti
@Reggie Mantle:
There is no indictment fairy and it won’t be saving the Sanders campaign.
It’s over. Your guy lost. Move on.
Feebog
@Bailey:
Gotta disagree here. Comey’s characterization of “extremely careless” handling of emails is not supported by his remarks. First, he never said how many, if any at all of these emails were marked as classified at the time. The fact he deliberately left that question open leaves me to believe the answer is zero. Second, Comey’s statement that Clinton’s private server could have been hacked, but there is not evidence that it was is highly prejudicial, especially in light of the fact that we know the State Department’s “secure” system has been hacked repeatedly. It seems to me that Comey couched his remarks in the worst possible way to reflect poorly on Clinton.
oldgold
In the last week HC has cleared the last two hurdles between her and the presidency.
That is the news.
The rest is navel gazing BS.
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman: But…but…but…you mean i might get thru’ all those articles and come to the conclusion that this whole dog’s breakfast wasn’t all a result of DECISIONS SEC. CLINTON MADE AS SOS??
Bailey
@Miss Bianca:
Why does it not make sense to do so? HRC’s closest advisor simultaneously worked for both her and the Foundation. Whether HRC voters want to admit it or not, there is a lot of very murky relationships between official government roles and work with the Foundation. All made more disconcerting by the fact that HRC’s government server was apparently on the same network as the Foundation.
Again, whether this was ultimately indictable is not the question. What it is is really fucking stupid and totally avoidable.
Bailey
@Feebog:
Um, okay.
Reggie Mantle
@Cacti:
You can keep saying that I said Hillary was going to be indicted all you want, but it will still be a lie.
Why must the Clintonistas keep lying about what people who don’t agree with them have said? Is it because they know the truth is not kind to their Queen?
FlipYrWhig
@Bailey: Sure, I mean, that’s the email story, basically: there were rules about how to use email, and she didn’t follow the rules for how to use email. At my office we’re not supposed to use email to discuss personnel issues, but people still use email to discuss personnel issues, because (1) we are old and (2) no one has embarrassed themselves or (3) gotten in trouble about it. This is why to me the story from the beginning has sounded like the Office Space scene about using the right cover sheets on the TPS reports. There are rules and preferences and policies, most of them promulgated from above and disregarded until a problem arises. Did a problem arise? Or was the problem that the policy wasn’t observed (like not using the cover sheets on the TPS reports)?
But you’re using it to bring up something about the foundation. Kinda seems like a major leap.
Cacti
@Reggie Mantle:
In other bad news for Bernfeelers: Clinton still leads in CA by 387,000 votes with less than 150,000 votes left to count.
It’s over. Your guy lost. Move on.
EriktheRed
@srv:
You mean the Congress where the next President’s Party is going to make significant gains this November? Where they’ll likely take back the Senate? That one?
Chyron HR
@Bailey:
Yes indeedy, maybe the failed Clinton Foundation Scandal and the failed Clinton E-Mail Server Scandal can have a baby and it will be the scandal that at long last, after twenty-five years of failed scandals, finally brings down a Clinton.
Adam L Silverman
@Miss Bianca: Magic 8 Ball app says: “ask again later”.
Gin & Tonic
@Reggie Mantle:
Grumpy Code Monkey, in contrast with you, has a fairly lengthy commenting history here. Funny how in a lot of cases good will builds up over time, and someone can disagree with the consensus without poo being flung, whereas in other cases, somebody new walks in and pees on the rug and is then surprised when his pearls of wisdom aren’t widely lauded.
Reggie Mantle
@Gin & Tonic:
So tell me, O Arbiter and King of Balloon Juice, how many posts does it take? 100? 200? 500?
Chyron HR
@Reggie Mantle:
Depends, do you mean the total posts made under ALL your fake names or just this one?
FlipYrWhig
@Feebog:
Also because the characterization of “extremely careless” applies to a “they” which means, in context, HRC and her colleagues. Was HRC extremely careless? Comey didn’t actually say that, you’ll notice. Seems like what he was getting at was that a lot of people in the State Dept. sent or forwarded emails that contained security-relevant information without thinking twice or stopping themselves (as he thinks they should have). But IIRC — and this may have been from Adam Silverman’s earlier posts on the subject? — there’s a way that _receiving_ _unrequested_ classified information (or whatever the technical label is) also puts you on the hook for having done something wrong. I’m no expert so I’m open to corrections of that impression.
FlipYrWhig
@Chyron HR: “…and I saw one of the babies and one of the babies looked at me!”
Technocrat
I don’t really get this response. It sounds like you understand the innate absurdity of govt/corporate IT – a workers view – but still expect it to be navigated flawlessly – a managers view. It’s not so much that I disagree with your response, as I’m curious how you reconcile both views.
I consider stupid, sub-optimal decisions par for the course in IT. The frequency of these decisions does matter, but their total absence is a chimera, IMO.
Trollhattan
@Chyron HR:
Sometimes, when a mommy scandal and a daddy scandal love each other very much….
Cacti
@Trollhattan:
But they don’t have to love each other.
Bailey
@Chyron HR:
I’m not interested in bringing down a Clinton. I am, however, interested in a Clinton that can exercise some good judgment, and both Clintons have some rather incredible lapses. I will applaud when they do things right but will not blithely overlook the absolutely avoidable faceplants.
Perhaps I am just conditioned by how excellent a president Obama has been. HRC will likely not come close and will find a way to score numerous own goals.
JerryN
@FlipYrWhig: Actually, Comey did say, “For example, seven e-mail chains concern matters that were classified at the Top Secret/Special Access Program level when they were sent and received. These chains involved Secretary Clinton both sending e-mails about those matters and receiving e-mails from others about the same matters. There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position, or in the position of those government employees with whom she was corresponding about these matters, should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation.” That’s pretty directly describing HRC as extremely careless.
Look, overall the outcome is pretty much as expected but it paints a somewhat worse picture than the Clinton campaign presented. Does this matter much? Probably not. But it’s not exactly a shining victory for Clinton.
nutella
So there’s no mention of an earlier claim that a) the Secretary of State must be available 24/7 by email and phone and b) the Department of State email and phone systems were up and running much less than 24/7.
Am I remembering that right? Because to me that was an indication there was strictly right/wrong decision to make.
Or am I remembering that wrong?
Omnes Omnibus
@Bailey: Just off hand, did you ever get around to explaining how Bill Clinton talking to Loretta Lynch was an ex parte communication?
FlipYrWhig
@JerryN: Fair enough.
Fair Economist
@Grumpy Code Monkey:
So she was supposed to do it through State servers, which were substantially less secure than her own? Or was she supposed to do it like Powell and use a commercial service where literally hundreds of people could have read it and where Google (or whatever service) would datamine it? That’s preposterous. The truth is that Hillary Clinton used the safest available service to email information she needed to do her job. There was no better choice.
nutella
@nutella:
Oops. Fixted.
WJS
@Reggie Mantle: Where’s the indictment, fucko?
satby
@Tee: besides, it’s absurd to assert that someone would be adept at using a BlackBerry but not able to use email on a computer.
Thymezone
@Feebog: Absolutely correct. Comey, the dyed in the wool Republican, has crafted a political hit piece, without even bothering to present facts to support his judgment, or to allow his imaginary defendants (Clinton, and staff) an opportunity to present a defense against the non charges of a non crime. He’s just held his own prosecutor kangaroo court, declared them all guilty, and presented the package as a gift to the GOP for its use at their pleasure for the rest of the summer. Nice job.
I think the Clinton camp, and her friends, will present that defense, and at the end of the struggle, the Comey condemnation will fail in its intended purpose. Comey will move on to a new job at FoxNews eventually and can spend the next four to eight years bashing the Clinton administration.
Villago Delenda Est
@amk: I’m not wetting any beds, but Mrs. Greenspan certainly is.
Villago Delenda Est
@Bailey: And yet the alternatives to Hillary offer substantially worse judgement. Bernie’s inability to actually have plans aside from hand waving turned me off, and the less said about the sterling judgement of Drumpf, the better.
Villago Delenda Est
@D58826: DING DING DING DING DING
Reggie Mantle
@WJS:
No indictment, no problemo, right? Never mind “extreme” carelessness with classified material. Never mind serious lapses in judgment. As long as someone’s not indicted, they’re good to go, President-wise.
Reggie Mantle
@Villago Delenda Est:
New slogan: Clinton 2016–EVERYONE ELSE IS WORSE!
That’ll get ’em to the polls.
Cermet
@Reggie Mantle: well thought out – that someone used a private e-mail server knowing full well every congress-thug would hunt her government posts down to look at in a magnifying glass. What you need to worry about is the NSA reviewing yours (and all of us) emails and posts. Talk about dumb and dumber; you and the num-nuts who thinks you have any point what-so-ever. LOL
Ella in New Mexico
@Technocrat:
Besides the fact that I have several family members who work/ed for the government and the stories I could tell you about how impossible it was to get shit done perfectly, I’ve come to believe that THAT management view has become the least common denominator in the average worker’s life in America.
As an RN, I deal with this mindset every single day. Every single day I break at least 5-10 “unbreakable” rules, rules that mangers and business people not doing my job came up with in order to do their jobs easier. ALL of which make absolutely no immediate difference in what I actually do for my patient, in their safety or quality of care. From “no food or drink at the nurses station” to entering info in yet ANOTHER location or form, because someone in a random office in Admin can’t collect their data on our antiquated system easily. Even though they could just ask the OTHER department that collects it to share the data. Sometimes you really wonder if they want you to actually do the job you were hired to do, or just document that you do it.
No manager should ever be allowed to supervise people if they don’t spend at least one day a month doing their jobs, as an average grunt, with no special favors or privileges. Let’s see how many of THEM spend a 12 hour shift without a God-damned water bottle in the drawer next to them.
Reggie Mantle
@Cermet:
Riiiight. Like Hillary isn’t going to be as bad, if not worse, on that subject.
piratedan
still sitting here wondering how in the fuck can the NSA deny the request for the then sitting Secretary of State for a modern secure means of communication with people that require her attention to matters all over the world…..
Cermet
@Reggie Mantle: Try that under bush (via his VP bloody hands cheny) a major undercover agent working to defeat terrorist from getting fucking nukes was outed and her cover destroyed; very likely many of her critical contacts were compromised and some may well have been killed. But a e-mail with a handful of top secret posts (which most likely were minor) that never was shown to have been compromised in any way or manner is important …right. You are either stupid and refuse to learn or just a dumb ass troll.
catclub
@Thymezone: I just heard about the 911 caller on the man from United Arab Emirates in national garb.
She claimed he was pledging allegiance to ISIS. I think he was speaking in Arabic and she does not understand Arabic, but your translation of what Comey said reminds me of the way this woman misheard words another person said.
Reggie Mantle
@Thymezone:
So classic…Comey exonerates Hillary criminally, but questions her judgment in regard to classified materials, and he’s suddenly part of the Great Conspiracy.
No questioning the Queen! Off with their heads!
Cermet
@Reggie Mantle: Finally, a good post that makes sense – there you are absolutely correct.
Jim Parene
@Miss Bianca: I adore you for the U. Utah Phillips reference!
Thymezone
@Reggie Mantle: So classic, in the Bj sense of what passes for a conversation on this shitpile. I didn’t say anything like what you said I did. I said that Comey presented no evidence to support his assertion, apparently held a trial, perhaps with himself and an imaginary rabbit, maybe with his staff .. and convicted Clinton and staff of something called “extreme carelessness,” without benefit of counsel or the opportunity to present a defense. That’s what happened.
You can call it a conspiracy if you want to. You can argue that he was just being patriotic, or that he has a brain tumor. But you cannot announce that I am declaring the existence of a conspiracy. I will however concede to calling Comey an asshole, an abuser of his position, and a political hack, based entirely on what he did today.
Don’t put words in my mouth, motherfucker. I don’t like that.
encephalopath
@Corner Stone:
Yes… it looks like Comey is attempting to justify all that time and money being spent on an investigation that found absolutely nothing. His statement as an ass covering quality to it that just doesn’t sit well with me.
“No crimes were committed. The end,” would have bee a better statement.
Instead he wanders off in some really weaselly tangents. Someone COULD have gotten into the server, even though there’s no evidence of that. The State Department actually HAS been hacked, so why even bring this up?
“They” were careless with classified information. Who, exactly.
And classified how? Like classified in the cable service, moved to non-classified email, then sent to someone without the clearance to see that information? THAT”S a classification breach, but he doesn’t say anything like this happened. Just “careless.”
Other people wouldn’t have gotten away with this, he says. “Administrative sanctions” would result. When have Secretary level department heads EVER been subject to administrative sanctions for anything?
When has trawling through 4 years of work email looking for dirt ever been done to another government official like this? If you did this to anyone you would find similar levels of irregular nonsense. Why are we expected to believe Clinton’s email archive is somehow unique and special regarding the handling of classified information?
WJS
@Reggie Mantle: You are, of course, free to indict Hillary if you can. Citizen’s arrest! Citizen’s arrest!
And, yeah. I would add more but I’ve spent all day laughing at assholes like you who selectively apply outrage to things you don’t understand so it’s all good.
J R in WV
@Miss Bianca:
Mountain State white bread agrees; I couldn’t watch that show enough to know who was playing which character… terrible.
Also, if Colin Power and Condi Rice AND G W Bush all used non-federal email systems, how can anyone diss Hillary Clinton for using a non-federal system?
When I watched EPA’s contractors all leave when another corp got the low bid to support EPA’s IT structure, and no one coming on knew the difference between one system and the other, I lost all respect for federal IT infrastructure. I don’t know if the FBI has actual employees running their IT investigations, but I bet they use the same cluster-F of contractors.
Anyone know for sure?
And if Powell and Rice did it, why aren’t they getting interviewed?
pseudonymous in nc
@? Martin:
This is exactly true. In January 2009 the state of the art smartphone was the iPhone 3G, and even that wasn’t close to being a commercial hit until the 3GS later that year. Back-dating 2016 infosec principles to 2009 (or even 2012) feels revisionist, especially given the number of governmental systems that have been owned by hackers since. Arguably, State’s SOP had more procedural wiggle room than it ought to have done, but if the alternative is a classified network where you basically have to go into a room and use a computer connected to a separate set of tubes, then it’s barely a network at all by the standards of the 2010s. Which is why it’s changed since then.
WJS
@pseudonymous in nc: You’re exactly right. They’ve been trying to retroactively apply standards that weren’t well defined in 2009 in such a way as to derail a presidential campaign in 2016 without tipping their hand as to what this has always been about. Selective outrage at someone’s E-mail usage is proof we are not paying attention to the right things anymore.
encephalopath
Comey is arguing that the content of Clinton’s email is unique and special in its wrongness and we should all pay attention to it, but what’s unique is the fact that this was done at all. We have no way to evaluate whether Clinton’s actions are special in their wrongness, while admittedly fully legal, because we have never seen a federal department head subjected to this kind of public investigation before.
I don’t get where Comey is going by making these sorts of claims in his statement.
Technocrat
@Ella in New Mexico:
You know, I said it like it was an IT thing, but duh you’re right. It’s a manager thing (or more probably a middle-manager thing).
Boom. I think you’d quickly have more sensible regs if the people creating them had to live with them!
jl
@encephalopath: Does anyone know what was ‘unique and special in its wrongness’ about the stuff in the emails that was labeled as classified at the time it was sent? I remember reading about some material in the emails that was highly classified, but also almost identical material in the public press at the time (in NYT, IIRC). Was Comey referring to stuff like that? Anyone know?
Captain C
@RandomMonster: TV Tropes has a trope on why Seinfeld may not seem funny to viewers who are too young to remember TV before it: Seinfeld is Unfunny
On the other hand, if it just doesn’t tickle your funny bone, that’s OK too. For me, it has some good moments, but too often I just want to smack the characters for being @$$holes.
grandpa john
@Bailey: some how your reply does not reflect your self supposed impartiality
encephalopath
@jl:
Exactly.. Comey is making sweeping generalization about… well someone’s legal wrongdoing while being really vague about what the supposed impropriety is and who did it.
Irony Abounds
@Grumpy Code Monkey: I haven’t read any comment past yours, and I have no doubt you will Fournierized in later comments. With that said, I agree with your sentiments.
jl
@Irony Abounds: For me, it depends on the nature of the classified material that was in the emails, and we don’t know that. As I said above, there was some news a while ago about publicly available information that paralleled highly classified material, and picking over the threads of emails to see what was what. If that was what it was, then I think case could be made that this is a total hothingburger.
Miss Bianca
@piratedan: Yeah, that’s kind of the big question for me, too: “SOS asks you to do something, and your response is, ‘sorry, no can do?'”
tybee
@Miss Bianca:
the answer to that sort of question is: that’s an error but if you insist that i do that, put it in writing.
that chills a LOT of bullshit.
i’m also amused at the number of IT folks who are/were email admins.
FlipYrWhig
@jl:
From the OP, some of the email exchanges…
I have a hunch that “classified materials” and “classified matters” are different, but this isn’t my area at all.
jl
@FlipYrWhig: That kind of language is why I am asking if anyone knows whether this is about ‘classified matters’ that were also reported on in the press. That concerns the weird world of parallel classified and unclassified information on the same topic, and sometimes is the same information, in which case this whole thing might be total BS. I think that kind of language is evidence that is exactly what the investigation was about, which is a nothingburger. But that is just a strong suggestion. I’m wondering if there is any information about the specific very bad and no good stuff that Comey said was the problem.
Groucho48
@JerryN:
I believe one of those email chains was the discussion of a newspaper article about drones. It was classified because any mention of drones required Top Secret classification. I believe another chain was about scheduling a meeting with a foreign leader. Again, any communication discussing foreign leaders is automatically classified. I wouldn’t be surprised if the other chains were of a similar nature.
Or, as Comey puts in in his hit job, there is not enough evidence at this time to prove this.
Davebo
Good grief. These days everything short of the Uniform of the Day in the POD is “classified”.
You know it’s highly classified when you read it in the New York Times or WAPO.
Let the nuts wail all they want. This one is behind us.
J R in WV
@encephalopath:
This. Powell, Rice, SecDef, you name them, four years worth of hard geo-political work documented on one’s computer accounts, there will be exceptional stuff when shit hit the fan that is outside every rule, procedure, or common practice.
And, as others have said, Secretary of State is the security authority for the Department of State. She decides when to declassify data. The end of that story!