Hillary's email server

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Mori Chu
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Hillary's email server

Post by Mori Chu »

I posted the text below on Facebok and thought I'd re-post here to see if others have thoughts.


As a computer person, I'm really bummed about this Hillary email server story. Such an irresponsible violation of proper information security principles. In general I trust Hillary a lot when it comes to matters of state, but this was a very poor decision. I can't tell whether to chalk it up to ignorance (Hillary not understanding the tech implications of what she did, or listening to bad advice of an aid) or malicious intent (wanting to be above the law, or wanting to hide or control her email records, etc.). Either way it's bad.

"... the references in dozens of emails to classified information, including 22 emails that the C.I.A. said contained information on programs or sources that were “top secret.”"

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/h ... ort-223574
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... story.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/26/us/po ... mails.html

I don't support the idea of any politician using a personal email account for sensitive private messages. But isn't the private server a very important distinction, though? Taking on the IT responsibility of maintaining a hack-proof private server is a big deal and is likely to fail. It smacks of poor judgment or poor advising.

I do not think it is okay to have an unsecure private server storing important information about our national security. Hillary is the Secretary of State, meaning that she had a lot of important information about our defense and relations to other nations. I don't have a smoking gun of a specific piece of data that she had on that server, and I don't have proof that her server was in a poorer state of security than the ones the government maintains. But the government servers have all the weight of the nation's IT experts taking care of them, rather than 1-2 random Hillary staffers doing their best effort to maintain a system themselves.

The best comparison I can think of is if you gave your money to a bank, expecting experts to care for your money; and they then gave your money to some random guy named Joe and asked him to hold the money in his house instead. You catch the bank and get after them, and they say, "Well, my guy Joe knows a lot about keeping money safe in his house; he put it under his mattress and everything. And you can't prove that anybody broke into Joe's house and took any of the money!"

Nobody can be an expert at everything. A smart leader surrounds him/herself with other smart people, listens well, and makes good decisions. This was a very poor decision, either in the choice of her advisors about IT, or in what to do with their advice. I don't think it is a "deal-breaker" because other candidates are worse, but it's still very disappointing.

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Indy
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Re: Hillary's email server

Post by Indy »

Didn't the report say that most (if not all) of the SecStates have done the same thing, going back 12-15 years? Not saying that it is a good idea, but it wasn't anything different than what was done before. Actually, I think what it said is that the others used their private email address, not a private server. So it was probably an aol, yahoo, or gmail account. Yikes.

Also, I read a summary that said none of the info in the emails was classified or top secret at the time it was being sent/received. The government retrospectively identifies items to be made classified, and does it so often, that Congress passed a law several years ago to limit the practice of just classifying everything as secret/top secret after the fact.

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ShelC
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Re: Hillary's email server

Post by ShelC »

I certainly don't know all the facts but knowing the history here, I think it is possible she was trying to hide certain things (some have suggested emails regarding The Clinton Foundation and business dealings). And why delete some 30,000 emails? The Clintons are always working that gray area and using legal loopholes somehow and it's why people don't trust her/them. Just seems like it's always something with them.

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