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Comment by jrowley | Hacker News Reader

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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