How Clinton’s email scandal took root
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
They can't provide her with a secure device. That's the Secretary of State of the United States of America who they can't provide with a secure device and so they leave her, literally to her own devices. Apparently nobody reviewed how she was communicating and advise her directly about her own behaviour. "Much less, ok what do you need? We'll design a system that does that with the best security we can manage. We'll tell you exactly what not to do. Mr/Madam Secretary." Whoever the secretary of state is.
Fire them all and start again. You can't do worse than this can you? No matter who you've got in power you're selling them and US State Department policy. Hillary, yeah, to hell with her, but that's entirely beside the point and totally a sideshow in this story. I can't think of a single politician who would know and understand the security implications of electronic communication without being directly advised in the most clear and emphatic fashion possible.
Does anyone care to speak up for the competence on display here?
The BlackBerry part is interesting. At civilian sites (Natl labs) you can easily get an encrypted blackberry, and even take it into classified areas. You are just required to power it off before viewing or discussing any material. Apparently the Dept of State can't even manage what we already do throughout the country.
I can't imagine, "Just power it off" as a security mechanism, and can only imagine that compliance is somewhat less than 100%.
Also - I can imagine there are different levels of classification, and that the Secretary of State may be in places where the rules might be somewhat more strict.
just seemed like she had really bad communication discipline and didnt believe it was that big a deal.
did get the impression that there really wasnt anyone who really wanted to step up and forbid her to do certain things not sure if there is a role who has authority to do that
I can understand where Clinton is coming from. If I took a new job and they told me I had to use the ed editor to write code, and could only send patches by fax, I would either demand to keep using my networked laptop, a version control system, and preferred editor, or quit on the spot.
It’s ridiculous that the NSA, the White House, and the State Department couldn’t work out some kind of secure mobile device solution for Clinton.
And where did everyone who fucking emailed her the entire duration of her employment think emails addressed to HDR22@clintonemail.com were going, exactly?
There was a lot of discussion some time ago when essentially the same story hit Slashdot: https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/03/17/2242233/emails-show...
EDIT: Lest I forget, this also happened after she'd set up the home email server...
Awkward is insecure.
Therefore if it is your job to keep communications secure, it is not enough to supply users with a secure system, it is also your job to supply them with a usable system.
she had as far as i can tell a usable system, i am under the impression it is usable because pretty much everyone else besides her and the president who have top level security clearance use the system and do their job...
Ever see a password written on a sticky note & stuck to a monitor?
The inconvenience of having to work to a certain level of security is highly awkward - so people reduce security in whatever way they can.
thats all...
that's probably the most likely scenario. they can punish her but they cant control her real time.
They could not find one to set hillary's mail correctly? Or they did not wished to? Or did Hillary refused to have an email set up by the government to protect her MI6/DGSE leaks?
And when you read the story of snowden's, he was able to trigger all alarms and get away with it.
And now NSA discover that too much data is a problem because informational entropy is growing so much it is hard to find the relevant data, even though informational entropy is a basic concept? (not to speak of false positive (innocent tagged terrorists) and false negative (missing the boston terrorist)).
ELECTINT is living its last years at my opinion. And I am okay with it. It has created a growing gap of perception between governments and the people they govern.
Sometimes failure are okay for me.
To err is human, to persevere is evil, and no machine can notice when it errs. Relying to much on ELECTINT is the first part of incompetence here.
(Non us citizen here btw)
If, as the above poster said, it's a rule/law shouldn't they be disallowed from running for president? By breaking a law that is.
Edit: (can't reply to dogma thread too long?).
Damn. I can sort of understand why, but how isn't this sort of law breaking being pushed by everyone else running for president. I would be pointing it out!
A small pro tip if you can't reply, click reply to any comment and just edit the post id to the one of the comment you want to reply too in the URL.
Bernie decided not to attack her over the issue at the first Democratic Party debate last year. It was honestly a smart move on his part. He wants to win the primary, but he wants his side to win even if he does not. In the general election campaign, Hillary will now be more convincing when she says it's just a Republican witch hunt (see "vast right-wing conspiracy" from her time as FLOTUS).
In the unlikely scenario that she's actually indicted for a crime, she'd probably be politically forced to drop out of the race, but who knows.
Any record created by any government official has to be kept and recorded this isn't some game if something happens there needs to be a clear trail of all records for accountability.
If a person can run their own records and communications they can do what ever they want and never be hold accountable because no one else knows those records even exist.
On a more comedic note Hilary could send a drunken email to Putin and cause WW3 and no one would be the wiser to why this has happened.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Records_Act
And this is the part which annoys me that the "left" ignores I love Bill Maher but he continuously brings this up and makes it look like there is a witch hunt against Hilary she violated a federal law her emails don't contain cookie recipes and links to cat videos and while they probably also do not contain nuclear launch codes they do contain information that could potentially be volatile (as it shows opinions which are held by public officials and individuals of note) as well as official statements/positions by the secretary of state and the administration at large (and any email from the secretary of state could even count as an "order" to some extent) as when you assume a public office there is little to no "unofficial" communications one can make especially when they are communicating with public sector executives, think tanks, and other elected officials.
It's worth remembering that Obama was also told no at first when he asked for a secure Blackberry. He only got one a few months later after making it clear as CIC he would get one or else.
So they made him one. Well why can't they make two? Or 20?
One answer might be bureaucracy. The NSA reports to the President, not State, so maybe they won't do as much for State. Turf-fighting is pretty common among federal agencies, especially those with overlapping jurisdictions.
Another reason might be that information collection is prized much more highly right now in the federal government that information assurance. Even if the NSA helps out State IA, will they get much credit for it? No. And will they get punished if they fail to help State IA? Obviously not.
Simply put, federal IT is very sick right now. The Clinton email saga is a tiny symptom of that. Snowden and the OPM breach are much larger and more consequential results of this pervasive problem.
they didn't make her one because she was not the president of the united states, she asked repeatedly for the same thing the president had and was told no.
most likely she was told 'no' by the NSA because, they know very well what is in their range of capabilities and so know what is probably in the range of capability of nation states.
When told not to do what she was doing she said she "got it," and continued to do it anyways.
I know this seems like nitpicking, but you said "She went against protocol because she wanted to and she could, and she should own the consequences". The fact is that she did not go against protocol. If the president or congress wanted to prohibit the use of certain communication devices, they would have. Just like if someone's supervisor didn't want them to use a blackberry, they wouldn't write a memo pointing out problems with the device. They would just say "Don't use a blackberry."
The issue is did she break any laws or policies regarding the handling of classified information. That's for the courts to decide. But if there was any evidence I'd imagine they would have brought an indictment by now.
That's mentioned in the article around this point,
> Under Title 18, Section 2071, it is a misdemeanor to take federal records without authorization, something that is sometimes referred to as the “alienation” of records. The law is rarely enforced, but a conviction can carry a fine or imprisonment.
Agreed it is for the courts to decide. It would be quite a farce if this didn't see the light of a court room.
> But if there was any evidence I'd imagine they would have brought an indictment by now.
It takes time to build a proper case. Note that the guy who set up the email server was just given immunity in exchange for his cooperation earlier this month. I imagine the DOJ only gives immunity when they are working towards something.
It's not exactly a vote of confidence that smartphones are so unsecure that the intelligence services will not even allow them within the walls of a secure building. Shouldn't that be the first problem on the list here?
It's not just that smartphones are insecure enough to allow external attackers. Smartphones would also make it easier for another Snowden to exfiltrate material.
And some of this is abundance of precaution - GCHQ and NSA banned Furbies because they weren't sure what would or wouldn't be recorded.
Which makes setting up her own server all the worse.
> They can't provide her with a secure device.
They did, but it wasn't a BlackBerry one. BlackBerry or Windows Mobile, I don't think either were that secure anyway.
I agree with the general sentiment that digital security in the government is between catastrophic and terrible. It's now going towards just "terrible", so there' some progress, I suppose.
> Which makes setting up her own server all the worse.
Obviously she didn't set up the server. She probably got one of her technical aids to do it. Probably not good either way, though. It's almost certainly unpatched.
> > They can't provide her with a secure device.
> They did, but it wasn't a BlackBerry one. BlackBerry or Windows Mobile, I don't think either were that secure anyway.
> I agree with the general sentiment that digital security in the government is between catastrophic and terrible. It's now going towards just "terrible", so there' some progress, I suppose.
1) this exposes that Secretary of State is a figurehead to placate world leaders, a tool for diplomacy, but not highly respected or valued by the intelligence community. The position exists on the outskirts of what they care about locking down.
2) they left her to her own devices on purpose. it was a trap she fell right into. they knew she would make a bad decision and let her hoping it would lead her to her own demise.
Since Hillary Clinton was long expected to be a candidate in this years election, it's not too much trouble to use that as an explanation.
Interesting how people forget that our government is to serve its people, not its own career interests. Hillary Clinton chose to sacrifice the country's interests (major security lapse) in order to cover her ass and hide potentially unethical (perhaps even illegal) activity.
All business conducted on behalf of the country should be made public as soon as it is safe to do so (no more than 5 years for classified material).
IMO there is but one mode for computer security - lock and key, perhaps barbed wire, perhaps armed guards. And certainly no connection to the larger internet. That's me reading Bruce Scheiner. Probably badly - computer security bores me no end ( because I know of the one way to do it, you see... )
Bluntly, those who do not serve their own career interests simply won't be in government. The Anthropic Principle - it's not just for physicists.
And that's rather beside the point. I'm by no means up on the details here, but it begins to look like there was no available solution that met requirements.
This is straight up Dilbert "Mordac, Preventer of Information Services" nonsense. Was having email available optional for her? Probably not.
And frankly, the entire narrative is that of imagined threats. I realize that's the mode de jour now but I still have the habits of looking for evidence not made up in the pursuit of political power.
After seeing the Clinton-bashing effort outed completely ( but the rotting zombie corpse of it still in use as a political device - inexplicably ) I'm just not inclined to hold any other opinion. MY conspiracy has been proven and completely outed.
I have little use for either of the Clintons, but there can be no explanation for the furor surrounding the American Spectator in that time except this one. Even when Neocon hit pieces were done on films like "The Power of Nightmares" they conveniently left out reference to the Clinton hit pieces, preferring to shore up the Neocon's evidence and other more tractable things.
I simply find use of The Big Lie patently and irrevocably offensive.
The processors, basebands, MMUs, all of them lack the tools necessary to create a chain of trust with also sufficient isolation at the application level to run normal applications. When everyone is saying "of course the FBI could get into the terrorist cellphone, just take it to TAO," this same thing applies to Blackberries and Android phones when applied by opposite numbers in China or Russia.
It is not possible to secure a mobile device from a nation-state attacker due (at least) to gaps in the hardware capabilities
Can't trust the hardware, can't trust the software. How can this device be ok to be used by a state official?
This is a throwaway tidbit in the article that I wish had a link to some more details. That one sentence hints at a very interesting longform article on its own.
Edit: I found these, which offer a few details. Surprising that it's from 1999!
""" Clinton lawyer David Kendall later told the State Department that her “use of personal email was consistent with the practices of other Secretaries of State,” citing Powell in particular, according to a letter he wrote in August.
But Powell’s circumstances also differed from Clinton’s in notable ways. Powell had a phone line installed in his office solely to link to his private account, which he generally used for personal or non-classified communication. At the time, he was pushing the department to embrace the Internet era and wanted to set an example.
“I performed a little test whenever I visited an embassy: I’d dive into the first open office I could find (sometimes it was the ambassador’s office). If the computer was on, I’d try to get into my private email account,” Powell wrote in “It Worked for Me: In Life and Leadership.” “If I could, they passed.”
Powell conducted virtually all of his classified communications on paper or over a State Department computer installed on his desk that was reserved for classified information, according to interviews. Clinton never had such a desktop or a classified email account, according to the State Department. """
...sooooo. Colin Powell did the same thing as Clinton and all we have is his (and his staff's) claims that they didn't communicate classified information over inappropriate channels? So then what makes this situation any different or any more deserving of attention?
Also, even if we now find out that Powell acted as poorly as HRC, that doesn't excuse either of them at all. It just means that they're both guilty, not that Hillary should get off the hook because previous Secretaries of State did it too.
Well that's pretty obvious: she's the leading candidate for the Presidency. Would you claim it's unfair that the leading candidate for the highest office shouldn't be heavily scrutinized or treated differently than other people? That premise wouldn't be realistic, the world has never and will never work that way. It's unfair? Ok, let's say it's unfair (assuming similar abuses occurred under the last Bush White House and aren't going to be pursued at all), I agree... so what. Since when do leading presidential candidates get treated fairly?
It's also unfair if Hillary is being protected from prosecution by the Obama Administration, which appears to be the case right now. General Petraeus had his career destroyed for doing less than what Hillary has done. We already know for a fact that she communicated classified information improperly.
If there's no evidence that Colin Powell did anything wrong, then you don't get to proclaim that he broke the law. The difference - if that's all the evidence that exists regarding Powell - is that we have a full chain of proof of what Hillary did.
Hillary should get into appropriate trouble for it (which would instantly end her candidacy for President), and there needs to be an investigation into any other recent past abuses. It's that simple.
I've seen other controversial topics drop off the front page that have recent submission times, and a decent number of points and comments, while others with similar stats remain on the front. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Among the things that can cause big drops:
User flagging.
Administrative action.
Staleness (some number of hours on front page)
Flamewar detector (flurry of responses to responses)
> Clinton's private email server was reconfigured again to use a Denver-based commercial email provider, MX Logic, which is now owned by McAfee Inc., a top internet security company. Except MX Logic isn't a "commercial email provider," it's a service that offers spam and virus filtering for email, very similar to Google's own Postini service. One of my friends who runs an ISP offers both Postini and MX Logic to customers but recommends MX Logic because he says the spam management is better.
http://www.zdnet.com/article/clintons-little-email-fuss-beyo...
They didn't even have physical control over the server? So anyone could've exploited internaps vulnerable ubersmith install and asked them to boot clintons box into recovery.
What worries me is not the ethical part - I am yet too cynical, but the total disregard of basic security.
The chimp needs everyone else to be using PGP too. Since everyone else is using the already secure email networks they see no need to use PGP.
And, really, PGP is not that easy to use. It's very easy for people to make mistakes with PGP.
A simple policy - I have tuned the server to discard any non encrypted and non signed email will force big chunk of the beltway elite to learn a new thing.
if you read the article, its pretty clear her entire team were blackberry users and refused to use anything else to communicate with each other.
Seriously, it's enough already. There's no new information to discuss.