
State Dept.: Clinton IT aide's email archive is lost - a3n
http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/279233-state-dept-claims-to-have-no-emails-from-clinton-it-aide
======
luso_brazilian
See also the "Bush White House email controversy": [1]

 _> The "gwb43.com" domain name was publicized by Citizens for Responsibility
and Ethics in Washington (CREW), who sent a letter to Oversight and Government
Reform Committee committee chairman Henry A. Waxman requesting an
investigation._

 _> Waxman sent a formal warning to the RNC, advising them to retain copies of
all emails sent by White House employees. According to Waxman, "in some
instances, White House officials were using nongovernmental accounts
specifically to avoid creating a record of the communications."_

 _> The Republican National Committee claims to have erased the emails,
supposedly making them unavailable for Congressional investigators_

It is hopeless to expect voluntary transparency by the government, there is no
incentive to

1) comply with the rules when transparency is clearly detrimental to your
backroom deals or

2) to punish the very people that appointed you to your high positioned job or

3) to punish the opponents in the other party when they fail to comply while,
after 4 years, the positions can be reversed and you may be in the crosshairs
in a similar investigation.

Nothing was done when Bush did it, nothing will be done now that is Hillary
doing it and don't expect anything different regardless of what party manage
to snag the congress and White House.

If regulatory capture is a significant problem in the private sector imagine
inside the government itself. It is hopeless.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_White_House_email_controv...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_White_House_email_controversy)

~~~
tanderson92
The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed the
initial suits, suing for information related to Hillary Clinton's e-mails.
Then they were taken over by Clinton acolyte and hatchet-man David Brock,
using his super PAC money. They have since had a, um, strategic restructuring.

Incredibly, this line of inquiry has been dropped by CREW.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
If you're interested in corruption in government, the CREW story is incredibly
interesting. Most of these agencies have internal quality control and feedback
systems, notably the Inspectors General.

In many cases these systems are no longer working like they should. NGOs tried
taking over that role.

Now we're seeing the NGOs being "strategically restructured"

Who's left? The press? They suck up to whomever is in power. If they don't,
they get locked out. SV? All they care about is keeping the money machine
going.

I'm looking around and not seeing much of an answer.

~~~
blowski
Perhaps forums like HN and /r/politics genuinely are the best we have.

~~~
TheRealDunkirk
Seriously? The prevailing biases of both, while not making them completely
useless, prevent them from being a useful feedback mechanism. /r/politics sure
isn't going to hold HRC accountable for an illegal email server. It's _why_
/r/the_donald has become what it is.

~~~
llamataboot
My general feeling about r/the_donald is that it is a perfect example of Poe's
Law [1] driving a feedback cycle of continued irrational extremism. I used to
think i had a pretty good eye/ear for spotting subtle sarcasm and trolling,
but I honestly haven't been able to tell what is a serious post in that
subreddit for months now.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law)

~~~
Karunamon
I think you may be reading it the wrong way. I've been in their IRC channel a
few times - there is very little trolling happening in there, lots of genuine
enthusiasm.

..combined with a stated and enforced policy of zero tolerance for public
dissent, mostly as a defense mechanism from the divide-and-conquer concern
trolls who tend to infest political communities. They characterize it as a
"24x7 Trump Rally", and that's exactly what it is.

If you're more interested in the discussion than the echo chamber, there's
/r/asktrumpsupporters. You'll find little of value on the main subreddit
unless you actually support the guy.

------
gthtjtkt
Shouldn't they be in the Datto backups? The ones that even Clinton herself
didn't know about because they were kept by mistake (and against her orders)?
The ones that contain the 30,000+ emails she and her lawyers attempted to
delete because they were "personal"? The ones that _still_ haven't been
released despite numerous FOIA requests and a lawsuit?

I have a feeling we're only getting one side of this (the State Department's)
while the FBI already has these emails. The FBI would have no reason to chime
in and tell the public "It's ok, everyone, we have those emails too." And the
State Department obviously wouldn't have them since she wasn't using their
email system.

I'm 99.99% sure nothing is _missing_ here, it's just not where they expected
it to be. Pagliano already struck a deal with the DOJ and appears to be
cooperating, which probably isn't a good thing for Clinton.

~~~
djrogers
> Pagliano already struck a deal with the DOJ and appears to be cooperating

No, not really -
[http://bigstory.ap.org/article/a2bf597d0dec4780af6f8710822ee...](http://bigstory.ap.org/article/a2bf597d0dec4780af6f8710822ee9d7/ex-
clinton-staffer-again-says-no-testifying-congress)

Unless he changes his mind again or is compelled to testify...

~~~
gthtjtkt
He's cooperating with the FBI and DOJ. Do you really think they'd offer him an
immunity deal that allowed him to plead the 5th?

What you're talking about are separate investigations by Senate committees.
It's understandable that he has no desire to participate in those dog and pony
shows.

~~~
snuxoll
I may be mistaken, but judicial immunity automatically waives your fifth
amendment rights since you can no longer incriminate yourself. I can't really
imagine the point otherwise.

------
chishaku
Can't the FBI just query the NSA's impressive archive?

They don't even need a warrant.

[https://www.aclu.org/doj-report-fbi-activities-under-
section...](https://www.aclu.org/doj-report-fbi-activities-under-section-702)

~~~
spacehome
Maybe they did and the rest is parallel construction?

~~~
daveguy
Parallel destruction?

~~~
fab13n
No, parallel construction. That's what law enforcement does when it has
illegally gathered proofs: knowing what they're looking for, they figure out
another way to "find" it again, but this time through legal and seemingly
lucky paths. The later proof is expected to stand in front of a judge, whereas
the "real", original one wouldn't. They might also do it to protect a
confidential informant.

Essentially, it's to legal proofs what laundering is to money.

~~~
giardini
Daveguy was making a joke with the "parallel destruction". I think he already
knows what parallel construction is, but your clarification here is well-
placed for those unacquainted with the concept.

------
spoiledtechie
Isn't this the least bit fishy? To say that politicians are held to a
different standard than the average citizen is in full effect here. Its a HUGE
cover up. How is she not in jail yet?

~~~
sebular
You're right, politicians are held to a different standard-- a much more
strict one. Clinton had her own private email server set up. I'm sure that
many people on this forum can back me up on this one, it's quite legal to set
up an SMTP host on your own domain.

The issue is that she was apparently told to use the .gov email address
provided to her by her work, and she did this instead.

People have accused her of doing this for various reasons, but personally I
don't believe there's evidence to show that she did this for any other reason
than wanting to stand out and look special by sending mail from
hillary@clintonemail.com, and so that she could use her own BlackBerry.

~~~
morgante
If I told my employer that I refused to use a company email address, they
would absolutely be suspicious.

And that's for a lowly developer job dealing with absolutely no classified
information.

~~~
GVIrish
That's not the right analogy. It would be more like if you were a famous
business person brought in to be CEO, and wanted to keep using your personal
email.

You'd probably still catch some flak but you might have enough power/influence
to actually do it whereas if you're employee #42593 of a big company there's
no way in hell you're gonna get your way.

~~~
morgante
Oh, I agree that a CEO might get away with it. That doesn't make it right.

Similarly, Clinton will probably get away with it. That doesn't excuse her
behavior though. Might does not make right.

~~~
GVIrish
You're absolutely right. I think a lot of people who get to the top in
politics or business have an extremely high level of confidence and
determination, but sometimes that turns into arrogance and a disdain for
rules. Clinton is one of those people that I think has an attitude of 'rules
are for little people'.

Hopefully she'll keep that character flaw in check as president, but I
wouldn't be surprised if she didn't.

------
DanielBMarkham
I have a feeling that this case is going to be studied for years no matter how
it turns out.

In ethics the appearance of impropriety is generally considered enough to be a
breach. I _think_ most independent observers would admit that there's plenty
of bad-looking stuff here, however with the election season in full swing I
could be wrong.

More interesting, I imagine, is the legal maneuverings going on. Assuming that
something went way wrong here, and please enough with the clintonesque _tu
quoque_ arguments, it's fascinating comparing what happened to the witnesses
after the investigation was launched here compared to, say, aaronsw.

In Aaron's case, a school set up a camera and caught him accessing files he
shouldn't. In the Clinton case, scads of sensitive emails were sent all over
the internet from a server that shouldn't be handling them.

The difference in evidence here looks astounding, especially if you know
something about email.

In the first case, a lone prosecutor is able to use the full force and weight
of the U.S. government to harass and threaten. There's a small number of
people involved, limited resources, and lots of press.

In the second case, over a hundred FBI agents are working hard night and day,
one supposes, but evidence goes missing, hard drives which need to be in
evidence are instead sent to secure destruction facilities, and we can't even
seem to be able to to locate low-value secondary information. Press consists
of lots of pieces slanted against the government's case.

My money says nothing comes of this. I'd give 50-50 odds that in some fashion
it's tossed to the Congress to consider impeachment, and of course that'll
never happen.

There are a lot more incredible contrasts between these cases. I hesitate to
mention them due to folks getting upset about their political candidate not
looking so good.

~~~
giardini
_"...over a hundred FBI agents are working hard night and day, one
supposes..."_

NBC says there are _12_ FBI agents working on the case:

[http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/fed-source-
about-12-fbi-...](http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/fed-source-about-12-fbi-
agents-working-clinton-email-inquiry-n548026)

titled

"Fed Source: About 12 FBI Agents Working on Clinton Email Inquiry".

Undoubtedly they are a hand-picked group (although whose hand did the picking,
I don't know).

Furthermore I fear that FBI agent Comey is in Clinton's pocket/corner. Comey
gave Hillary Clinton a bye in the Whitewater investigation:

[http://www.westernjournalism.com/wow-something-
from-20-years...](http://www.westernjournalism.com/wow-something-
from-20-years-ago-is-a-major-clue-about-what-fbi-will-do-to-hillary/)

Comey has done well in his career in the years since Whitewater.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
I must be repeating what I heard in March.

"Official: FBI team on Clinton email probe not near 150"
[http://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/how-many-fbi-agents-
hi...](http://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/how-many-fbi-agents-hillary-
clinton-email-221299)

The Washington Post reports "dozens" [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
fix/wp/2016/03/28/th...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
fix/wp/2016/03/28/there-are-147-fbi-agents-involved-in-the-hillary-clinton-
email-investigation/)

------
404error
I still don't understand how someone who is being investigated by the FBI can
run for President of the United States and have this be perceived as a non
issue.

~~~
mikegioia
Welcome to the circus that is the 2016 Presidential Election. She's running
against "The Donald" ffs! The whole thing is just disgusting, top to bottom.

~~~
404error
Ha! Yes, it is disgusting. Can you imagine applying for a job and the employer
finds out that you are being investigated by the FBI. I would imagine that
there would be some questions/concerns about hiring you. You can't just brush
it off and say "Oh that, don't worry about that."

------
Mendenhall
The RNC also said they have no text messages or blackberry messages sent to or
form Clinton during her time in office lol the state department declined to
discuss that, isn't that nice.

"In addition to the emails, the State Department also does not have any text
messages or BlackBerry Messenger messages sent to or from Clinton during her
time in office, the RNC claimed. The State Department declined to discuss that
declaration."

------
pasbesoin
Audit-ability is essential to accountability is essential to effective
government -- in our case, a democracy (well, ok, a republic).

Failure to provide for this should be considered outright failure in one's
job. Failure to serve a fundamental tenant of our form of government.

To the extent it is define as a crime by our laws, it should be fully
prosecuted.

In the private sector, I've cleaned up far too many ill-defined, ill-
documented messes. Private or public, these things end up being and serving
gross dereliction of duty. I've seen it over and over.

~~~
smileysteve
The counter perspective to this is that Hillary's privately managed server has
better audit-ability (and could be interpreted to higher security standards)
than government IT.

The big "flaw" that I see in this "crisis" is the assumption that government
servers (which have knowingly and publicly been hacked: OPM - or have leaks:
Snowden) are somehow more secure than a given private server. And we can all
probably find both a government and private website that doesn't use TLS/SSL,
SPF, or authenticated SMTP.

~~~
pasbesoin
Thank you. I, for one, don't assume government server configuration and
management is necessarily better.

Another thing that bothers me about Clinton, is that years after Manning's
leaks (which I do not condemn, personally), word was/is that State's document
/ information systems situation is as messed up and deficient as ever.

They had a "big problem", by their own definition and rhetoric. Yet, years
later -- years under her watch -- apparently nothing substantial has been
fixed. (I may be wrong on this, but it's the latest that I recall reading on
the matter.)

------
pdabbadabba
They don't have a PST archive, but they still have at least some of his
emails. FTA:

> “The absence of this email file, however, does not indicate that the
> department has no emails sent or received by him,” she added. “In fact, we
> have previously produced through [the Freedom of Information Act] and to
> Congress emails sent and received by Mr. Pagliano during Secretary Clinton’s
> tenure.”

------
hbrid
Makes me wonder whether NSA is seriously involved. If they were to have
vacuumed up and provided all these deleted emails to the FBI in the course of
this investigation, that will have been the absolutely most benevolent
application of broad surveillance powers I can think of.

~~~
dTal
The NSA quietly and illegally helping an investigation into a presidential
candidate in an election year is pretty much the antithesis of benevolence,
regardless of what you think of Hillary. That kind of activity is basically
worst-case scenario, war-on-democracy level stuff.

------
sschueller
Let's hope the Hacker that claims he got in has a backup and can supply it to
the FBI.

------
bitL
Obstruction of justice anyone? Ooops, wrong caste!

------
diakritikal
No coverups here at all.

~~~
johndevor
Move along, _citizen_.

~~~
jefurii
And pick up that can while you're at it.

------
dccoolgai
If there are emails that were deleted in a .pst file, they are (or at least
were back when I was a MS desktop admin 8ish years ago) entirely recoverable
by remapping the index at the head of the file (i.e. the messages are "soft-
deleted")...should be a piece of cake to recover...

------
abhi3
It increasingly seems that they knew what they were doing since the beginning
when they decided to use the private server rather it being a
mistake/oversight. One can just hope this drama gets over before the
convention.

------
mariusz79
NSA should have a copy...

------
OliverJones
.pst? Microsoft Outlook? Really? Wasn't that software package very exploitable
in the 08-12 timeframe? It seems likely the server was some version of
Exchange.

Why would anybody in her right mind -- not to mention a powerful and visible
government official -- operate her own email server?

In that timeframe there were several SaaS email providers that were very
secure. A couple were even certified as HIPAA Associated Business Entities
(for certain limited use cases). That's a high standard of security.

It's not hard to believe that servers for staff use operated by a department
of the US federal government were ancient, poorly maintained, and vulnerable.
It's almost certain they had unreasonable usage limitations. "Sorry, your
mailbox contains 24 / 25 megabytes so it's almost full." Plus, they probably
thought they were cool because they had a T1.

But why couldn't a powerful person like Secretary Clinton figure out how to
contract with a competent SaaS? I bet the big email provider on Amphitheater
Road would have jumped at this project.

Finally, how come nobody involved in this cluster __*k has ever answered the
question "why?"

~~~
smileysteve
> In that timeframe there were several SaaS email providers that were very
> secure. A couple were even certified as HIPAA Associated Business Entities
> (for certain limited use cases). That's a high standard of security.

Thank you for saying this.

In this crises we're comparing a government IT department that can't keep
audit logs via .pst, imap, or exchange and comparing it to a non-cloud
provided private email server.

Both should be considered inept in 2008 and certainly now. Unfortunately, the
assumption is that the government IT is somehow trustworthy.

------
atemerev
I'd look at the same place where those IRS email backups are. Ask Lois Lerner.

------
jpollock
After the Microsoft anti-trust trial, people started to realize just how much
information there was in an email history log. Later trials just hammered it
home.

In response, everyone added a chapter to their document retention policy to
cover emails. Emails are typically kept for 1 year, with exceptions for
specific named individuals (CEO, Member of Parliament, Senator, Secretary of
State, you get the idea). Secretary of State's retention period seems to be 30
years [3].

Individuals would be able to mark a document to be kept, but that's the
exception rather than the rule.

As soon as a court case where a person is mentioned starts, that person's
documents are typically retained regardless of schedule - destroying docs that
might be material is really frowned upon by the courts.

All of this is typically mediated by a custom document retention server which
costs a lot of money.

The state department has a document retention policy [1], and I think this
section [2] covers email. It lists retention at TEMPORARY:

    
    
      Transitory Files (including in electronic form)
      TEMPORARY: Destroy immediately, or when no longer needed for reference, or
      according to a predetermined time period or business rule (e.g., implementing the
      auto-delete feature of electronic mail systems).
    

There might be something specific, but they all seem to be 1-2 years.

With that in mind, let's look at this specific situation. The controversy
started in March 2015. That puts Feb 2013 - the date the RNC is saying marks
the end of the period they want revealed, outside of the document retention
window (Controvery Start - 2 years).

However, once asked you have to _search_ for a record. So the State Department
would have searched through backups, there may be an old tape sitting around
containing a backup of his personal computer. Nope, they couldn't find a copy
of the PST (Microsoft Exchange or Outlook!). They would have found emails that
he was party to where the other person was on a longer retention schedule.

They may still find others if he sent emails to departments that don't have
retention policies.

Since this is a government department, all of this is defined by statute -
it's up to Congress to set the time periods. If they want it changed, they
need to pass a bill and then fund it because document retention is expensive
(think format conversion).

Finally, I understand that finance companies (stock traders) have additional
retention requirements, even covering chat/SMS/etc messages.

There is no cover up here, just proper application of good policy.

[1]
[https://foia.state.gov/Learn/RecordsDisposition.aspx](https://foia.state.gov/Learn/RecordsDisposition.aspx)

[2]
[https://foia.state.gov/_docs/RecordsDisposition/A-03.pdf](https://foia.state.gov/_docs/RecordsDisposition/A-03.pdf)

[3]
[https://foia.state.gov/_docs/RecordsDisposition/A-01.pdf](https://foia.state.gov/_docs/RecordsDisposition/A-01.pdf)

------
jonny-bravo
"Lost"

------
ck2
Oh just give this nonsense up.

WTF are y'all hoping to find? Seriously.

If you have issues with Hillary there are plenty of policy issues you could
attack and at least I'd respect your right to argument.

------
awt
Maybe Lois Lerner has it?

------
Cozumel
Well, that's convenient!

------
a3n
Huh.

~~~
reefoctopus
>The State Department has lost all archived copies of the emails sent to and
from the man believed to have set up and maintained Hillary Clinton’s private
email server during the four years she served as secretary.

