Should Clinton Emails Have Been Classified From the Start?

[cui bono]

Hillary Clinton's repeated insistence that she didn't send or receive classified emails through her infamous personal email server seemed to take a hit Friday morning, when Reuters reported that many of her State Department emails should have been deemed automatically classified from the start. But the reality of the rules, like so many of the details in the growing email scandal, isn't entirely clear cut.

The State Department began releasing tracts of Clinton's emails this summer, some of which have been retroactively stamped as classified—though the messages originally lacked such markings, as Clinton has consistently said in her defense. Reuters perused the thousands of emails released to the public so far and discovered at least 30 message chains that had been redacted due to their inclusion of "foreign government information." It's all a bit technical, but essentially, Reuters wrote, information privately passed along by foreign governments to US officials should immediately be considered classified, a policy put in place to facilitate regular communications between countries. Reuters said that such information is the only type that US officials must considered "presumed" classified from the start.

"It appears this information should have been classified at the time and not handled on a private unsecured email network, according to government regulations," Reuters concluded.

But one security expert doesn't think it's quite that simple. "Strictly speaking, the executive order on classification is permissive, not mandatory," Steven Aftergood, who writes Secrecy News for the Federation of American Scientists, told Mother Jones. "In other words, it authorizes classification; it doesn't require it." Aftergood pointed to Executive Order 13526, signed by President Obama in December 2009, which says "information may be originally classified," but does not explicitly mandate it.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/08/hillary-clinton-emails-classification-foreign

[HereSince1628]

1. The content of the emails and their classification is likely a side-show

Flashy as a side show may be, the real issue is the physical handling of the information, outside of government control. There were regulations/policies in place to disallow that. And, importantly, that is probably not a crime but a violation of policy. Secretaries of US Cabinet Departments don't get dismissed for such breaches and this sec was already out of office.

Where things could get very messy is around the question of the quality of Clinton's cooperation aka what the red team considers purposeful evasion if not obstruction. The red team will drag that crap on as long as possible...which means well into 2016.

[elfin]

2. That answer only matters to the bias of the media "reporting" on the story

They will select according to their preferred narrative.

Whereas I am interested in the possibility that the out-of-the-mainstream- loop server just may have ultimately been more "secure" than the constantly pummeled State, Pentagon etc. domains because the "evil doers" were looking for her communiques there instead of the more official channels.

[rock]

3. She sent nor received emails marked "classified"

See the problem?

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

4. Yeah.

The problem is that she KEPT emails on a non-State server AFTER they were classified. And on a thumb drive she gave to a lawyer.

[Thor_MN]

6. So you believe there is an app to retroactively find all references to something deemed classified

and it was ignored?

[cui bono]

8. "Search"

[Thor_MN]

9. For what? The word classified?

[catnhatnh]

5. Some information is "born classified"

http://www.businessinsider.com/r-exclusive-dozens-of-clinton-emails-were-classified-from-the-start-us-rules-suggest-2015-8

Hillary both knew and ignored this...

[ZX86]

7. Where was all this concern for national security issues

During the last administration? Sorry. I'm all out of f*cks to give as I used them all up on the national security failures that lead to the worst attack on U.S. shores and the subsequent war against a nation that had nothing to do with it. In comparison this email issue is equal to someone leaving the lights on.