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Comment by bergoid | Hacker News Reader

>I'd feel obliged to add some "but, her emails..." reference.

HRC's secret email server and the leaked Kash Patel emails couldn't be more different.

The first one is, in the words of a federal District of Columbia judge: "one of the gravest modern offenses to government transparency". [1]

The second one is the malicious leaking of some private emails. These emails are frankly none of our business (unless you are part of Kash Patel's family or friends).

[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2018/12/07/politics/clinton-emails-l...

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Not sure why this is being down voted.

There is a difference for sure between hosting your own email server and using it for official government communications and having your own personal email address used for personal communications.

The issue that seemed to completely disappear related to the use of Signal messenger for official white house communications seems more aligned to the email server issue. It was reported heavily at the time what the reporting requirements were and that they would have to submit the full chat histories within 30 days or something like that to stay within the law. I never heard whether that actually happened or not, the story just died.

I think we all know the answer to that…

It's beind downvoted because "but, her emails..." is not saying it's the same thing, but rather, that so much fuss was made about her emails, and then when something similar happens, the right conveniently ignores it. For example, as you mentioned, signalgate, or the times members of the Trump administration used their "own email server and using it for official government communications and having your own personal email address used for personal communications."

It's being down voted because it's attacking a strawman. No one is saying they are the same exact thing. It's that you will see people activatley defending this as a big nothingburger when in truth, it's still a security breach that has the potential to lower our defenses.

HN is overrun by partisans whose majority does not care about factual interpretations of current events and flags level-headed comments in favor of cheap shots, double standards, hyperbolic misconstructions, and ad hominem. I don't think it's difficult to be critical of the government without resorting to such low-brow commentary, but it is what it is. I once offended some people by comparing HN to Reddit, but the lines are getting more blurred by the day.

The moderators need to take a more active stance on getting these hot button political topic wars off HN. We're seeing some sort of brigading and/or manipulation going on here with behaviors (like flagging) that are not consistent with what I think we want to have on the platform. Certainly no following of the guidelines. Just look at the top comment here.

"Normal" people are stuck in two modes, either they ignore it or they need to descend to the same level. I put normal in double quotes since I honestly don't know what's normal any more. I would like to believe the majority of the kind of community we used to have here on HN does not operate at this level of discussion.

To some extent this is a reflection of broader polarization, tribal behavior, and social media manipulation. Even Reuters IMO have chosen a sensationalist headline and seem to have an agenda here. There's an easy tell - can you tell the political orientation of the author by reading the article/comments etc.

This topic could be an interesting one and we could actually have some good discussions about security. Instead it degenerates into what's essentially a political bashing flame war.

We know for a fact that the current DoD are using private Signal messages for coordinating military action. We know they are constantly using private emails. We are sending the president's son-in-law to negotiate with foreign countries despite not being a government employee and also have massive conflicts of interest.

> HRC's secret email server and the leaked Kash Patel emails couldn't be more different.

That's not what the "but, her emails..." reference implies. It's not saying they are the same thing. It's saying that the amount of attention and excitement made about her emails was a show. And you know it was a show, a mockery, because with cases like this where something equally bad happens and nothing will come from it. Same thing with the signalgate from last year, or all the previous times the Trump administration used private emails or private communication for government business as well.

So, no. The fact that it is not the same is immaterial. Which makes the rest of your comment immaterial.

> And you know it was a show, a mockery, because with cases like this where something equally bad happens and nothing will come from it

How is this case equally bad? It's just his private email being hacked, he did nothing wrong.

There are probably about a thousand things you could point to in the Trump administration that are worse than Clinton's private email server, but this isn't one of them.

Was it equally grave when Colin Powell did the same thing?

Yes. That man lied us into the Iraq war. He is a traitor.

my standard for criminal acts is also whether i don't like the guy.

> HRC's secret email server and the leaked Kash Patel emails couldn't be more different.

But it is literally no different than what the Trump administration did [0] after all of their finger pointing. Idiocracy runs deep across both political camps.

[0] https://www.politico.com/news/2024/12/18/federal-officials-n...

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