Comment by xenadu02 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by xenadu02 | Hacker News Reader

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Which legal experts?

The relevant laws are clear as to what happens. It is the CIO responsible for the individual department who is required to regulate the use of IT resources. It would have been their responsibility to tell Clinton specifically that she wasn't allowed to use the server then cite her if she continued. That didn't happen so she's completely in the clear. The law even allows the CIO leeway to allow things contrary to policy under certain conditions (though I don't think that was done in this case).

The law doesn't provide for felony prosecution for using personal IT resources, no matter how much some people want that to be true for politically convenient reasons. The same people crying about Clinton would reject the charges out of hand if it were their favored political candidate.

In the end she didn't do anything morally wrong which is why this whole email thing has been one big nothing-burger. Everyone has had to fight corporate IT's outdated and stupid policies at one time or another and almost all of us have subverted those policies to get our jobs done.

The only reason we even know about this is because she disclosed it. Colin Powell and Condoleza Rice both used private email servers. So did the entire Bush administration. When confronted with requests for the data they just nuked it from orbit and no one gave a shit. Suddenly it's a huge scandal! The crime of the century!

Trump has violated tax law by using is "charitable" foundation as a piggy bank. I'm not calling for an investigation and prosecution of him because that's banana republic territory.

Ok, so I'll put aside for a moment the fact that she lied directly to the FBI when the former Secretary of State told them that she didn't know that "C" meant classified, along with the myriad criminal pay-to-play issues that the FBI has simply ignored, both of which are slam-dunk federal felony cases. The law provides for criminal charges when someone uses gross negligence in the mishandling of classified materials - no intent required. According to Comey himself, her conduct actually met the legal definition of gross negligence. He just didn't want to use the gross negligence statute instead of the statute that requires intent because it would have handed Trump the presidency.

>the fact that she lied directly to the FBI when the former Secretary of State told them that she didn't know that "C" meant classified

She didn't have to lie should could of been grossly incompetent and negligent in her handling of her duties.

(C), as a portion marker in a classified document (which it would properly only occur in if the document itself was at least as highly classified, with banners marking the classification in full words) means "confidential", not "classified". In email, the banner text is placed at the top and bottom of the body (the subject line of a classified email is portion marked to indicate the classification status -- including (U) for unclassified if that applies -- of the subject line itself.) [0] Any place that portion markers are properly used, the whole containing document is clearly marked as classified with a specific level, and the whole content -- other than parts portion-marked as unclassified -- is classified.

It's kind of funny how the majority of the people who mock Clinton over this get it wrong themselves.

And also omit the context, which was a (C) used in an email which had neither a portion marker in the header (as all classified emails should) nor classification banners. In that context, I think mlet's actually pretty reasonable to have no idea that a parenthetical (C) on a paragraph was intended as a portion marker of classification level.

[0] http://www.cdse.edu/documents/cdse/Marking_Classified_Inform...

I apparently used the wrong word in my comment (Clasified vs Confidential), but regardless, she claimed that she didn't know what it meant. I'm not the former Secretary of State, so my gaff is understandable. Hillary Clinton, however, is the former Secretary of State, and undoubtedly received extensive training in these matters. That means she either lied or has some kind of mental defect that made her unable to remember some of the most critical training that she received during her tenure. Either of those are disqualifiers for the Presidency in my opinion.

No, she said she didn't know what it was intended to mean in the email in question, which had neither classification banners nor a portion marker on the subject line.

It's perfectly reasonable to not know that a lone parenthetical letter at the start of a paragraph in an email that is not itself marked as classified is intended as a classification portion marker. Because parenthetical letters have many uses in general written communication, and there special use as portion markers is specific to documents that are classified as a whole, which there are standard ways of marking.

Once again, we are talking about the former Secretary of State and government emails. In that context, it is not reasonable for her to claim that she wouldn't have applied her intimate knowledge of the indicators of classified/confidential materials to the email in question. We won't agree on this, at least until after the election when perhaps many Clinton supporters like yourself will be free to acknowledge simple, unassailable facts about your candidate.

Most government emails are not classified. Outside of a classified context, parenthetical letters have the full take off uses they have in general English communication, especially the use that Clinton suggested was the only one that came to mind in the context of the email in question.

Without any of the indications that should have been present indicating that the email itself was classified, there's little radon to think a stay parenthetical (C) is intended as a portion marker.

Clinton didn't say she didn't know what (C) meant as a portion marker (which would be worthy of mockery) , she said she didn't know that the (C) in an email lacking any indication that it was a classified document was intended to have the special meaning that (C) has within a classified document.

>Most government emails are not classified.

I would guess that a significant percentage of State Department emails to and from the Secretary of State are at least confidential. Again, we won't agree on this until after the election when Clinton supporters like yourself are able to undertake an honest assessment of their new President without Trump in the picture. She lied, she will very likely continue lying, and given the history of the Clinton family, the odds are overwhelmingly high that this will be far from the most significant scandal overshadowing her candidacy/Presidency.

> I would guess that a significant percentage of State Department emails to and from the Secretary of State are at least confidential

Probably, so? The fact that it's a mixed environment means that it's a code switching situation, which means that the indicators that a particular context is in play are critical. There's a reason that classified documents have banners (and though it's not the purpose of portion marking email subject lines to serve as a "this document is classified" flag, it probably in practice schedule at least as useful as a code switching trigger as proper banners.

> Again, we won't agree on this until after the election when Clinton supporters like yourself are able to undertake an honest assessment of their new President

We won't agree on this question even then. I mean, my position on the emails in general or this particular point hasn't changed since I was a vociferous opponent of Clinton in the primary, I don't see why it would even if I became entirely disenchanted with her performance in office.

I suspect you're projecting from the fact that your reaction is based on your prefered electoral outcome to assume the same must be true of anyone who disagrees with you as well.

I would prefer that neither of them win. Certainly we can do better than this.

I think what it means is that (C) data was removed from a documented and transmitted.

Her staff discuss worries over highly classified pictures of North Korea in the Podesta emails related to this scandal, so no matter what markings were used, she showed very poor judgement.

There's also a point there that intentional negligence is a contradiction in terms. If something is intentional, it's not negligent. If it's negligent, it can't be intentional.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/07/politics/hillary-clinton-colin...

A Weiner is going to ruin it for Hillary again. She should have never ran in the first place given their corrupt past.

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