5 ms·

This story just keeps getting better. There is either a grand nefarious plot, or worse, horrific incompetence. I just can't find a third possibility.

Aelinsaar 10y ago
"Many journalists have fallen for the conspiracy theory of government. I do assure you that they would produce more accurate work if they adhered to the cock-up theory." -Bernard Ingham
- ZenoArrow 10y ago
  Seems similar to Hanlon's Razor: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor
  - mpnordland 10y ago
    Thank you, I'd been trying to remember what this was called.
levyinglocal 10y ago
Obvious throwaway account for obvious reasons. I worked at a well known international "activism" type organization. If our data practices ever came to light, the organization wouldn't exist anymore. I promise. Never underestimate the incompetence even by the largest of organizations.
gizmo 10y ago
No nefarious plot. My understanding is that it went roughly like this. Back in 2009 Clinton requested a secure smartphone from the NSA. It's a custom made device (security by obscurity?). Anyway, the president gets one. As the secretary of state she has to travel a lot, and not being able to do email on the road is highly impractical. So she thought she should get one too. The NSA denied her request for a secure smartphone and gave her some nonsense excuse. She tried a few more times to get one, and then Clinton gave up and ordered somebody to set her up with a private email server. She used this unsecure email server for years. She used it to communicate with top level officials (including the president). That she had this server was common knowledge in the administration. She knew it wasn't secure and she's been very careful not to discuss any classified information over email at all. In a handful of cases she slipped up and some classified information ended up on email anyway.
- Kluny 10y ago
  That's the most believable version I've heard so far by a long shot.
- blhack 10y ago
  Do you have any sources for that? The story I keep hearing is that she had this set up to make FOIA requests more difficult/impossible to fulfil. The really out there stuff is that this was to hide any cash-for-favors exchanges that happened with relation to The Clinton Foundation.
  - daughart 10y ago
    If the latter was the case why not just use the .gov email for state dept. business and the clintonemail.com email for international cash for favors?
    - blhack 10y ago
      I don't want to go too far down the conspiracy theorists' rabbit hole here, so just consider this some alternative reality fiction for a second: Because it is easier if everything is in one place. Imagine emailing back and forth with somebody, and they accidentally send you an email to the wrong account. It makes it easier to control everything.
  - gizmo 10y ago
    I can't prove some of the more out-there theories aren't true, but they just don't make sense to me. Given the sheer volume of email she sent from her blackberry (lunch meetings, when to get up, where to go, can you print this, happy birthday, etc) it's pretty clear it's her primary way of communication. So that explains her refusing to take no for an answer from the NSA. If her motivation was to block FOIA requests, then why did she do literally all important and confidential communication on paper, which falls under FOIA? Then why did the entire administration accept her use of a private email server if she didn't have an obvious reason why she needed one? If her real motivation was to dodge FOIA, then why was the NSA stonewalling? The FOIA hypothesis raises far more questions than it answers.
ZenoArrow 10y ago
Depends if you class lobbying as a grand nefarious plot or not. I suspect there's likely to be financial reasons for the private email server in this case.
shas3 10y ago
It almost sounds like a farce: Clinton gets indicted or loses face due to incompetence relating to the e-mail server scandal, and in her place is elected The Donald, a man who has committed worse transgressions and has the potential to do even worse things when given power. Frankly, she doesn't sound any more incompetent than even a typical old company c. 2010: think Target, Sony, etc. It would be sad, given that her opponent will likely be Trump, if this scandal sinks her candidacy.
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  She has no one to blame but herself.
- bitJericho 10y ago
  Worry not. Any democrat candidate on the ballet will beat trump. You can't win an election on the rich, white, male vote.
  - seehafer 10y ago
    Donald is a test as to whether or not you can win an election on white votes. The rich, white, male votes are probably the one cohort of whites he's least likely to get.
    - chiaro 10y ago
      Depends. You'd be right if you consider rich whites with a college degree, but I believe rich whites without one are more dependably Trump iirc.
- Shivetya 10y ago
  While I care for neither she is the bigger danger because the anti-war left will be silent with her as will many other good activist groups like they are currently silent. A complicit and complacent press and Congress is the reason we have drones killing American's abroad, Manning in jail, Snowden in Russia, Libya in disarray, and a general mess in the Middle East to say the least about increased racial issues in the states. Identity based politics is poison and it shuts down too many groups. Donald won't catch a break from ANYONE, it will be good to have nearly every group riding the Administrations ass every single day. Let alone he really isn't bound to one party or another and likely will go down the middle and get more things fixed than a party centric politician. tl;dr the real threat Clinton poses over Trump is that press, Congress, and activist, will be silent against her.
bpchaps 10y ago
Somewhere in between, just based on experience from spending 1.5 years to get Rahm's phone records. I've received one week so far and now I'm working on getting as much of a sample of his phone records as possible without them invoking their usual "unduly burdensome" rejection [0]. (Hoping to have something published within the next two months or so. Crazy story.) The level of misinterpretation of FOIA among FOIA officers, lack of domain knowledge, intentional delays and reject-if-possible mentality makes these things very difficult. Total incompetence. Though, if you find yourself close to something juicy, you can bet your ass a lawyer will swoop in and find something technically wrong to prevent information from being released. Chicago did that to me eight months in by saying "We don't use VoIP, so your request is void." after the state's attorney general's office told Chicago to give me the info. I'd consider this mildly nefarious. [0] As far as I'm concerned, "unduly burdensome" is just another way of saying "we're not clever enough to get that information, so you're going to have to come up with a clever way on your own, with 1% of the information we have".
koolba 10y ago
It's both. The security aspect is incompetence. The idea of having it external is deliberate to avoid FOIA.
godgod 10y ago
It's a vast right wing conspiracy. All the scandals...over her 30 year public career. Nothing to see here. /sarc
okaram 10y ago
It is neither. It is just standard 'incompetence'; this is really '65 year old doesn't understand computers' ; details @ 11
- venomsnake 10y ago
  It is "65 years old wants to skirt the rules and no in her entourage had the skills to do it properly or the balls to tell her it is a bad idea". In a sense I am sympathetic with her - this is the type of hacking the system we at HN tend to admire. Clinton is "Uber for Email" before it was cool - dislike the rules and current infrastructure - build your own.

Aelinsaar 10y ago

"Many journalists have fallen for the conspiracy theory of government. I do assure you that they would produce more accurate work if they adhered to the cock-up theory." -Bernard Ingham

ZenoArrow 10y ago
Seems similar to Hanlon's Razor: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor
- mpnordland 10y ago
  Thank you, I'd been trying to remember what this was called.

levyinglocal 10y ago

Obvious throwaway account for obvious reasons. I worked at a well known international "activism" type organization. If our data practices ever came to light, the organization wouldn't exist anymore. I promise. Never underestimate the incompetence even by the largest of organizations.

gizmo 10y ago

No nefarious plot. My understanding is that it went roughly like this. Back in 2009 Clinton requested a secure smartphone from the NSA. It's a custom made device (security by obscurity?). Anyway, the president gets one. As the secretary of state she has to travel a lot, and not being able to do email on the road is highly impractical. So she thought she should get one too. The NSA denied her request for a secure smartphone and gave her some nonsense excuse. She tried a few more times to get one, and then Clinton gave up and ordered somebody to set her up with a private email server. She used this unsecure email server for years. She used it to communicate with top level officials (including the president). That she had this server was common knowledge in the administration. She knew it wasn't secure and she's been very careful not to discuss any classified information over email at all. In a handful of cases she slipped up and some classified information ended up on email anyway.

Kluny 10y ago
That's the most believable version I've heard so far by a long shot.
blhack 10y ago
Do you have any sources for that? The story I keep hearing is that she had this set up to make FOIA requests more difficult/impossible to fulfil. The really out there stuff is that this was to hide any cash-for-favors exchanges that happened with relation to The Clinton Foundation.
- daughart 10y ago
  If the latter was the case why not just use the .gov email for state dept. business and the clintonemail.com email for international cash for favors?
  - blhack 10y ago
    I don't want to go too far down the conspiracy theorists' rabbit hole here, so just consider this some alternative reality fiction for a second: Because it is easier if everything is in one place. Imagine emailing back and forth with somebody, and they accidentally send you an email to the wrong account. It makes it easier to control everything.
- gizmo 10y ago
  I can't prove some of the more out-there theories aren't true, but they just don't make sense to me. Given the sheer volume of email she sent from her blackberry (lunch meetings, when to get up, where to go, can you print this, happy birthday, etc) it's pretty clear it's her primary way of communication. So that explains her refusing to take no for an answer from the NSA. If her motivation was to block FOIA requests, then why did she do literally all important and confidential communication on paper, which falls under FOIA? Then why did the entire administration accept her use of a private email server if she didn't have an obvious reason why she needed one? If her real motivation was to dodge FOIA, then why was the NSA stonewalling? The FOIA hypothesis raises far more questions than it answers.

ZenoArrow 10y ago

Depends if you class lobbying as a grand nefarious plot or not. I suspect there's likely to be financial reasons for the private email server in this case.

shas3 10y ago

It almost sounds like a farce: Clinton gets indicted or loses face due to incompetence relating to the e-mail server scandal, and in her place is elected The Donald, a man who has committed worse transgressions and has the potential to do even worse things when given power. Frankly, she doesn't sound any more incompetent than even a typical old company c. 2010: think Target, Sony, etc. It would be sad, given that her opponent will likely be Trump, if this scandal sinks her candidacy.

toomuchtodo 10y ago
She has no one to blame but herself.
bitJericho 10y ago
Worry not. Any democrat candidate on the ballet will beat trump. You can't win an election on the rich, white, male vote.
- seehafer 10y ago
  Donald is a test as to whether or not you can win an election on white votes. The rich, white, male votes are probably the one cohort of whites he's least likely to get.
  - chiaro 10y ago
    Depends. You'd be right if you consider rich whites with a college degree, but I believe rich whites without one are more dependably Trump iirc.
Shivetya 10y ago
While I care for neither she is the bigger danger because the anti-war left will be silent with her as will many other good activist groups like they are currently silent. A complicit and complacent press and Congress is the reason we have drones killing American's abroad, Manning in jail, Snowden in Russia, Libya in disarray, and a general mess in the Middle East to say the least about increased racial issues in the states. Identity based politics is poison and it shuts down too many groups. Donald won't catch a break from ANYONE, it will be good to have nearly every group riding the Administrations ass every single day. Let alone he really isn't bound to one party or another and likely will go down the middle and get more things fixed than a party centric politician. tl;dr the real threat Clinton poses over Trump is that press, Congress, and activist, will be silent against her.

bpchaps 10y ago

Somewhere in between, just based on experience from spending 1.5 years to get Rahm's phone records. I've received one week so far and now I'm working on getting as much of a sample of his phone records as possible without them invoking their usual "unduly burdensome" rejection [0]. (Hoping to have something published within the next two months or so. Crazy story.) The level of misinterpretation of FOIA among FOIA officers, lack of domain knowledge, intentional delays and reject-if-possible mentality makes these things very difficult. Total incompetence. Though, if you find yourself close to something juicy, you can bet your ass a lawyer will swoop in and find something technically wrong to prevent information from being released. Chicago did that to me eight months in by saying "We don't use VoIP, so your request is void." after the state's attorney general's office told Chicago to give me the info. I'd consider this mildly nefarious. [0] As far as I'm concerned, "unduly burdensome" is just another way of saying "we're not clever enough to get that information, so you're going to have to come up with a clever way on your own, with 1% of the information we have".

koolba 10y ago

It's both. The security aspect is incompetence. The idea of having it external is deliberate to avoid FOIA.

godgod 10y ago

It's a vast right wing conspiracy. All the scandals...over her 30 year public career. Nothing to see here. /sarc

okaram 10y ago

It is neither. It is just standard 'incompetence'; this is really '65 year old doesn't understand computers' ; details @ 11

venomsnake 10y ago
It is "65 years old wants to skirt the rules and no in her entourage had the skills to do it properly or the balls to tell her it is a bad idea". In a sense I am sympathetic with her - this is the type of hacking the system we at HN tend to admire. Clinton is "Uber for Email" before it was cool - dislike the rules and current infrastructure - build your own.