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> "As a PST file or exported MSG files, this could be done though, yes? > The issue is that these emails involve the private email address of someone you'd reco

> "As a PST file or exported MSG files, this could be done though, yes? > The issue is that these emails involve the private email address of someone you'd recognize, and we're trying to replace it with a placeholder address as to not expose it." From the way it reads it looks like he is asking how to bulk remove an email address from the archived messages so when they are turned over they don't contain the redacted email address. I assume it would be embarrassing and/or problematic to share the email addresses of various ambassadors and other government officials in public records. You could also read something nefarious into it if you want. This whole fishing expedition is hilarious and transparently political. The Bush administration ran private email servers to avoid FOIA requests, then nuked millions of saved emails when his term was up to avoid handing them over. I didn't see any huge circus or massive outcry about that. The idea that we should be able to immediately read all the correspondence written by any public official also seems silly... it just encourages public officials not to use email. People are allowed to have private conversations. A reasonable compromise might be a time limit... say emails are held sealed for X years after leaving office, then made public?

danso 10y ago
The removal of private email addresses should be left to the State Department who was in charge of releasing those emails. In the emails released so far, Clinton's actual address has been removed from the To: field (physically, as in it was whited-out) as is at least one name from the From: field http://graphics.wsj.com/hillary-clinton-email-documents/pdfs/C05797218.pdf http://graphics.wsj.com/hillary-clinton-email-documents/pdfs... But I could see this as a result of incompetency, that is, the IT person didn't realize that it's not up to him to redact addresses, the State Dept. could do it. I know that sounds naive but we're talking about an IT person who posted this question on Reddit using an account easily connected to him, so, incompetency is inherent in the scenario. edit: Apparently, there is a Slashdot user named "StoneTear" who has been posting since 2002 and has made reference about working in government and knows about their data retention policies. So that mostly rules out the possibility of IT-guy-is-just-the-Senator's-nephew-in-law-who-got-asked-because-to-do-IT-because-no-one-else-was-around: https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/09/19/2239234/computer-specialist-who-deleted-clinton-emails-may-have-asked-reddit-for-tips https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/09/19/2239234/computer-sp...
- mozumder 10y ago
  > The removal of private email addresses should be left to the State Department who was in charge of releasing those emails. Only for her work email account. This is her personal email account that they requested to release, but it isn't under their control. Employers aren't supposed to be able to control one's private email account.
  - generj 10y ago
    Yeah, a private email account which was used extensively for official government business. With no work email account ever setup. It's a matter of law that any and all work related emails on a personal email address are to be handed over for future FOIA requests, etc. upon leaving office. If I used my personal email address for all communication with my companies clients for work, they'd demand all of those emails when I left the company.
    - mozumder 10y ago
      > If I used my personal email address for all communication with my companies clients for work, they'd demand all of those emails when I left the company. But they wouldn't be able to get them, no matter how hard they demanded. Personal email addresses exist. Companies have to deal with that fact.
      - generj 10y ago
        Oh, yes they could. The easiest route would simply be to refuse me referrals. If I had a golden parachute deal, it would be invalidated by such an action. Any vested stocks I had would be in jeopardy. They can try to blackball me. They can cut off insurance benefits unexpectedly. And all that before lawyers get involved... If you do work on a personal email, your employer may later demand access to those emails. So don't do it.
      - JumpCrisscross 10y ago
        > But they wouldn't be able to get them, no matter how hard they demanded I work in securities. My work emails must be archived. If I send work email from my personal email (a) that is potentially illegal and (b) I must promptly turn them over to my archives. If I refuse b, I face civil and potentially criminal censure. Blows me away how finance has stricter controls than the people conducting bombing raids.
adam12 10y ago
> From the way it reads it looks like he is asking how to bulk remove an email address from the archived messages so when they are turned over they don't contain the redacted email address. You don't redact email addresses when you are subpoenaed by the f'ing FBI. edit: My bad, it was the House Select Committee on Benghazi (July 2014). The FBI didn't take custody of the server until August 2015.
- kreneskyp 10y ago
  They were subpoenaed by Congress, but not until March 4, 2015. The initial request for emails was made by the State Department. Edit: small mistake. The initial request did come from Congress and went through the State Department. It was not a subpoena though, that came later. Edit 2: Since it was clear to some, the reddit post was dated July 24th, 2014. That's 7 months, prior to the first subpoena.
- rando444 10y ago
  I think it reads worse than that “I’ve done quite a bit already in the last few months related to this. Her team had me do a bunch of exports and email filters and cleanup to provide a PST [personal storage file] of all of HRC’s emails to/from any .gov addresses,” Combetta wrote. [0] Exporting email and filtering it, but only for .gov addresses(?).. I would imagine that whoever subpoenaed those mails was requesting not just .gov communication, and I can't help but think that these sort of actions are suggestive of some deeper cleanup activity. [0] http://dailycaller.com/2016/09/19/computer-tech-who-asked-how-to-strip-out-email-addresses-may-have-worked-for-hillary http://dailycaller.com/2016/09/19/computer-tech-who-asked-ho...
monochromatic 10y ago
We don't know the motive, but it seems at least equally plausible that this was in anticipation of responding to a discovery request that filtered on sender/recipient. > The Bush administration ran private email servers to avoid FOIA requests, then nuked millions of saved emails when his term was up to avoid handing them over. Citation needed if you're going to "correct the record."
- desdiv 10y ago
  He's probably referring to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_White_House_email_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_White_House_email_controv...
dilap 10y ago
What adam12 said -- sure, running a private email server to avoid FOIA is just Bush-level shady (though I'd hope the bar acceptable behavior would be higher than 'Bush did it'). But modifying and deleting evidence to thwart a subpoenae from the FBI is real bad.
- Retric 10y ago
  It's 7 months, prior to the first subpoena. This is a question for redacting information, which is fairly common when doing releases to congress etc.
  - dilap 10y ago
    ah, good point about the timeline. after the benghazi subpoena, but before the email subpoenas. not nearly as bad.
  - dogma1138 10y ago
    Do you really think that they didn't knew a subpoena was coming? Infact I would bet that they've consulted with a lawyer and this "redaction" was deemed as "shady but not criminal". Hilary might be "dumb" (as far as IT goes) but she ain't stupid.
    - Retric 10y ago
      If they thought it was going to cause a mess they likely would not have done it in the first place. If the opposition can make something look bad and you don't gain anything from it then what's the point.
      - dogma1138 10y ago
        Hindsight is always 20/20. Overall this sort of redaction smells like legal advice. You define the record as the body of the message and archive messages without the headers, or at least without the sender and recipient headers in them. This might even be a valid interpretation of the US records act. When asked why you can say this was the archiving policy and you stored the messages as a document and the headers were irrelevant since they did not hold any information. When asked about who sent or received a specific email that has been redacted you can 'honestly' claim "I do not recall". Overall this is pretty much exactly the borderline illegal narrative that a good legal counselor would provide in this case. Of Course that advice was granted based on the premise that there would not be a trail that would make this look premeditated and suspicious.
umanwizard 10y ago
> The Bush administration ran private email servers to avoid FOIA requests, then nuked millions of saved emails when his term was up to avoid handing them over. Who cares? "But the other guys are corrupt too!" is not a great argument for your candidate. > I didn't see any huge circus or massive outcry about that. We can all agree this is a problem.
- mcphage 10y ago
  > We can all agree this is a problem. Funny how nobody seemed to think so until now.
  - umanwizard 10y ago
    Who cares? Literally what point are you making? Dude, do you think this is a football game? That scoring a point against your opponent negates points scored against you? I suspect a big chunk of the people complaining about this would have complained even harder when Bush did it (if what you say is true), if they had been old enough to be aware what was going on, and had social media like we do now. So, what is your point? How does Bush doing it matter literally at all to whether Clinton should get in trouble?
    - mcphage 10y ago
      > Literally what point are you making? The point I'm making is that I don't think you, or anybody else actually cares about the emails—they care it's something they can criticize Clinton for. Before her, nobody gave a shit. After her, nobody will give a shit. They don't matter, except that they can be used to criticize Clinton. So of course nobody complained about it with Bush, because nobody cares about them. > I suspect a big chunk of the people complaining about this would have complained even harder when Bush did it (if what you say is true), if they had been old enough to be aware what was going on They wouldn't have. The rest of us had much bigger complaints to make, that complaining about deleting emails would have been a laughable waste of time.
      - 10y ago
losvedir 10y ago
> I assume it would be embarrassing and/or problematic to share the email addresses of various ambassadors and other government officials in public records. You could also read something nefarious into it if you want. That's what I'm trying to understand here. Was it the case that they were just going to hand over the whole DB regardless, and are trying to keep personal info private (but still, e.g., leave the name so it's clear who's in the conversation)? That's, I suppose, kind of reasonable. On the other hand, I'm vaguely aware that at least in some cases there's a legal discovery process, where you don't just hand over everything, but do certain searches for "relevant" info and hand over that [0]. Is that true or at all relevant here? That would be quite a bit more nefarious if they were trying to avoid the discovery mining process by changing the email addresses (without flat out deleting the emails). But it seems like instead of doing that why not just delete them? [0] http://enterpriseit.co/microsoft-exchange/search-all-users-mailboxes-for-specific-content-in-discovery-situation/ http://enterpriseit.co/microsoft-exchange/search-all-users-m...
- losvedir 10y ago
  As a follow up, I found this news article from Time[0], talking about a discovery process: > Instead, as Clinton revealed Tuesday, her attorneys searched the trove of emails for certain email addresses and subjects. Baron argued that raises the possibility that they missed some emails that should have been saved for the public record. > First, the lawyers searched all emails with a “.gov” email address in any address field, which yielded 27,500 emails—more than 90% of the total correspondence ultimately provided to State. Those matching emails were turned over on Dec. 5, 2015 and Combetta posted on July 24, 2015. The optics of trying to change the email addresses ahead of a search by her lawyers for certain email addresses to decide what to turn over are certainly not great. [0] http://time.com/3740357/hillary-clinton-emails-search/ http://time.com/3740357/hillary-clinton-emails-search/
  - anon946 10y ago
    Wasn't it July 24, 2014?
- Judson 10y ago
eggy 10y ago
I don't care much for Hillary or Trump, Democrat or Republican. I think noting Bush's similar actions does not make Hillary's actions right. The old 'Two wrongs don't make a right' bit here. There was plenty of anti-Bush press during his term too, so I can't answer to the lack of public outcry specifically on his email doings; perhaps, there was just too much other low-hanging fruit. Although, suspicions were raised blaming the Bush administration for the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that devastated parts of Indonesia and Thailand, and other earthquakes [1,2]. Sure a lot of them are flat-earther types, but you'd be surprised how some of the links I googled on this were just political forums. [1] http://www.apfn.net/messageboard/03-17-05/discussion.cgi.81.html http://www.apfn.net/messageboard/03-17-05/discussion.cgi.81.... [2] http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/12/306992.shtml http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/12/306992.shtml
newman314 10y ago
Well, given that they probably search for email addresses as part of ediscovery, it would be an easy way to avoid hitting the search filter.
joshmn 10y ago
> I didn't see any huge circus or massive outcry about that. There were just so many things wrong with the Bush administration. I have mad respect for George W, he's a nice guy, and talks a little funny (to a northerner), but some of the things he did just... I don't even know.
belorn 10y ago
> The idea that we should be able to immediately read all the correspondence written by any public official also seems silly Open government is silly? It has been a core aspect of democracy for a long time, and dates back at least to the time of the Enlightenment. People are allowed to have private conversations, but government are held accountable for decisions and the decision process. Transparency allows citizens of a democracy to control their government, reducing government corruption, bribery and other malfeasance. Is that what we are calling silly? What it should do is encourage public officials to act lawfully and within the trust than citizens has given them. The idea of sealing emails "X years after leaving office" goes directly against the idea of classified documents, since that seal should only be added to information which will harm society and the public that elected the government. Embarrassing or corrupting showing information is not that.

danso 10y ago

The removal of private email addresses should be left to the State Department who was in charge of releasing those emails. In the emails released so far, Clinton's actual address has been removed from the To: field (physically, as in it was whited-out) as is at least one name from the From: field http://graphics.wsj.com/hillary-clinton-email-documents/pdfs/C05797218.pdf http://graphics.wsj.com/hillary-clinton-email-documents/pdfs... But I could see this as a result of incompetency, that is, the IT person didn't realize that it's not up to him to redact addresses, the State Dept. could do it. I know that sounds naive but we're talking about an IT person who posted this question on Reddit using an account easily connected to him, so, incompetency is inherent in the scenario. edit: Apparently, there is a Slashdot user named "StoneTear" who has been posting since 2002 and has made reference about working in government and knows about their data retention policies. So that mostly rules out the possibility of IT-guy-is-just-the-Senator's-nephew-in-law-who-got-asked-because-to-do-IT-because-no-one-else-was-around: https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/09/19/2239234/computer-specialist-who-deleted-clinton-emails-may-have-asked-reddit-for-tips https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/09/19/2239234/computer-sp...

mozumder 10y ago
> The removal of private email addresses should be left to the State Department who was in charge of releasing those emails. Only for her work email account. This is her personal email account that they requested to release, but it isn't under their control. Employers aren't supposed to be able to control one's private email account.
- generj 10y ago
  Yeah, a private email account which was used extensively for official government business. With no work email account ever setup. It's a matter of law that any and all work related emails on a personal email address are to be handed over for future FOIA requests, etc. upon leaving office. If I used my personal email address for all communication with my companies clients for work, they'd demand all of those emails when I left the company.
  - mozumder 10y ago
    > If I used my personal email address for all communication with my companies clients for work, they'd demand all of those emails when I left the company. But they wouldn't be able to get them, no matter how hard they demanded. Personal email addresses exist. Companies have to deal with that fact.
    - generj 10y ago
      Oh, yes they could. The easiest route would simply be to refuse me referrals. If I had a golden parachute deal, it would be invalidated by such an action. Any vested stocks I had would be in jeopardy. They can try to blackball me. They can cut off insurance benefits unexpectedly. And all that before lawyers get involved... If you do work on a personal email, your employer may later demand access to those emails. So don't do it.
    - JumpCrisscross 10y ago
      > But they wouldn't be able to get them, no matter how hard they demanded I work in securities. My work emails must be archived. If I send work email from my personal email (a) that is potentially illegal and (b) I must promptly turn them over to my archives. If I refuse b, I face civil and potentially criminal censure. Blows me away how finance has stricter controls than the people conducting bombing raids.

adam12 10y ago

> From the way it reads it looks like he is asking how to bulk remove an email address from the archived messages so when they are turned over they don't contain the redacted email address. You don't redact email addresses when you are subpoenaed by the f'ing FBI. edit: My bad, it was the House Select Committee on Benghazi (July 2014). The FBI didn't take custody of the server until August 2015.

kreneskyp 10y ago
They were subpoenaed by Congress, but not until March 4, 2015. The initial request for emails was made by the State Department. Edit: small mistake. The initial request did come from Congress and went through the State Department. It was not a subpoena though, that came later. Edit 2: Since it was clear to some, the reddit post was dated July 24th, 2014. That's 7 months, prior to the first subpoena.
rando444 10y ago
I think it reads worse than that “I’ve done quite a bit already in the last few months related to this. Her team had me do a bunch of exports and email filters and cleanup to provide a PST [personal storage file] of all of HRC’s emails to/from any .gov addresses,” Combetta wrote. [0] Exporting email and filtering it, but only for .gov addresses(?).. I would imagine that whoever subpoenaed those mails was requesting not just .gov communication, and I can't help but think that these sort of actions are suggestive of some deeper cleanup activity. [0] http://dailycaller.com/2016/09/19/computer-tech-who-asked-how-to-strip-out-email-addresses-may-have-worked-for-hillary http://dailycaller.com/2016/09/19/computer-tech-who-asked-ho...

monochromatic 10y ago

We don't know the motive, but it seems at least equally plausible that this was in anticipation of responding to a discovery request that filtered on sender/recipient. > The Bush administration ran private email servers to avoid FOIA requests, then nuked millions of saved emails when his term was up to avoid handing them over. Citation needed if you're going to "correct the record."

desdiv 10y ago
He's probably referring to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_White_House_email_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_White_House_email_controv...

dilap 10y ago

What adam12 said -- sure, running a private email server to avoid FOIA is just Bush-level shady (though I'd hope the bar acceptable behavior would be higher than 'Bush did it'). But modifying and deleting evidence to thwart a subpoenae from the FBI is real bad.

Retric 10y ago
It's 7 months, prior to the first subpoena. This is a question for redacting information, which is fairly common when doing releases to congress etc.
- dilap 10y ago
  ah, good point about the timeline. after the benghazi subpoena, but before the email subpoenas. not nearly as bad.
- dogma1138 10y ago
  Do you really think that they didn't knew a subpoena was coming? Infact I would bet that they've consulted with a lawyer and this "redaction" was deemed as "shady but not criminal". Hilary might be "dumb" (as far as IT goes) but she ain't stupid.
  - Retric 10y ago
    If they thought it was going to cause a mess they likely would not have done it in the first place. If the opposition can make something look bad and you don't gain anything from it then what's the point.
    - dogma1138 10y ago
      Hindsight is always 20/20. Overall this sort of redaction smells like legal advice. You define the record as the body of the message and archive messages without the headers, or at least without the sender and recipient headers in them. This might even be a valid interpretation of the US records act. When asked why you can say this was the archiving policy and you stored the messages as a document and the headers were irrelevant since they did not hold any information. When asked about who sent or received a specific email that has been redacted you can 'honestly' claim "I do not recall". Overall this is pretty much exactly the borderline illegal narrative that a good legal counselor would provide in this case. Of Course that advice was granted based on the premise that there would not be a trail that would make this look premeditated and suspicious.

umanwizard 10y ago

> The Bush administration ran private email servers to avoid FOIA requests, then nuked millions of saved emails when his term was up to avoid handing them over. Who cares? "But the other guys are corrupt too!" is not a great argument for your candidate. > I didn't see any huge circus or massive outcry about that. We can all agree this is a problem.

mcphage 10y ago
> We can all agree this is a problem. Funny how nobody seemed to think so until now.
- umanwizard 10y ago
  Who cares? Literally what point are you making? Dude, do you think this is a football game? That scoring a point against your opponent negates points scored against you? I suspect a big chunk of the people complaining about this would have complained even harder when Bush did it (if what you say is true), if they had been old enough to be aware what was going on, and had social media like we do now. So, what is your point? How does Bush doing it matter literally at all to whether Clinton should get in trouble?
  - mcphage 10y ago
    > Literally what point are you making? The point I'm making is that I don't think you, or anybody else actually cares about the emails—they care it's something they can criticize Clinton for. Before her, nobody gave a shit. After her, nobody will give a shit. They don't matter, except that they can be used to criticize Clinton. So of course nobody complained about it with Bush, because nobody cares about them. > I suspect a big chunk of the people complaining about this would have complained even harder when Bush did it (if what you say is true), if they had been old enough to be aware what was going on They wouldn't have. The rest of us had much bigger complaints to make, that complaining about deleting emails would have been a laughable waste of time.
    - 10y ago

losvedir 10y ago

> I assume it would be embarrassing and/or problematic to share the email addresses of various ambassadors and other government officials in public records. You could also read something nefarious into it if you want. That's what I'm trying to understand here. Was it the case that they were just going to hand over the whole DB regardless, and are trying to keep personal info private (but still, e.g., leave the name so it's clear who's in the conversation)? That's, I suppose, kind of reasonable. On the other hand, I'm vaguely aware that at least in some cases there's a legal discovery process, where you don't just hand over everything, but do certain searches for "relevant" info and hand over that [0]. Is that true or at all relevant here? That would be quite a bit more nefarious if they were trying to avoid the discovery mining process by changing the email addresses (without flat out deleting the emails). But it seems like instead of doing that why not just delete them? [0] http://enterpriseit.co/microsoft-exchange/search-all-users-mailboxes-for-specific-content-in-discovery-situation/ http://enterpriseit.co/microsoft-exchange/search-all-users-m...

losvedir 10y ago
As a follow up, I found this news article from Time[0], talking about a discovery process: > Instead, as Clinton revealed Tuesday, her attorneys searched the trove of emails for certain email addresses and subjects. Baron argued that raises the possibility that they missed some emails that should have been saved for the public record. > First, the lawyers searched all emails with a “.gov” email address in any address field, which yielded 27,500 emails—more than 90% of the total correspondence ultimately provided to State. Those matching emails were turned over on Dec. 5, 2015 and Combetta posted on July 24, 2015. The optics of trying to change the email addresses ahead of a search by her lawyers for certain email addresses to decide what to turn over are certainly not great. [0] http://time.com/3740357/hillary-clinton-emails-search/ http://time.com/3740357/hillary-clinton-emails-search/
- anon946 10y ago
  Wasn't it July 24, 2014?
Judson 10y ago

eggy 10y ago

I don't care much for Hillary or Trump, Democrat or Republican. I think noting Bush's similar actions does not make Hillary's actions right. The old 'Two wrongs don't make a right' bit here. There was plenty of anti-Bush press during his term too, so I can't answer to the lack of public outcry specifically on his email doings; perhaps, there was just too much other low-hanging fruit. Although, suspicions were raised blaming the Bush administration for the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that devastated parts of Indonesia and Thailand, and other earthquakes [1,2]. Sure a lot of them are flat-earther types, but you'd be surprised how some of the links I googled on this were just political forums. [1] http://www.apfn.net/messageboard/03-17-05/discussion.cgi.81.html http://www.apfn.net/messageboard/03-17-05/discussion.cgi.81.... [2] http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/12/306992.shtml http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/12/306992.shtml

newman314 10y ago

Well, given that they probably search for email addresses as part of ediscovery, it would be an easy way to avoid hitting the search filter.

joshmn 10y ago

> I didn't see any huge circus or massive outcry about that. There were just so many things wrong with the Bush administration. I have mad respect for George W, he's a nice guy, and talks a little funny (to a northerner), but some of the things he did just... I don't even know.

belorn 10y ago

> The idea that we should be able to immediately read all the correspondence written by any public official also seems silly Open government is silly? It has been a core aspect of democracy for a long time, and dates back at least to the time of the Enlightenment. People are allowed to have private conversations, but government are held accountable for decisions and the decision process. Transparency allows citizens of a democracy to control their government, reducing government corruption, bribery and other malfeasance. Is that what we are calling silly? What it should do is encourage public officials to act lawfully and within the trust than citizens has given them. The idea of sealing emails "X years after leaving office" goes directly against the idea of classified documents, since that seal should only be added to information which will harm society and the public that elected the government. Embarrassing or corrupting showing information is not that.