
Clinton approved CIA drone assassinations with her cellphone, report says - titzer
http://www.salon.com/2016/06/10/fbi_criminal_investigation_emails_clinton_approved_cia_drone_assassinations_with_her_cellphone_report_says/
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cyberferret
She could have approved drone strikes using smoke signals or carrier
pigeons... - it all boils down to the same thing - execution of human beings
without a trial...

~~~
golergka
This description fits almost any action that you can perform when you're at
war. So, either you advocate that war courts review cases of all the enemy
soldiers before aithorizing an attack, or you have to come up with a more
precise definition of what is exactly wrong here.

Clarification: I'm not a fan of CIA assasinations, far from it; but "execution
without a trial" isn't logically justifiable complaint: we do it in a lot of
situations no reasonable person would argue with.

Edit: my original comment was pointing out errors in someone's logic. Sadly,
everybody seems to think that this means that I've taken a certain side in
drone debate. This is not the case; please, read my comment and understand
what exactly am I saying — and what I'm not — before reacting.

~~~
m_eiman
Saying that the US is at war with various groups of people in the country side
of Pakistan is a rather generous definition of the concept of war, isn't it?

It's more like "the US is blowing up people who may or may not be those
intended, but it's kinda hard to tell since they're doing it all by remote
control".

~~~
jflatow
Also, congress hasn't declared war since WWII, which is required by law.

~~~
rurban
No it's not. They came up with the interpretation that the
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Powers_Resolution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Powers_Resolution)
allows them to engage into limited armed conflicts without Congress
authorization. Which is dearly needed, because that's what they are doing
since decades, with the CIA and friends. And several such CIA wars happened
even without the President's authorization, but usually the just lie to the
president to able to engage in such armed conflicts.

What this War Powers Resolution does not authorize is a formal declaration of
war (Clinton did not care) and any engagement voiding the Geneva conventions.
All those drone killings are of course war crimes. This is one of the reasons
the US does not recognize international law.

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Fuxy
Whenever I hear something about US drone Strikes I always think how long until
the other side starts getting drones developed and and easy way to mass
produce them and smuggle them into the US assemble them and start launching
drone strikes from within the US on US persons of interest like politicians
and CIA officials.

Drone parts are getting cheaper and cheaper and easier to get it's only a
matter a time someone start using them as assassination tools.

Plus they don't really need to be as big or as powerful as what the CIA uses
they can be small and weak and make it up in numbers. I certainly would hate
to be on the receiving end of a swarm of assassination drones.

It's a slippery slope and the more they get used the more pissed off people
with the know-how and the reason to do it are created like people who have
lost family members in these strikes.

~~~
gonvaled
Which of course is the only bad thing about drone strikes, right? That they
could ever hit the "right guys"?

Who cares that hundreds of innocent civilians are killed, if they are not
american citizens?

Disgusting, really.

EDIT, for the downvoters

you'll have to justify what in my comment you do not like. The parent is
making the case that what worries him/her is that drone strikes will
eventually be used to attack american targets, and by implication suggesting
that the current targets are not really something to worry about.

Or he/she is at least suggesting that is not as serious, since what he really
is worried about are american targets. Which, if you ask me, is a very
widespread opinion, thus my comment.

~~~
imgabe
Showing concern for one group of people does not imply a lack of concern for
another group. You're drawing conclusions that are not supported by the
original comment and being needlessly antagonistic. That's why you're getting
downvoted.

~~~
gonvaled
Sorry but western media (of which this forum is a subset, whether you like or
not), is _strangely_ always extremely affected by all attacks performed
against western targets, but usually completely oblivious to the attacks that
western powers are performing on foreign targets, usually civilians.

This does not look to me like it "does not imply a lack of concern for another
group". Once is ok, twice is ok, but whenever you see that "not lacking
concern for another group" actually means "not giving a sxxt about them,
because they are just second class people and who the hell knows where they
live anyway", sorry but I need to point it out.

Because being good on paper means nothing if you are actually pulling the
trigger like a madman all around the world.

~~~
imgabe
The commenter you were replying to, as far as I know, is not a professional
journalist and does not represent "western media". This is a private
individual making a salient observation about the risks of low-tech drone
weapons.

I'm not disagreeing that _all_ civilian deaths are a reason to be concerned,
but you're coming out of left field and injecting your personal crusade to a
completely unrelated comment thread. Make a new top-level comment with your
view if that's the point you want to make instead of picking a fight with
people who are talking about something else entirely.

~~~
gonvaled
We in the west are so convinced that we are speking from high ground, that we
go to the extreme to conflate western citizens with "high value people". We
are thus not really worried about what happens to the rest of humankind: we
are good, and drones are killing some people somewhere, imagine how horrible
if the bad guys came to the idea of using drones to kill us good people. That
is just horrible!

And you missed this part: this forum is a part of western media. The expressed
opinion is not an isolated one, is an extremely widespread one. Call it media,
or call it western society, the fact is that it is not a personal opinion: we
value the life of "interesting american person" above the life of civilian
bystanders in irak, and that is a reflection of what society we are living in.

You call it misplaced rant, I call it pointing a very big fault of our
collective opinion, one which is so intrinsically part of our nature that we
are even unable to recognize it by what it is: a despicable lack of humanity.

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Patient0
This is exactly the sort of political crap I'd rather not see on the Hacker
News front page.

~~~
rando444
It's political, but if you think about it, it's really technology/security.

I mean not only about this information falling into the wrong hands, but also
the fact that using unsecured channels for these things could lead to hackers
approving or even ordering drone strikes themselves.

~~~
JoBrad
Everything could be about technology/security. That doesn't mean it should be
on Hacker News.

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kogus
Maybe I'm being nitpicky, but this line really bothers me:

Under Sec. Clinton, State Department officials approved almost every single
proposed CIA drone assassination. They only objected to one or two attacks.

One or two? Which one is it? If they have actually gone through a list of
requests and vetted which ones were approved by the State Department, then
they know the actual number. A hand-wavy figure indicates that someone sat
down, skimmed through the list, found "a couple, I think" and wrote the
article. Something of this importance deserves rigor.

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elcapitan
"There's an app for that!"™

~~~
rvense
Droneder! Swipe left and you'll never hear from them again.

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curiousgal
I finished watching "13 Hours" last night, a movie about the Benghazi events.
The use of drones to kill indirect threats is ubiquitous and yet when it came
to saving Americans citizens, drones suddenly weren't in use? dafuq.

~~~
dogma1138
Drone strikes are arranged and approved weeks and even months in advance it's
not like the US has an army of drones waiting to strike at targets of
opportunity. Also allot of the "drone strikes" that happen over pakistan
aren't actually drone strikes it's just more convenient to both Pakistan and
the US to claim that no manned aircraft are used but quite a few
released/leaked BDA images show craters that are way too big for AGM-114's and
even the GBU-12's which is the biggest thing that US drones can currently
carry. While some of the craters might be caused due to secondaries many of
them don't show the tell signs of being secondary explosions.

But onto Benghazi drones wouldn't really help, drones won't stop mobs of 100's
of people with AK47's storming a compound, even full on CAS with gunships
could had very little effect on the end result as far as US casualties go, the
people storming the both the embassy and the secondary "support compound" were
doing it knowing that they will most likely die in the process. These aren't
regular armies that when they suffer even high single digit %'s force
depletion sound the retreat because it would be foolish to stay otherwise.

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littletimmy
Is this against the law, or just the way things are done now? My gut instinct
would be there's more examination that goes into a drone strike but after the
Snowden revelations I don't know what to believe.

~~~
bertil
Outside of handling confidential information on non-secure channels, the issue
could the authentication. You want to be sure it is actually her approving it.

Another issue could be about the quality of the briefing: if the phone call
was all she got, it might mean that she wasn’t briefed enough to review the
evidence and make an informed decision.

However, I think that this just goes to the line: she was reckless with
confidential information — which, at this level, is against the law.

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dragonwriter
My bigger problem is with the Secretary of State approving drone strikes than
with the "with her cell phone" part. The Secretary of State isn't the Director
of the CIA, nor in any chain of command above the Director of the CIA, nor
anywhere in the military chain of command.

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nmc
Original source is the WSJ: [http://www.wsj.com/articles/clinton-emails-in-
probe-dealt-wi...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/clinton-emails-in-probe-dealt-
with-planned-drone-strikes-1465509863)

(may be paywalled, just google the headline to bypass)

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gloves
I stopped reading at "An explosive new report reveals..."

Just give me the actual news, not your opinion of it.

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whbk
The US had some "bad luck" with drone strikes during her tenure. There's been
no evidence released to prove it (and it may well not exist), but for people
still questioning why this email setup matters: Given that it's abundantly
clear any state-sponsored hacker would have no difficulty hacking her server,
it isn't exactly a stretch for our enemies to move the targets of drone
strikes and put innocent civilians in their place to win the propaganda war. A
former State Department aide attached his name to claims that her sloppy comms
may have foiled multiple counterterrorism operations. [1]

That said, this isn't "just what it is that the FBI is looking to" as this
article says. The FBI director originally said they expected to wrap this up
by October 2015. If we were talking about a few emails sent over the holidays,
this would've been wrapped up a long time ago. In a separate civil suit, the
FBI filed a motion to prevent the release of documents, or even the number of
documents, for which a FOIA request had been issued. [2] Even the number of
documents would tip their hand? The only explanation that really makes sense
there is that they're building a RICO case against the Clinton Foundation -
and thus a ton more documents than would otherwise be relevant are in play.
The fact that they started investigating VA governor McAuliffe's time at the
Clinton Foundation shortly after receiving the backups of Clinton's server
from their third-party data backup service makes this kind of obvious. Yes,
the backups that Clinton's associates attempted to have destroyed even after
the State Department asked them to turn over her emails. [3]

[1] [http://www.newsweek.com/hillary-clinton-email-terrorism-
slop...](http://www.newsweek.com/hillary-clinton-email-terrorism-sloppy-
communications-463605)

[2] "disclosure of these records [his immunity agreement] could reasonably be
expected to reveal the nature, scope, and focus of the FBI’s activities in the
investigation.” [http://lawnewz.com/high-profile/new-fbi-filings-reveal-
pendi...](http://lawnewz.com/high-profile/new-fbi-filings-reveal-pending-
investigation-into-clintons-e-mails-is-far-from-over/)

[3]Despite Boian’s statement that Platte River set up a 30-day revolving
retention policy for Clinton’s emails, Johnson’s letter noted that Platte
River employees were directed to reduce the amount of email data being stored
with each backup. Late this summer, Johnson wrote, a Platte River employee
took note of this change and inquired whether the company could search its
archives for an email from Clinton Executive Service Corp. directing such a
reduction in October or November 2014 and then again around February, advising
Platte River to save only emails sent during the most recent 30 days.

Those reductions would have occurred after the State Department requested that
Clinton turn over her emails.

It was here that a Platte River employee voiced suspicions about a cover-up
and sought to protect the company. “If we have it in writing that they told us
to cut the backups,” the employee wrote, “and that we can go public with our
statement saying we have had backups since day one, then we were told to trim
to 30 days, it would make us look a WHOLE LOT better,” according to the email
cited by Johnson. [http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-
world/national/articl...](http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-
world/national/article37968711.html)

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okoksowhatis
The problem is that we kill at all. This is self-evident.

