
Using Private Email, Hillary Clinton Thwarted Record Requests - SuperKlaus
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/04/us/politics/using-private-email-hillary-clinton-thwarted-record-requests.html
======
blfr
The whole disclosure stems from hacking of another e-mail account, apparently.

 _The disclosure that Hillary Clinton used a non-governmental e-mail address
while she was Secretary of State originally came courtesy of “Guccifer,” the
Romanian hacker now serving time in a Bucharest prison for his online attacks
against scores of public figures._

 _As TSG first reported in March 2013, “Guccifer” illegally accessed the AOL
e-mail account of Sidney Blumenthal, who worked as a senior White House
adviser to President Bill Clinton, and later became a senior adviser to
Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign._

 _When “Guccifer” (who was later identified as Marcel Lazar Lehel) breached
Blumenthal’s account, he discovered an assortment of correspondence sent to
Hillary Clinton at the e-mail address hdr22@clintonemail.com. The
“clintonemail.com” domain was registered in 2009, shortly after her nomination
to become Secretary of State._ [1]

They host with MX Logic[2], some McAfee's enterprise-y mail service. At least
it wasn't statedeptsugarycake22@gmail.com.

[1]
[http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/investigation/hillary...](http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/investigation/hillary-
clinton-private-e-mail-account-897531)

[2] [https://www.mxlogic.com/](https://www.mxlogic.com/)

~~~
001sky
The story seems a bit more complicated on how it was setup.

 _It was unclear whom Clinton hired to set up or maintain her private email
server, which the AP traced to a mysterious identity, Eric Hoteham. That name
does not appear in public records databases, campaign contribution records or
Internet background searches. Hoteham was listed as the customer at Clinton 's
$1.7 million home on Old House Lane in Chappaqua in records registering the
Internet address for her email server since August 2010.

The Hoteham personality also is associated with a separate email server,
presidentclinton.com, and a non-functioning website, wjcoffice.com, all linked
to the same residential Internet account as Mrs. Clinton's email server. The
former president's full name is William Jefferson Clinton.

In November 2012, without explanation, Clinton's private email account was
reconfigured to use Google's servers as a backup in case her own personal
email server failed, according to Internet records. That is significant
because Clinton publicly supported Google's accusations in June 2011 that
China's government had tried to break into the Google mail accounts of senior
U.S. government officials. It was one of the first instances of a major
American corporation openly accusing a foreign government of hacking.

Then, in July 2013, five months after she resigned as secretary of state,
Clinton's private email server was reconfigured again to use a Denver-based
commercial email provider, MX Logic, which is now owned by McAfee Inc., a top
Internet security company._

------
mootothemax
Hilary Clinton's not the first nor only politician guilty of doing this, NY
Daily News just put together five other notables:

\- Sarah Palin

\- Mitt Romney

\- Karl Rove

\- Andrew Cuomo

\- Chris Christie aide Bridget Anne Kelly

[http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/5-examples-
lawmaker...](http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/5-examples-lawmakers-
email-lawbreakers-article-1.2135674)

It definitely seems less than ideal for these rules to be abused like this.

The problem is, how do you stop it?

It's unreasonable to expect all private communications to be on public record,
and if you write a note to your babysitter during office hours, why should the
wider world have to know about it?

It's a difficult balance.

~~~
jeremyt
Well, the specific law referenced here is a federal law which only applies to
high ranking federal officials (e.g. Cabinet secretaries). It would apply to
Clinton, but not to most of the people on your list.

"The head of each Federal agency shall make and preserve records containing
adequate and proper documentation of the organization, functions, policies,
decisions, procedures, and essential transactions of the agency and designed
to furnish the information necessary to protect the legal and financial rights
of the Government and of persons directly affected by the agency’s activities.
(44 U.S. Code § 3101)"

The only relevant question is, "are emails 'records'?", and according to the
State Department, the answer is yes:

"All employees must be aware that some of the variety of the messages being
exchanged on E-mail are important to the Department and must be preserved;
such messages are considered Federal records under the law. (5 FAM [Foreign
Affairs Manual] "

And I might add that the accusation here is not that she had a personal
account in addition to her official one, it's that she didn't have an official
one at all.

~~~
dragonwriter
> The only relevant question is, "are emails 'records'?"

I don't know, I see other relevant questions. For instance, nothing in the
quoted law says anything about _how_ they shall "make and preserve" the
records, only what purposes those records must be adequate to serve. So, using
private email _alone_ doesn't seem to be a violation, it seems to be something
that might be the starting point for an inquiry as to whether she made and
preserved "ontaining adequate and proper documentation of the organization,
functions, policies, decisions, procedures, and essential transactions of the
agency and designed to furnish the information necessary to protect the legal
and financial rights of the Government and of persons directly affected by the
agency’s activities", but it doesn't alone provide an answer to that question
whether or not you consider emails as records.

~~~
danielweber
Undoubtedly emails are records. This has been established in previous scandals
from both parties that failed to retain them as required.

In the corporate world, if there were a legal requirement for compliance, the
auditor would verify that all work email is going over work servers, and then
review the policies in place on those servers. You could technically let a
special employee run their own server, but then _that server_ would need to be
audited, and the policies in place there reviewed. "Nah, you can trust Joe"
wouldn't cut it.

Otherwise the entire point of compliance laws just goes out the window.

~~~
dragonwriter
> In the corporate world, if there were a legal requirement for compliance,
> the auditor would verify that all work email is going over work servers

Legal compliance audits that I have been involved in tend to go beyond what is
_unquestionably_ prohibited by the law and also seek to identify and eliminate
activities which _might_ arguably violate the law (and thus create legal risk)
including, but not limited to, those which violate organizations internal
guidelines which are based on the applicable law but whose requirements may be
(generally, _should_ be) more strict than the law itself.

There are three different, but related, categories into which this might fall,
in decreasing order of breadth:

1) Behavior that would be of concern to a compliance audit focused on the law
in question,

2) Behavior that would violate administration guidance related to achieving
compliance with the law in question,

3) Behavior that actually violates the law in question.

You are arguing, and I agree, that it is #1. There are reports that
administration sources have indicated that it is #2 (I see no reason to doubt
them, though I haven't seen the actual guidance, so I don't have an informed
opinion.)

Neither of those, however, is the same thing as it being #3.

~~~
danielweber
As to #3, quoting from the article, as of 2009 (emphasis mine):

> agencies that allow employees to send and receive official electronic mail
> messages using a system not operated by the agency _must ensure_ that
> federal records sent or received on such systems are preserved in the
> appropriate agency record-keeping system.

How did they ensure this? As a few news stories, including the linked article,
have reported, they would have been immune from FOIA requests.

Here's another from [http://www.politico.com/story/2015/03/hillary-clinton-
used-p...](http://www.politico.com/story/2015/03/hillary-clinton-used-private-
email-account-for-state-department-business-115686.html)

> The fact that Clinton’s emails were not a part of official State Department
> records until recently means many of them would not have been located in
> response to Freedom of Information Act requests, subpoenas or other document
> searches conducted over the past six years

~~~
dragonwriter
> How did they ensure this?

Yes, that's exactly the question this raises.

> As a few news stories, including the linked article, have reported, they
> would have been immune from FOIA requests.

They would not have been immune. They _may_ have been _overlooked_ in the
course of handling such requests, although assuming anyone in the State
Department offices responsible for conducting document searches in response to
FOIA requests (or subpoenas, etc.) was aware of the practice, they quite
probably wouldn't have been, there just would have been an extra step involved
in handling the requests.

------
DanielBMarkham
I'm voting this one up although I have concerns the article could end up in
some kind of partisan BS here.

So let's be clear about the root of the problem: government regulations demand
that public officials have recordable conversations as part of their duties.
This allows openness and inspection. (It also allows political shenanigans)

It's a very, very similar situation to where we are with government spying on
the citizens. The government, for whatever reason, has decided it wants to
record everything you do of type X. As a subject of the government, you are
not given a choice. To record some information in some contexts might be
reasonable, in other contexts it might not, but all we're given is blanket
requirements.

What we're seeing with Hillary -- and probably with anybody else that has any
common sense -- is just blowing off the law and "making things work" without
regards to whether it is legal or not. For what it's worth, and I am a member
of neither political party, I'd do the same thing.

You can try to make this into an election-year deal about Hillary, or stand on
a soapbox and talk about government accountability, and you wouldn't be
entirely wrong. But the real issue here is that the freaking government is
trying to collect too much information about everybody. It's not just limited
to public servants. And the proper response to a government that refuses to
act in a reasonable manner is non-violent non-participation.

Having said all of that, I fully expect that point to be completely lost by
folks on both sides of this issue.

~~~
jes
> _And the proper response to a government that refuses to act in a reasonable
> manner is non-violent non-participation._

I couldn't agree more.

~~~
fche
Try "non-participating" by not paying taxes....

~~~
msandford
It's really too bad that not paying your taxes isn't thought of as a valid way
to voice your opposition to what's going on in Washington. I realize why it's
that way, but it's a real bummer to me. Not because I'm a greedy bastard who
doesn't want to pay a dime, but because elections aren't that great of a
feedback mechanism now that career politicians and parties and etc have
developed into neigh unstoppable powers that put people into office.

It seemingly has been in the past, but for some reason isn't now.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_resistance](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_resistance)

------
joshstrange
From what I understand she is not the first secretary of state to do this (All
her predecessors did as well) and the laws that require them to keep emails
and/or use provided email were passed AFTER she held the position. I'll agree
it's a bad practice but can we fault her for doing that same thing as the
people before her when there was no law/rule/regulation to do otherwise?

~~~
Bedon292
This of course should not have been the case, but does seem to be. All of her
predecessors appear to have used their personal emails as well. Kerry is the
first one to use an official email. She left office at the beginning of 2013,
while the official policy banning personal email went into effect at the end
of 2013. [http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/03/03/hillary-
ema...](http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/03/03/hillary-email-
scandal-not-so-fast.html)

~~~
danielweber
Careful when you say "the policy of banning personal email went into effect in
2013," because it might suggest to the casual reader that there weren't other
requirements being violated. Such as the 2009 law that required the State
Department to ensure that, regardless of which email system employees were
using, that all emails were being retained properly.

------
yincrash
Why is this news now? Wouldn't everyone she would have corresponded with have
known it isn't a government email and raised a flag?

~~~
loumf
The IT dept would also know that she gets no official email. Normal auditing
software alerts on counts to make sure the backup is working.

~~~
superuser2
Yeah, but is some low-level IT guy going to throw away his government career
by confronting the United States Secretary of State with an accusation of
wrongdoing?

------
EdSharkey
Hillary is the front-runner in the democratic field. And the republicans are
putting Jeb Bush forward as "most electable", whatever the hell that means.

I suppose the power elites are freaking out right now because neither of those
bluebloods should be allowed anywhere near the white house.

Will status quo go out the window with the next president, or will we continue
with the endless war, bailout, QE, and surveillance policies of the Clintons,
Bushes, and Obama?

~~~
JustSomeNobody
Oh, definitely more of the same. Until this nation's citizens stop the my
party is better than your party BS and actually start paying attention to what
these people are doing to our country, we'll never have change.

~~~
sanderjd
The "everything's terrible!" tone of your comment is one of the major problems
and main contributors to the partisan divide. It would be harder to get people
riled up for their pet party if more people were aware that, hey, things are
going pretty well! It would make the things that aren't going as well easier
to identify and work on.

~~~
JackFr
Everything is terrible -- in that the two leading parties in the United States
are doing a poor job of representing the values of the people. They need to be
fundamentally readjusted or be replaced by better alternatives, and that is
not accomplished easily.

In nerdy terms, if there are N dimensions to public policy and individuals are
represented as N dimensional vectors, the ideologies of our current parties do
a terrible job of dimensional reduction.

~~~
sanderjd
That perspective is absolutely what I'm arguing against, and I believe it is
one of the main contributors to exactly the problem it decries. Convincing
people that everything is terrible is the first step to convincing them that
it's the other side's fault and you have the solution, which is how we end up
with the divisiveness that fails to represent the mostly moderate values of
the people.

~~~
JackFr
No -- I think you missed my point.

Everything is terrible, because there is no other side. Neither party
represents my interests adequately, and both parties are sclerotic and
resistant to change because of symbiotic relationships with rent-seeking
interest groups.

What should I do?

~~~
sanderjd
I didn't miss your point. The divisiveness that follows from convincing people
that everything is terrible isn't just bi-directional, it also divides many
people (like you and me) into a helpless feeling "nobody speaks for me" group.

I don't know what you should do, but current my strategy (as you can see) is
to call out what I see as unhelpfully hyperbolic rhetoric (both negative and
positive, though that's rare these days) when I talk to people and point out
good things about our society while not papering over things I'd like to see
improved.

There are quite a few axes on which to measure how well things are going, and
the adequate representation of your (and my) interests is just one of them. I
totally agree the system doesn't do a great job of that, but it does a good
job of lots of more important things.

------
pertinhower
This is an unusually political post to have risen so high on Hacker News. Is
that because of the significance of email to the story? The use of email in
this case is not very technically interesting. Or is there some other
attraction?

~~~
joshuaheard
A hacker discovers a secret email account and server being run in violation of
the law that could bring down the leading Democratic presidential candidate?
That's Hacker News.

------
snissn
I don't understand this story -- according to the smoking gun report, there's
only evidence that this one guy sent her emails to her person account (
possibly by an autocomplete or address book oversight? ) and not any evidence
that she sent any emails of replies back. If she wasn't sending emails from
the account, and just one person was using her person address as the
recipient, it seems just like a one off minor oversight from one of her
advisors.

~~~
jeremyt
It appears Clinton's staff has provided 50,000 pages of correspondence from
the account in question since it was discovered.

------
Wissmania
How is this supposed to be a scandal exactly?

The issue seems to be that she could of hid something in her personal emails
by not turning everything over. But couldn't any official have just used their
gov email for "official business" and use their personal email for stuff they
want to hide? Doesn't every politician actually do this?

The fact that Clinton is letting personal correspondence mix with government
correspondence indicates to me she has less to hide, not more.

The only issue that has the possibility of being legitimate in is the Benghazi
stuff. Technically, it could have been a deliberate move to make emails
related to Benghazi un-searchable during the investigation. Of course, this
only actually matters if those emails contain anything significant/damning,
and they probably don't.

~~~
revelation
Well yes, if we are discussing why it's illegal to use personal email for this
kind of communication, you can't make the assumption that it's legal to use
the personal email for hiding stuff and arrive at the conclusion there is no
scandal.

That's circular logic.

~~~
danielweber
This "it could have been worse" is weird. The point of requirements to use
official channels is two-fold:

1\. It maintains an archive that can be used for accountability.

2\. Anyone communicating with not-that-account can potentially flip to the
watchdogs, making it harder to use unofficial communications.

I'm not so naive to think that those unofficial communications don't happen. I
expect that most campaigns have used them for dirty laundry. It doesn't mean
we get rid of the channels we _can_ see.

------
circa
[http://textsfromhillary.com/](http://textsfromhillary.com/)
[http://textsfromhillaryclinton.tumblr.com/](http://textsfromhillaryclinton.tumblr.com/)

So you mean to tell me that all of these are from a Gmail account?

------
nodata
Interesting timing of this revelation.

~~~
Shivetya
Regardless if it is to stile a political run or to get the damage over and
done with this is the type of behavior by top officials that needs to stop. Is
Kerry doing similar? Who else is? There seems to be a concerted effort by the
Administration and/or those in it to hide communication from the official
record, being Hillary Clinton or Lois Lerner.

What happens to her because of this obvious effort to conceal is the most
important aspect of the case. Will she get the wrist slap like Pretraeis and
other friends of Washington get? Likely. Whereas everyday citizens are hounded
to death by AGs and the like.

To be honest, government officials taking actions like this need to be treated
like the criminals they are, they are purposefully betraying the public trust
and hiding behind the power of their office and names to do it. The real one
percent in Washington

~~~
DangerousPie
> Is Kerry doing similar?

The article says "Secretary of State John Kerry uses a government email
account, and his correspondence is preserved as part of the department’s
record-keeping system."

~~~
tvon
From a Washington Post[1] article:

> Clinton was not the first secretary of state to use a private account. The
> State Department said Clinton’s successor as top diplomat, John F. Kerry, is
> the first secretary to use a standard government e-mail address ending in
> “state.gov.”

[1] [http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hillary-clinton-
used-...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hillary-clinton-used-private-
e-mail-for-government-business-at-state-
dept/2015/03/02/275d13d8-c156-11e4-9271-610273846239_story.html)

~~~
danielweber
If you read the article linked here, the law was changed in 2009, partly as a
consequence of the 2007 scandal in which some Bush emails weren't preserved
because they were run off of a server managed by the RNC.

The agency _must_ make sure that emails are being retained according to law.
In any private enterprise that must retain records, there is exactly one way
to do this: you use your employer's email server, which has a long audit trail
and dedicated compliance officers.

------
spenrose
Ezra Klein is good on this: [http://www.vox.com/2015/3/4/8146295/hillary-
clinton-emails-t...](http://www.vox.com/2015/3/4/8146295/hillary-clinton-
emails-transparency)

------
jacquesm
Simple solution suggestion: if you use your private account for government
business it converts into a government account. If you don't want that to
happen don't use it that way.

------
sandstrom
It's interesting that [at least some members of] the same administration that
denies privacy for citizens still want it themselves.

------
higherpurpose
Private as in _not public_ , as a government employee's email should be, not
necessarily a _secure_ email.

------
Borogravia
Because nobody else in politics ever did this.

~~~
jazzyk
Does not make it right. It is time to clean the house.

------
dodyg
Yawn.

------
jeremyt
What difference, at this point, does it make?

------
StylusEater
_GASP_ ... another politician gaming the system.

------
navait
Given the sheer number of officials doing thing this, I can only assume this
is done mostly out of ignorance about how email works. If I knew nothing about
email, I could see myself assuming IT has a magic way to archive this.
Remember when Sarah Palin's account got hacked? She probably never thought
about how the security questions could easily be looked up once she was in the
public spotlight. Once your email account is set up, I imagine most people
don't really think about it.

Of course, it's also 2014, there is no reason a high-level official should be
this ignorance, but it wouldn't hurt for aides to make sure they are using the
correct email account.

~~~
Varcht
C'mon, she hired someone to set up a mail server just for this position, she
knew what she was doing.

