No one should be quoting it here.

This is what Tom Blanton, Executive Director of the National Security Archives has to say. The whole classification system is arbitrary and capricious.


http://www.politico.com/story/2015/08/hillary-clinton-fights-back-on-classified-documents-121532.html



National Security Archive Executive Director Tom Blanton said Wednesday that the withholding of information already formally published by the government — as occurred with the transcript sent to his group — underscores the unpredictable nature of the classified information process.

“This is the very definition of arbitrary and capricious,” Blanton said in an interview. “That’s the deep problem with the classification system, everybody who leaves the system looks back and says, ‘Wow, more than half, maybe three-quarters, of what I saw marked classified didn’t deserve to be but people on the inside are busy using their enforcement authority to keep people in line.”

SNIP

“This document shows what the intelligence community reviewers would like to do with Hillary Clinton’s emails,” he said. “This is why the State Department should not give in to pressure to retroactively classify information that circulated on an unclassified system. … It’s a double standard. What the intelligence community wants to call classified, they get away with calling it classified.”

Followed by you know what kind of bashing....all on the backs of RW sites....

A classic!

we have some righties posing as socialists here.

Deflection. Projection.

We all used to do that.

When we were six years old.

It's a bit unseemly for a presidential candidate to be doing it.

of the National Security Archives.

And with retroactive classification, it would be almost impossible to know you weren't improperly possessing classified information. So practically everyone in Congress and covering political stories in the media might be doing it.

For example, all the reporters who downloaded the Kissinger transcript anytime in the last 8 years -- a transcript which has been sitting on the State Department website -- are now possessing classified information. Oops.

At this point in time it's the Clinton campaign that has to deal with the accusations.

And deflecting blame onto everybody else does nothing to exonerate them.

can reliably follow them. Not Hillary or anyone else.

The policy may be a joke but it is still the policy.

And until the policy is scrapped or more likely, rewritten, it applies to everybody. And I question that there was even a good faith effort to comply with it in this case. Which left the SoS vulnerable to this sort of scrutiny, fairly or unfairly. It conveys a sense of arrogance, entitlement, and the rules are for the peons.

I don't don't believe anything rose to the level of a crime. But the stonewalling and drip drip drip of stories is reminiscent of Watergate and the various Clinton I scandals, near scandals, and rumors.

to consistently follow it.

I have a very different impression of her than you do. I don't think she's like Bill at all. I think she's the Girl Scout type, trying to follow the rules as best she can.

No she certainly isn't at all like Bill, but thats not necessarily all good. Rumors and allegations have followed him around for decades, but mostly never stuck, partly because he was able to bullshit his way out of it. He has the people skills, gregariousness and charisma (gift of gab) to charm people into agreeing with him, or at least to overlook his mistakes. Obama has it too, to a lesser extent.

Hillary is IMO a bookwormy introvert who is uncomfortable with the scrutiny and lack of privacy that comes with being a public person. Her reaction to criticism is visible resentment at being attacked when she has (in her mind) such noble motives.

And this more than anything else, is what makes me believe she is temperamentally unsuited for the office of POTUS. To some extent, the press needles her because its so easy to get a reaction, to goad her to lash out. If they do it long enough, they may be able to provoke a meltdown or some sort of Nixonian self pitying soliloquy.

There's also a smugness, an arrogance that comes across in stressful situations like the meeting with the BLM representatives, or the unfortunate remark after the death of Khaddafi.

I'm always reading posts here about her alleged toughness. I don't believe it, I think she is a very fragile person who may not be up to the day to day stress of the job and the fishbowl nature of the office. And if thats true, better that we find it out now.

Hillary is a very smart woman with lots of savvy to boot! And when she takes the oath of office, Gowdy will be hiding somewhere in the fetal position.

Oh how sweet it would be!

Yes, another false "scandal" going nowhere,

All the ranting and raving about security can bite them in the butt.

First of all, the FBI has been clear that HRC is not the target. The targets will be anyone who sent HRC a document in which they included classified information.

This could include HRC subordinates who summarized information for HRC from reports they had on a classified system. These could be political people she brought in or career professional asked by the SoS to put together analyses on hot spots. The latter is where it could be really unfair. They were asked by their boss to create the reports and they likely never thought that sending them to the SoS - on the email they were given - could be a problem. However, it IS sending classified information to a non classified machine.

What I described - and something described in several articles - is the concern that OTHERS emailed Clinton emails that included CLASSIFIED INFORMATION - that came from reports on their classified systems. This is what is being investigated. This is also why they are saying HRC is NOT the target. If anyone sent her information that came from classified sources, then they have broken the law.

(Note that even if HRC had a non classified State.gov account, this would be a problem. )

says that retroactive classification IS what is at issue here.

You are right that the issue of a personal server is irrelevant. Classified info doesn't belong on non classified .gov accounts, either.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/08/hillary-clinton-fights-back-on-classified-documents-121532.html

“The emails at issue were written by career foreign service officers,” Fallon said, noting that neither message was marked classified at the time. The 2011 email is actually marked “SBU” — meaning “sensitive but unclassified.”
“When you look at these emails. … We think it vindicates our point,” he said.

Fallon emphasized that Clinton’s top aides had simply forwarded the messages to her.

He said it would be odd for her or her aides to substitute their judgment for those who compiled the information in the first place. Clinton “was, at worst, the passive recipient of unwitting information that subsequently became deemed as classified,” he said. “When it comes to classified information, the standards are not at all black and white. … We think this matter is mostly just shining a spotlight on the culture of classification in certain corners of the government.”

SNIP

“This is the very definition of arbitrary and capricious,” Blanton said in an interview. “That’s the deep problem with the classification system, everybody who leaves the system looks back and says, ‘Wow, more than half, maybe three-quarters, of what I saw marked classified didn’t deserve to be but people on the inside are busy using their enforcement authority to keep people in line.”

SNIP

Blanton said the confusion about the Kissinger transcript shows that State should stand its ground in the current dispute over Clinton’s emails.

“This document shows what the intelligence community reviewers would like to do with Hillary Clinton’s emails,” he said. “This is why the State Department should not give in to pressure to retroactively classify information that circulated on an unclassified system. … It’s a double standard. What the intelligence community wants to call classified, they get away with calling it classified.”


Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/08/hillary-clinton-fights-back-on-classified-documents-121532.html#ixzz3jPemIsxa

This is an extreme example, but I go through the drivethrough at Taco Bell. Written on the inside of the bag is highly classified information...names of Chinese moles, for example.

So I eat my Doritos Locos tacos, cool rance and nacho cheese.

I put my wrappers inside. Then the feds arrest me.

I had no idea that the classified information was in my possession. Is that a crime?

Time to enact a strict law that ALL government business needs to be done on official government servers and email accounts and kept for a significant amount of time. There is no reason for anyone to be using outside email accounts or servers for any reason.
Officials can still use all the modern electronic devices to get to their accounts and servers securely with today's technology.

I doubt anything will come of Hillary's server use but I do think it was silly to put herself in this position. Cheney's use of other accounts and email deletions went nowhere and were far more serious. Why didn't we do something about it then?

whether her email was to be sent on the classified system or the non-classified .gov account, decisions that the Rethugs could criticize; and she still would have been subject to the risk of other people sending her classified materials on a non-classified email account -- which is what is alleged to have happened.

I am really irked that Cheney got away with what he did and I don't ever want that to happen again. It should all be done on government servers and preserved (in my opinion, forever).

who can decide, with every email, either to send it out on her personal account on her phone (for example), or on the .gov account.

The only difference is that she sorted through her emails after-the-fact instead of making the decision before she sent them. And then she turned over her work-related emails to the State Department.

Also, when she was sending emails on her email to other government employees, i.e., as part of her job, those emails went to other people who did have .gov accounts, and their accounts preserved them.

This is a problem the government is way behind with simply because it hasn't kept up with technology. It would be simple to fix and they should.

I find this a non-issue for Hillary (except for the fact that I think she should have known better - still I will stand by her on this issue) but one that can easily be solved for the future.

to send an email to your husband about a dentist appointment?

I specified government business. I really don't see a problem with my recommendation.

But one should always be aware that whatever they send over electronic devices could possibly be retrieved even if personal.

whether to use a personal account or a .gov account -- like other employees would do -- she used the personal account for everything, both dentist appointments and government business. And then when the govt. asked for her business emails, she went back through and identified them. (But the govt. already had them since the .gov recipients had copies in their files.)

So the only difference was that she made her decisions after-the-fact instead of before she sent an email. But she made the decision, just like anyone else makes the decision every time they choose to use their own email account vs. the .gov account.

If any government employee today wants to hide a work email, that person still has the option to send it via a personal email account. They shouldn't do that -- but they could.

The bottom line is that Hillary wouldn't have been restricted to using the .gov account and the classified account. She could have been using her personal email for anything she wanted and no one would have been looking over her shoulder. Why aren't they trusting her to distinguish between work and personal emails now?

Mine is between any government business (classified or not) and personal business. It really isn't hard to differentiate. And stiff penalties to not do so would make it even easier.

when you would have trusted her -- like all government employees -- to decide, on her own, whether she needed to use a .gov account for a work email or a hillary account for a personal email?

I am suggesting that NO government official should have that option. Do you really disagree?

Do you want more Cheney's in the future?

Good grief, I have already stated that I will stand by Hillary in this matter. I just want real accountability in the future. Why don't you????

ETA: And no, I don't particularly trust Hillary since she has already violated my trust in her.

following the previous custom and using her own email -- because the rickety government system (at the time) sucked. And the fact that it was on her own server, rather than google's server (or wherever) really makes no difference.

Where were Colin Powell's emails? On the RNC server.


And yet they have the nerve to criticize Hillary.

I just think further oversight is warranted.

I never want to have these email conversations again in regard to anyone in office. All government business on government email and on government servers and preserved like it rather obviously should be. It is a matter of accountability and appropriateness.

I doubt it is strong enough but will look it up. TY for the info, I wasn't aware it had been changed.

use of private systems, but it sets out how email will be handled. I read that John Kerry only uses the .gov account -- but the system has been overhauled and works much better than it did in Hillary's era.

http://mediamatters.org/research/2015/03/03/the-new-york-times-deceptive-suggestion-that-hi/202726

But The Law Overseeing Retention Of Private Emails Was Not Changed Until After Clinton Left The State Department
President Obama Signed Update To Federal Records Act In 2014. The Presidential and Federal Records Act

Amendments of 2014 became law on November 26, 2014. [Congress.gov, accessed 3/3/15]

▪ National Archives Official: 2014 Federal Records Law Clarified How Private Email Should Be Handled. Among the "major points" in the 2014 law highlighted by the National Archives was: "Clarifying the responsibilities of Federal government officials when using non-government email systems." [Records Express, National Archives, 12/2/14]

▪ 2014 Federal Records Law Marked "The First Significant Changes To The Federal Records Act Of 1950." According to the National Archives, the 2014 law marked "the first significant changes to the Federal Records Act of 1950." [Records Express, National Archives, 12/2/14]

Law Signed "Two Years After Clinton Stepped Down." Criticizing the Times article's insinuation that Clinton violated the law, Daily Banter contributor Bob Cesca pointed out: "The article doesn't say which federal regulation, though. Why? Perhaps because the federal regulations went into effect in late November, 2014 when President Obama signed H.R. 1233, modernizing the Federal Records Act of 1950 to include electronic communications. It was signed two years after Clinton stepped down." [The Daily Banter, 3/3/15]

But a big thanks for the very good information.