Snowden hasn't leaked anything from Hillary's email server.

[rogerashton]

Look, I'm a Bernie supporter, but there is an anti-Hillary meme among Republicans (and perhaps a few others) that needs to be debunked. It is the claim that her server would be less secure than a government email server. All the evidence is that government servers are NOT secure. Security is costly, and in a world of sequestration, there is no money to spend on that -- and anyway, one thing our federal bureaucracy does NOT seem to be very competent at is the use of computer technology. To the best of my knowledge, nothing from Hillary's server has been leaked by Snowden or any other source. The same cannot be said of government computers.

I'm no expert, but my guess is that material on Hillary's server was more secure, if only because the server was not known to exist -- until the Pubs made an issue of it and demanded that everything on it be made public. That did create risks to security, if the redaction of many of the documents is reasonable.

[CJCRANE]

1. What about the Romanian hacker "Guccifer"?

He hacked emails that were sent to that email address.

[rogerashton]

6. OK, I have learned something.

Apparently Guccifer hacked many US and UN figures with the intention of proving that they are members of the Illuminati.

https://pando.com/2015/03/20/exclusive-interview-jailed-hacker-guccifer-boasts-i-used-to-read-hillarys-memos-for-six-seven-hours-and-then-do-the-gardening/

Nevertheless, some important Clinton emails evidently were leaked and published by RT on the basis of Guccifer's hack. However, it was Blumenthal's AOL account that Guccifer hacked, not Hillary's server. (I'm not sure what sort of a source Pando is.)

http://www.rt.com/usa/complete-emails-guccifer-clinton-554/

According to Pando, Guccifer also hacked the Bushes, Colin Powell, and a UN figure, with AOL accounts particularly vulnerable. I would say that this is evidence that official emails are vulnerable enough across the board that the private email server did not increase the vulnerability of her communications -- and it remains the case that to the best of my knowledge, the Clinton server (unlike AOL) was not hacked.

[leftofcool]

11. AOL accounts have always been vulnerable.

They were never secure from the get go.

[DanTex]

13. That's correct, it wasn't her server that was hacked, it was on the other end. It wouldn't have

mattered how secure Clinton's server was.

[randome]

2. She'd need to post everything on Sharepoint for Genius-Boy to take it.

But you're right. A lot of hand-wringing over nothing but what might have happened but apparently never did.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Don't ever underestimate the long-term effects of a good night's sleep.[/center][/font][hr]

[riversedge]

3. The msm would rather sensationalize any crumb to the made-up story. It sells

advertize and leads to money for their pot.

[RiverLover]

4. RW smear or a fact that the head of NSA said

It would present an "opportunity" for spy agencies if the foreign minister of Russia or Iranwere to use a private email server for official business, the chief of the U.S. National Security Agency said on Thursday.

The comments by Admiral Mike Rogers were in response to questions during a U.S. Senate hearing about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's use of a private server for email.

"From a foreign intelligence perspective, that represents opportunity," Rogers told senators.

http://www.newsweek.com/mike-rogers-nsa-hillary-clinton-emails-376432

[BlueWaveDem]

10. But tech and forensics found no evidence of hacking or wiping.

[jeff47]

20. Actually, that isn't true.

No such "forensics" have been released.

[Hortensis]

5. Very true, Roger. Plus, another security problem with the government

server is that so many people see the messages. I've read that sometimes it's avoided because of that alone.

[BlueWaveDem]

7. And the State Dept servers are under constant attack.

So in retrospect, a pretty smart move.

[Le Taz Hot]

8. The problem, as has been stated time again,

is that it doesn't matter if what she did/didn't do was legal or illegal or smart or not smart or ethical or not ethical. The ISSUE is the MSM has a bone and they're going to run with it throughout the campaign. If she's the nominee, it will dog her throughout the general which eliminates the "she's more electable" claim. Look at her disapproval ratings. The GOP LOATHE her and will come out in droves to vote against her. Plenty of progressives will never vote for her either. She has NO crossover appeal and the Blind Party Loyalists and big money isn't enough to get her to the White House.

THAT is the issue.

[restorefreedom]

15. +1000 nt

[Motown_Johnny]

9. Your assumption is based on a false premise.

Just because government servers are not completely secure it does not mean that Hillary's server was more secure. It is very possible (and likely) that although government email servers can be hacked, hers could be hacked even more easily.

You claim that the server was not known to exist. But if the government server was hacked, then the hacker would have the address and it would then be known to exist to the hacker. As you already know, judging by your response top post #1, this did actually happen through Blumenthal's AOL account. It could easily have also happened through a government server, assuming one with her address was hacked.


I'm very sorry but your argument simply makes no sense at all.

[rogerashton]

14. "I'm very sorry," Motown_Johnny, but

your attempt at a counterargument is all might-have, could-have, maybe. Not a shred of evidence or conclusive reasoning.

1) A chain is a strong as its weakest link. What the limited available evidence tells us is that the Clinton server was not the weakest link. As Hillary has said, the use of private emails in the state department was not limited to her server, and the apparent weakest link was AOL.

2) It is one thing to obtain the email address and another to discover the server. Email addresses, including the domain name, can be and regularly are aliased. Many of my correspondents have self.com email addresses but are served by commercial providers. A top hacker might be able to find the server anyway, but according to the Pando account, Guccifer hacked Blumenthal's account by guessing that he used his grandmother's name as the password. Pretty elementary.

3) Your argument seems to be that the Clinton server could be hacked IF other accounts had been hacked first. That would make the Clinton server the more secure one.

Look, there is a scandal here, and the scandal is that a secretary of state or other government official has no option of a maximally secure email channel for official or for personal business, because the government relies on cheap computer equipment or services or on low-ball bids from private companies that are better at getting government contracts than establishing effective systems. That needs to change. Meanwhile, it seems that Hillary did the best she could with a poor situation.

[Motown_Johnny]

16. What evidence was presented in your OP?

I don't see anything other than the same speculation that I presented.

My point about the email address being obtained through government channels seems to have been misunderstood. It would make her more vulnerable since she would suffer the same vulnerabilities as any private email server (and we know plenty of them that have been hacked, if you don't believe me then try searching for "list of companies hacked in 2014&quot as well as being vulnerable because the address could also be obtained through other channels. Her husband had been using that server for years and it is entirely possible that people had been trying to hack Bill Clinton for many years also. If they had then they would have had access to her emails.

Hillary's private server is the weakest link. Any reasonable examination of the facts leads to that conclusion.

[jeff47]

22. 1) is false.

1) A chain is a strong as its weakest link. What the limited available evidence tells us is that the Clinton server was not the weakest link.

No, AOL actually does better with security than her team did with her server.

2) It is one thing to obtain the email address and another to discover the server. Email addresses, including the domain name, can be and regularly are aliased. Many of my correspondents have self.com email addresses but are served by commercial providers. A top hacker might be able to find the server anyway, but according to the Pando account, Guccifer hacked Blumenthal's account by guessing that he used his grandmother's name as the password. Pretty elementary.

Please stop commenting on technical issues. You have absolutely zero idea of what you are talking about. In fact, your comment here has made several people dumber.

Clinton's server is located at IP address 208.91.197.27. Everyone in the world can find that. That is the entire point of the DNS record "clintonemail.com". All those self.com emails that you claim obscure the real server likewise have a DNS entry pointing to the real server.

This does not require a "top hacker". It is utterly and completely trivial to find. Why? For the same reason the address is on the outside of an envelope. You have to know where to deliver it. So the systems are in place to make it trivial to find.

3) Your argument seems to be that the Clinton server could be hacked IF other accounts had been hacked first.

No, Clinton was broadcasting her server's identity to everyone she emailed. That's what @clintonemail.com at the end of the email address does. She used the email address to communicate with some foreign leaders too.

In addition, she accessed her email from outside the US - she claimed she didn't want to travel with multiple phones as her excuse for setting up the server. Her phone would be constantly accessing clintonemail.com, thus identifying it to the government of every country she traveled to. China and Russia aren't exactly known for not snooping on Internet service.

You really do not understand how Internet protocols and security work.

More to the point, could you show me the article about the State department's email system being hacked? 'Cause you are claiming all government IT systems are swiss cheese, and so Clinton was better off setting up her own server. So state's email system must have been hacked if it's so trivial. Where's the article?

Government IT systems get hacked largely because of two things:
1) There's a ton of them. Many, many, many tons. As in, you pile up the electrons that make up the 1s and 0s in the software and it adds up to tons. There is a joke that the NSA measures its computing power in acres. Securing every single one of those is not possible. So occasionally, one or more will get hacked.

2) The government is being targeted by other nation-states. They have resources so far beyond a normal "hacker" that things impossible for a "normal hacker" to do are trivial.

[HereSince1628]

12. With respect to the primary campaign, it's now gone beyond emails and the server

It's gone on to reflections re the personality and character of Clinton: how those contributed to this mess, and how those have confounded its resolution.

It's gone meta' because people ask "so what's the fuss?" and the answer comes back as speculation/concern about how these events are fit in to perceptions and concerns that already existed about her and her previous unscandals.

Set aside the legal/security issues. The meta' discussion remains relevant to the primary simply because everything that impacts/reinforces public perceptions about a primary candidate is relevant to the primary.

[treestar]

17. It would be hypocritical of anyone who supported Eddie

to care about this at all, as they think it should all be transparent anyway.

Suddenly a concern for national security, lol.

[ljm2002]

18. Wait, what?

"anyone who supported Eddie"... oh, you mean Edward Snowden. The person who lifted the veil on the NSA snooping everyone's emails. Since when do those who support "Eddie" want everyone's emails to be transparent? We want more government activity to be transparent, yes, within reasonable operational parameters. But we, and "Eddie", want email in general to be private. We, and "Eddie", want citizens to retain their Fourth Amendment right to privacy, without being snooped by our own government for no reason.

It does seem a little weird to run one's own private email server in order to conduct state business. But as long as emails are sent in the clear between her and other people around the country and the world, then the communications are not secure, regardless of their origin. Security is only as good as the security of the weakest link in the chain of email hops, and admins on any of the hops have access to the content of the email messages anyway.

The bottom line to me, is that everyone should be using email encryption as a matter of course, and our government officials should definitely be doing that, especially ones as highly placed as the Secretary of State. Until that becomes the norm, all this hand-waving about email security is, I repeat, laughable.

[jeff47]

19. Actually, you're completely wrong. Her server security was awful.

What we know so far:

1) Communications with her server were not encrypted for the first 3 months.
https://www.venafi.com/blog/post/what-venafi-trustnet-tells-us-about-the-clinton-email-server/

2) They left the default VPN keys installed on her server
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-04/clinton-s-e-mail-system-built-for-privacy-though-not-security

Using those addresses, McGeorge discovered that the certificate appearing on the site Tuesday appeared to be the factory default for the security appliance, made by Fortinet Inc., running the service.

3) They were using, and continue to use, self-signed SSL certificates
http://gawker.com/how-unsafe-was-hillary-clintons-secret-staff-email-syst-1689393042

4) They set up a .com domain, enabling the typosquater who has registered clintonmail.com (no "e" before "mail&quot . Whoever registered that domain is in a perfect position to steal login information or perform spear phishing attacks.

5) Her ISP was repeatedly hacked by China
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1251&pid=615632

We do know that the security on her email server was far worse than the security on a typical government system.

[RiverLover]

21. Great post, important FACTS, not rw bs.

You should make this an OP, if/when you have the time.

Democrats need to get their heads out of the sand.

[jeff47]

23. It would sink like a stone.

Clinton supporters would blindly call it a smear. Heck, they're already posting crap like reply #10.

And there are not enough non-Clinton supporters who are technical enough to understand it.

Heck, Team Clinton literally sent every email, unencrypted, to third parties: http://www.dvorak.org/blog/2015/03/16/breaking-news-spam-filtering-service-had-access-to-clinton-classified-emails/

But most people's understanding of the Internet mostly comes from awful "hacking" movies.

[RiverLover]

24. Probably so.

I appreciate your technical grasp & research on this. Will have to bookmark it.