Hillary's actions very likely gave secret information to America's enemies. Snowden's actions gave secret information to the public.
Hillary's intentions were to circumvent FOIA rules and break the law. Snowden's intentions were to be end unconstitutional spying and uphold the law.
Hillary's intentions were in no way to break the law. That was very clearly declared false by the FBI.
http://i.imgur.com/NneHu1w.jpg
I don't know what the right answer is here, but I am certain that I don't find incompetence a better excuse than malfeasance.
In the United States there are laws regarding criminal negligence, and hypothetically speaking, if someone died as a result of her criminal negligence, it would be considered criminally negligent homicide in most states and could result in prosecution and a real prison sentence.
Would she ever be tried or found guilty of it? Based on the outcome so far, I doubt it; the powerful and connected rarely fall. But the standard does exist.
2) Other evidence showed that this particular set of talking points ended up being sent by secure fax anyway.
2) That's why I said this is what intent looks like -- I'm not making any claims about whether she did in fact break any laws. I have no way of knowing that.
No it is not. "nonpaper" means scrap off all sensitive data and send it nonsecure. Comey explained what she meant in this email; long version would be: "okay, remove all the sensitive information from this note so that you can lawfully send it via non-secure line; then go ahead and do it".
No intent here.
This is the problem. It's not their job to find intent but that a crime had been committed and she should have been prosecuted. There are literally THOUSANDS of examples where someone hadn't intended to commit a crime and were punished regardless of that citing the often quoted "ignorance of the law is no excuse".
Hillary knew the law. She should have known better being in her position but she chose to circumvent the rules (for a number of reasons) and as a result the law was broken.
Her escape from prosecution is nothing more than a blatant public travesty of justice.
That's not at all what you're saying. The FBI isn't full of psychics, and has no ability to detect intention or read emails that have been permanently deleted.
Politions' actions should be transparent, at least in a better world.
Now imagine that your job isn't merely writing some app but literally about making or breaking world peace, and that your IT department isn't just some tired Windows admins down the hall but the entire disaster that is the same federal government that tried to launch healthcare.gov. And that at no point in your job did anyone even set you up with an official email account in the first place. What would you do?
Both of them broke the law; both of them had very good reasons for doing so. There are arguments that they made Americans less safe by their actions, but there are definitely arguments in both cases that they made Americans more safe by their actions.
And in any case, fixing the email systems for an organization this big is a messy project. There are countless employees who have the existing system set up and have workflows depending on it. There's special handling of classified information, records-keeping, and so forth. All of this will break, somehow, when you try to migrate it. I'm sure Hillary could have chosen to be the meddling exec who demands an IT overhaul to suit her needs if she really wanted to prioritize that, but it does not actually seem like that would have been better for America. (Or for her public perception, for that matter.)
If incompetence in operating unclassfied email systems on behalf of the State Department was a crime, it seems like some State IT folks would be going to jail too.
> Hillary's intentions were to circumvent FOIA rules and break the law.
One of the major findings of the FBI investigation was that she did not have criminal intent. In fact this was a major reason they recommended against prosecution.
Snowden didn't have criminal intentions either, but many people want to prosecute him to the fullest anyway. But I also believe that Hillary's lack of charges is absolutely politically motivated. Some people are more equal than others.
What he wants is an opportunity to present a whistleblower or "public interest" defense. These are affirmative defenses--you admit you committed the crime, but that you had a really good reason for doing so, which should excuse you from punishment. "Self-defense" is a well-known affirmative defense against prosecution for a violent crime.
HRC risked giving away the identities of clandestine agents.
Snowden proved that some of them committed war crimes, and that the NSA and CIA routinely betray our trust.
What the "classified documents" said were that the government is secretly violating the constitutional "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures". Innocent citizens are routinely having their e-mails and phone calls watched, and recorded in archives permanently.
The "classified information" you keep referring to is that the government is violating its own constitution.