There are two problems with this obsession over the Hillary email situation.
The first problem is one of substance. Yes we understand, she should not have muddled this line between a government account and a personal account. We get it. But it is out there. It has been discussed ad nauseum. It is now transparent as a policy matter. She has admitted she made a mistake. What more do you want?
The second problem is that it is absurd to imply that this dedicated, patriotic, committed woman, who has put her own life at risk countless times traveling around the world representing the United States as Secretary of State would knowingly jeopardize national security.
Finally the Republicans, with most of the media happily playing along for ratings and something to talk about – because God forbid they would actually do real reporting on the policy questions of our time – have been making much of the possibility that the Russians and the Chinese, for example, may have gotten access to classified material through her error. We will never know, but the problem is we have no idea the extent to which most communications are actually secure today. Can you say OMB server scandal? So this whole tempest is just an opportunity for the Republicans to score cheap political points.
All of the Democratic candidates plus Joe Biden, including Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton both, are leagues above any of the Republicans running. So does this scandal really rise to such a level that it requires us to form the circular firing squad?
Let it go. Hillary is an outstanding public servant.
The OMB breach involved different systems in different networks. Nothing in the OMB breach ever threatened Pentagon networks, presidential communications, or their counterparts in our closest allies (never mind enemies).
Discovering that an admin in a far-flung branch of a publicly traded corporation was stealing from petty cash is a qualitatively different matter from learning that the CFO was defrauding investors.
Let me pose a hypothetical — suppose you were a high-ranking intelligence officer in the German government. Suppose you were already helping your government (specifically Ms. Merkel, arguably one of the most powerful people in the world) deal with the disclosure that the US government had been penetrating your networks for at least five years. Given this information about Ms. Clinton’s handling of such matters as Secretary of State, what do you think your advice to your handlers would be when considering the prospect of her election as President?
I agree that Ms. Clinton probably didn’t “knowingly jeopardize national security” — the keyword being “knowingly”. As I’ve written elsewhere here, I’m far more interested in a clarification of her current priorities than I am in any apologies.
If the supporters of Ms. Clinton want me to “let it go”, a very good start would be to stop posting diaries and comments pertaining to it — especially when their explicit or implicit message is that only those who have “drank the right wing propaganda, witch hunt, smear campaign kool-aid against Hillary” (sic) are concerned.
I can, of course “let it go” — I agree with you that Ms. Clinton is superior to every GOP candidate, and so I’ll have to. Nevertheless, I wish that we Democrats showed more awareness of just how important these matters are.
It’s not an obsession for most of us. Hardly as obsessive as some people’s need to defend Clinton from any criticism, however well-deserved.
Her use of an unsecured server created a very real security breach. This is a big deal. That she used that unsecured server while traveling in China is astounding. China has one of the most pervasive and sophisticated cyber-spying operations on the planet. It’s very unlikely that they would fail to exploit such an obvious target. She should have known better; it’s hard to believe that she didn’t. As Edward Snowden points out, anyone below Secretary of State who did something like that would have been fired and possibly prosecuted.
Clinton “put her life at risk countless times?” Please document this. The only such instance I’ve heard of turned out to be a fiction that she created during her ’08 campaign.
As misguided and factually-challenged as the Republicans are, their use of this issue does not mean it’s not important.
Clinton making a “life at risk” claim would be up there with Sarah Palin keeping an eye on Russia.
they could almost certainly provide them.
And give detailed notes on each and every one.
I can attest that this was the case during the tenure of my fellowship. I had a security clearance, took on oath to uphold the security of the U.S., and had to attend mandatory counter intelligence and cyber security briefings to keep up to date with the various cyber threats to the U.S. security. I was searched on my way out the door every single day to make sure I didn’t carry anything out. I had to bring my hard drive to a secure room and watch it get destroyed when my clearance was deactivated and I was escorted out of the building by an armed guard. Flash drives were banned, you couldn’t bring any in and we were not allowed to use them in the building.
Part of the reason I’ve been so harsh on Manning and Snowden here, even if I see value in some of their disclosures, is that I took the same oath they did and knew the consequences, as they did, for failing to safeguard this information. For the life of me, I have no idea who cleared these private servers or thought this was a good idea. It may not have been illegal or even an uncommon practice, but it was profoundly poor judgment from a cyber security standpoint, let alone a political one. They clearly weren’t more secure than the public ones, so her rational is baffling to me.
I appreciate that she has owned up to her mistake and apologized and I look forward to her testimony before the Committee. We should also be very careful going forward in distinguishing between the right wing smear machine that is politicizing and trivializing a serious security breach, and the actual merits of the argument that this was put sensitive information at risk. The main difference is I believe Hillary cares about the security of this country and Trey Gowdy wants to score cheap shots, but I also think she should make it clear that she takes her mistake personally and has learned from it and won’t commit similar mistakes as President.
…you’re going to have to tell me how you managed such a high security clearance at such a young age:) I also think I would have been scared at that age by having to be escorted out by an armed guard as if I were a criminal.
Part of my visceral reaction is even if something marginally legitimate comes out if I don’t like how we got to that point I put on a don’t give a hoot attitude. Likewise her husband may have technically perjured himself in the Paula Jones deposition and before the grand jury, but since I felt it was stemming from questions that should never have been asked on a case that never should have been pursued motivated by political hatred I had practically gotten to the point of saying, “Go ahead and lie through your teeth, Mr. President; it’s the least you can do to give this whole charade the metaphorical one-fingered salute.”
A friend with better qualifications didn’t get it because he had relatives in Shin Bet. I applied 15 months before the internship was supposed to start, and consented to a full FBI background check, and apparently I passed. Got a nifty document signed by the President giving me a clearance for a period of time, I think it has expired and I actually got in the habit of keeping it off most resumes for fear of the ‘you seem overqualified’ kiss of death, but it was a cool experience and I’m glad I got to do it, even if I got rejected for Foreign Service last go around and haven’t landed a policy job.
If you can now see how tight security was an unpaid internship you can imagine how intense it must be for regular employees, and maybe you can understand why so many people I worked with are pissed off about this whole thing. But I completely agree with the mindset that usually if the Republicans are on one side and the Clinton’s are on the other, it’s likely the Republican side is bullshit. It is because of their partisan witch hunt that I think the actual issues at play here are getting overshadowed by electioneering and cheap ‘gotcha’ politics, even though cyberterrorism and espionage on the scale that the Russians and Chinese are practicing it is probably a bigger threat to the homeland than ISIS.
Let me concede at the outset that the “Clinton fatigue” that me and many others feel is not completely their fault, but related to aggressive right-wing coverage of their every move.
I think SomervilleTom and kirth have covered the security implications in detail, and neither is claiming that a crime was committed.
One much less crucial, but, to me, important point. Whatever you might think of President Obama’s administrative abilities in general, the launch of the federal website showed that when push came to shove, he knew how to mobilize the tech community to support him. See, for instance, a recent article in the Atlantic, “The Secret Startup That Saved the Worst Website in America“.
Comparing Clinton and her IT troubles with Sanders in this respect, Sanders seems to have the edge so far. (Because of NYT paywall at the link below, I’ll quote one paragraph):
Nick Corasaniti, “Legion of Tech Volunteers Lead a Charge for Bernie Sanders”, New York Times, Sep. 3, 2015
There is a bit of young = good bias in this article, and I’m not sure how good the software is, but it’s nice to see them involved ….
At best it looks like she thinks the rules don’t apply to her.
And it is apparently an argument used by other higher level State Department officials in the past.
My whole point is, Hillary should get ahead of this and say not only did she make a mistake, it was a mistake many other high level officials in both administrations have made, something that is legal at present but maybe shouldn’t be. She should use her own experience as a case to make substantial cybersecurity reforms that are desperately needed.
That is not only the best way to spin this politically, but also I think, is the best policy outcome that we can hope for in this debacle. A concrete top to bottom cybersecurity review that safeguards standards for the future. Scott Brown was also bragging about seeing classified information, so it’s not uncommon for politicians to skirt the clearances when it suits their ego or their self interest, but it should be made uncommon by better policy.
I’m not aware of other “higher level State Department officials” who used private servers exclusively (emphasis on exclusively).
I’ve seen a rumor that Karl Rove did so — I haven’t substantiated that, and I view that as further evidence that it was a bad decision.
According to his own aide, and it was apparently an allowed practice. The State Department has said John Kerry is the first SoS to use his @state.gov email exclusively.
My point is not to exonerate Hillary Clinton, it is to show that she is not alone in this lapse of judgment and the double standards accorded to higher officials. I knew I would’ve been thrown out for using even my gmail account on a state department hard drive or server, it was strictly prohibited. And the best way to move forward is for her to apologize, which she has, but also insist that all officials be held to the same standard as regular government employees when it comes to handling sensitive information and cyber security.
Colin Powell had a government account and used it.
The issue here is Ms. Clinton’s exclusive use of her personal server.
But my point is I wasn’t allowed to used personal email at all, for the very security reasons that CIA officers who briefed me during orientation made clear-the aren’t secure. For the same reason my mid level law firm doesn’t allow private email, since even we have been hacked by Chinese servers in the past since we have government and industrial clients. These policies should extend to high level officials who have the highest clearances and thus, are the most valuable targets to hackers.
The GOP isn’t focused on that, it’s on an erroneous issue of a Benghazi coverup or Clintonian corruption, and very few critics of the Clinton’s are making the substantive cyber security argument.
A good corollary is Deflategate, the league allowed a stupid policy-let quarterbacks inflate their own balls and the Pats underinflated to the limits. The NFL responded by outlandish fines and suspensions rather than changing the actual policy itself for the whole league, mandating league control over the ball. It did nothing to stop the actual issue from happening again.
I fear the same result here-sanctions and criticism exclusively directed at Clinton rather than a blanket policy change ensuring full conformity with government clearance cyber security counter measures at all levels of government.
I’ve seen plenty of people bring up Powell (and Condi Rice) for using a private “email account” for government business . . . However this to me seems different than Hillary keeping a private email server in her home in upstate New York. Are you saying that “email account” and “email server” are the same? I honestly don’t know.
Also wondering what SomervilleTom has to say about the question above.
is that a private email account would be with GMail or an ISP. Google, for example, would be storing the private emails.In my case, Comcast is storing my emails. Powell’s emails would thus be stored on a private server, but not a server owned by him.
Indeed, a private email account on a provider like Google (GMail) or Rackspace (a major provider of corporate email services) would mean that the traffic would be on the servers of the provider. In your case, Comcast.
What Ms. Clinton did was use her own private server — at first, a PC physically located in her home (according to published reports) and managed by staffers with essentially no security expertise. She subsequently arranged to have the server managed by a professional firm (though I’m not sure whether she physically moved her hardware, moved the disks, or did something else).
The difference between the two is profound. While there are, of course, significant and legitimate concerns about putting highly-sensitive government material on servers operated by Google, Rackspace, Comcast, or some other provider, at least the basic security infrastructure (certificates, physical security, secure connectivity, etc) would be MUCH stronger than what Ms. Clinton did.
Perhaps a useful analog is from the food service industry. A would-be entrepreneur who envisions selling premium-priced super-duper desserts to restaurants is required to use a “certified” kitchen. One path is to rent kitchen space from an already-licensed supplier. Another path is to build out a certified kitchen, have it licensed by the state, and then use it.
What Ms. Clinton did amounts to cooking the desserts at home. Maybe nobody got sick (we’ll probably never know). It was apparently not illegal at the time. Now she proposes to open an entire restaurant. I think it’s legitimate for me to ask whether or not she has a different view of food safety and licensing requirements today than when she started cooking from home.
I’m ok with “let it go”. I’m not OK about being labeled a right-wing crank because I am horrified by her choice. Telling me that “Nobody got sick (that we know of) is not helpful.”
I see that one of the less insightful diaries on the subject has just been front-paged.
I don’t think this issue is going to go away any time soon.