Snowden on FBI's Clinton Email Investigation | Hacker News Reader

Snowden on FBI's Clinton Email Investigation

twitter.com

98 pointshownottowrite41 comments

The biggest difference between Snowden and Hillary is that Snowden did what he thought was right, owned up his actions and suffered the consequences. He lost everything just so Americans could know that their government was spying them. He lived the American spirit.

Hilary Clinton denied first, lied next and then claimed ignorance. Pretty much like her husband and the worst part is the Law enforcement accepted her "ignorance of law" argument.

FBI director's conduct is despicable and reduces average citizen's faith in law and order. It shows that Hillary is either too powerful or FBI is compromised.

It's really not conceivable to you that, given the way the law is written, her actions are not clearly illegal, while Snowden's were? The laws in question are written around intent, and Snowden's intent was clearly different than Clinton's.

I'm citing section (f) of the law:

"Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense, (1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer— Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both."

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/793

Gross negligence is sufficient, intent is not required.

From discussion about this outcome: "Extreme carelessness doesn't necessarily translate into gross negligence," said Laurie Levenson, a professor of law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles and former federal prosecutor. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hillary-clinton-email-sc...

Sure, poop is not same as shit as per the same lawyer.

FBI director Comey said: "Although we did not find clear evidence that Sec. Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless."

What I find interesting about that is that the law states that intent to violate the law is not required, gross negligence is sufficient.

Here the FBI director states himself that Sec. Clinton was extremely careless yet he doesn't recommend prosecution.

The law (section f): https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/793

Not a lawyer, but I think "extreme carelessness" is a step below "gross negligence". I think gross negligence has specific meaning.

Any lawyers in the house familiar with this kind of law?

Where ever I looked it up carelessness is almost always the first that comes up in online law dictionaries to describe gross negligence.

But I'm not a lawyer too.

http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/gross+negligen...

So, I agree with you. She violated the letter of the law. The argument that the FBI director is making is that the law, while saying that negligence is also a violation, has never been tested with regard to negligence. It has only been used to convict people who intentionally released secrets.

The FBI director is right that it is novel application of the law, but that does not mean we don't attempt to apply it. That's my problem, is that the spirit of the law is clear in this case, but he's saying we shouldn't attempt to prosecute because it would be a novel application, regardless of the spirit.

In the end, we will have to hold our breath and wait for the AG to make a decision. I believe if I were in her shoes, I'd be praying that I received a minor fine for contempt of court, because of the statement that was made that the server was in use to make it possible to use only one phone. She obviously lied, there, because they found that multiple devices had been used. Her campaign would benefit from her admitting that she misspoke, and facing a slap on the wrist, because many will see it as her having done nothing wrong but lying. If she doesn't even get the slap on the wrist, she could be torn apart by a willing opponent (or motivated super PAC). That's just my feeling on it, though. It remains to be seen if she will even get a slap on the wrist and it remains to be seen whether the American people even care about the scandal.

Gross negligence and extreme carelessness are not the same. Gross negligence is a conscious and voluntary disregard of the need to use reasonable care. Clinton clearly understood the need for reasonable care as she took some security measures and asked people not to email her confidential materials. She merely did a poor job executing on the knowledge that care was needed, which in this case is not actually illegal (especially when grave harms did not occur, which is an additional legal factor).

The laws are written around consent because the goal of the law is to enable punishment of people who intend to harm the US government. Note that Comey said that it's the individual's responsibility to know when material is confidential, even if that is not marked. Yet even information that is widely reported on in the media can still be considered confidential. The law is written to protect those who take "careless" or "negligent" actions in light of the difficulty of the task of maintaining confidentiality during the kind of extensive communications required to execute the business of government.

I'm not convinced by this, especially when I see emails from Sec. Clinton like these:

https://sli.mg/gHT80S

Someone had issues sending her a secure fax and she replied that he should send it nonpaper and unsecure and to make it even worse - remove the identifying header (classified, secret, top secret and so on)

This is intent in my view. Not to harm the US, but to ignore the law because it's more convenient to her.

That's not clear at all -- there's no evidence that information was classified in the first place, but moreover a request to convert to "nonpaper" refers to sending a written summary or briefing. Jake Sullivan is no fool, he's a law professor at Yale. It is equally reasonable to assume that the request to send nonsecure includes an implicit request to not include confidential materials in the "nonpaper" version. Rational and intelligent actors could be assumed to act in a legal way based on this legal request.

Gross negligence AND the actual loss/spillage of the information would, together, be sufficient under section f. Is there evidence of the latter?

Granted there is a difference between publicly releasing > 1 million secret documents, but he makes a solid point.

Agreed, but if I did that with 10 emails in my current job I'd lose my clearance and the job with it.

She probably would have lost her clearance and job also. Fortunately for her, she'd already quit and is already applying for a new job that doesn't require security clearance.

i think the main distinction that the law does is intent (to harm the US, etc.) - at least it sounded that way in that FBI statment on Clinton . So depending on whether you think that the US is the people and their constitutional rights or something else...

> i think the main distinction that the law does is intent

It's not just a law, but a policy/statute where it is definitive that intent is irrelevant to the violation. The law even references negligence, so this looks like what it is from his own statements. It's blatant corruption across the executive branch to circumvent law and executive policy.

The only difference in actions that I see is intent and exposure of public information:

Snowden attempted to whistle-blow through reputable non-government actors (Reporters living in a very public spotlight) for the benefit of the people. Snowden's actions were driven by the belief of being a true patriot.

Hillary meanwhile willingly bypassed operation security for personal convince, benefit, and quite probably as a means of evading oversight and data retention/discovery measures. The lapse in security cannot be estimated as their practices were so poor that any measurement is not possible; it is very likely that TIMELY, SENSITIVE, information made it in to the hands of foreign powers thoughtful enough to have even 'script kiddies' attempt to breach a very publicly known server.

Does anyone have a theory of why she did it? I mean, I can imagine using Gmail instead of corporate email if the latter doesn't really work and you can't do anything about it - definitely not the case here though. This prompts one to consider a more substantial motive than "getting a working email server" - perhaps hiding something from someone else working for the government - but to add up, it has to be worth the risk, and it has to be the least risky way of doing it.

So why did she do it? Or rather, what could plausibly be the reason?

So why did she do it? Or rather, what could plausibly be the reason?

Why would you rule out plain ol' laziness and poor judgement?

Remember, the Clinton family already had the private email server in question, and Hillary's Blackberry was set up to use it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Clinton_email_controve...

Odds are good she just didn't want to be inconvenienced and didn't recognize the ramifications of that decision.

Edit:

The cited article goes into more detail:

http://lawnewz.com/high-profile/we-now-know-more-about-why-c...

Here’s the results of our meeting yesterday… as I had been speculating, the issue here is one of personal comfort … S [Secretary Clinton] does not use a personal computer so our view of someone wedded to their email (why doesn’t she use her desktop when in SCIF?) doesn’t fit this scenario … during the campaign she was urged to keep in contact with thousands via a BB … once she got the hang of it she was hooked … now everyday [sic], she feels hamstrung because she has to lock her BB up … she does go out several times a day to an office they have crafted for her outside the SCIF and plays email catch up … Cheryl Mills and others who are dedicated BB addicts are frustrated because they too are not near their desktop very often during the working day

So there you have it. Basic laziness combined with stupidity and, I think, a pretty hefty dose of hubris.

The Hanlon Dodge!

> By shifting blame from a locus where it would be attributed to malice, to one where it can plausibly be attributed to incompetence, the severity of penalties incurred is lowered.

http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2011/10/14/the-gervais-principle-v...

Suggestion: start going to murder trials. Every time someone gets sentenced to manslaughter instead of murder, shout "the Hanlon Dodge!".

I'm sure the judge will appreciate your insight into jurisprudence.

Basically, the Clintons are waist deep on all kinds of dirty business. It wasn't just her personal email that were in that location or on that server. Other reports connect their Foundation, various staffers, and so on to those I.P.'s. The thing is that people like them like to be in control of their activities and secrets. They might think, absent Snowden leaks or something, that just having their people possess, host, and control the email achieves something to that regard. Maybe it even did.

Further obfuscating their schemes, being control freaks, and convenience all together are my theory. Fits their prior activity.

Hillary violated it on a technicality getting work done. Bad for sure. Snowden gave most of the systems and techniques NSA uses to compete with foreign nations and intelligence services to foreign correspondents for mass publishing. It's a nearly 100% different situation. Even if Hillary was punished, which she should be, he would have done something far more severe additionally with provable intent to expose it to foreign parties.

So, yeah, his foreign leaks are still worse than hers. If it was Hillary, I'm more for imprisoning her over track record of corruption and things like torture situation.

Is it worth noting that Snowden didn't release anything publicly? He only leaked info to journalists. All public exposure was done at the discretion of the journalists.

Edit: Title edited to reflect the fact that this is a month old. Still relevant IMHO, but I didn't notice the date before posting.

And just like that we go from #1 to off the front page.

This pattern of HRC Email articles falling way side on HN, is alarming.

It's not alarming. HN readers don't like HN being filled with the day's political drama and the kind of comments that follow it -- enough that the algorithm holds those stories to a higher bar, and the users tend to flag them. This is a link to a month old tweet, not something especially thought provoking.

If hn has a policy against political articles so be it, but it's not even handed. This post crawled it's way to #1 and disappeared. There is enough interest, and my comment and it's parent are based on practice that is uniquely specific to this topic.

I think your theory is right. If we wanted drama, that's every corporate media outlet right there waiting for us. If we want insight, better chance of it being on places like Hacker News with filtering out the rest. I comment a little on these threads but mostly ignore them.

Also, thanks for HN replies if I haven't said so. Kept me from missing two things just today. :) Btw, are you same guy behind Cyclone or different Dan Grossman?

Not me :)

Oh well. Good comments and great comment reply feature earns you your own respect. :)

I feel like I read somewhere that hacker news automatically filters snowden/intercept/leak stuff because it was polluting the front page for some period of time. Kind of a bummer but you get what you pay for I suppose.

The government wants to have a secret list of "potential terrorist" and then wants to deny them right to own guns and ability to fly. Yet, a lady who has clearly put national security at risk can run for president and commander in chief of American forces. Tells a lot about how government operates more like a Mafia. You cant touch Mafia bosses no matter what they do.

> Laws control the lesser man, right conduct controls the greater one, and neither control politicians

It's not actually clear to me that she put national security at risk. During the recent U.S. State Department hack, an unclassified email system was compromised. Most of the emails Clinton sent (99.6%) were not classified at the time, and could have been sent on that email system. Even most of those that were classified were not marked as such, and still could have been sent on the unclassified system in error (which would not have been illegal either, assuming there was no intent).

For me, a better argument has to do with minimizing exposure to freedom of information.

> It's not actually clear to me that she put national security at risk

What contained in those emails is irrelevant. The very fact that she deliberately to serve own personal purposes violated all security protocols. That itself shows that the lady is unfit to be trusted with national security.

Just the way police would arrest any guy with DUI whether or not he threatened someone else's safety. In California you would be arrested immediately if you are carrying your legal firearm in a car and if the case + barrel is not under a proper lock. Your intent, ignorance or whether you really put someone at risk would not matter.

(1 Jun 2016) This isn't news.

It's relevant in light of recent developments.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com