Computer forensics defuses FBI's Clinton email 'bombshell' Since igniting a political firestorm and triggering major changes in US presidential voting intentions by revealing some emails passing through Hillary Clinton's private email server had been found in an unrelated criminal investigation, the FBI has gone to ground. The US criminal investigation bureau has repeatedly refused to …
And yet we now know (thanks to Russian hackers, apparently) that it was Mrs. Clinton who was arranging violent provocations at Trump events. And don't forget history, where the really big body counts are always at the feet of the major Leftists: Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, Hitler, etc...
PS - I know there's a theory out there that Hitler was right wing. Note that his party's name had the word "Socialist" in it, and his bitterest enemies were the German Communists, a rival leftist group.
And yet we now know (thanks to Russian hackers, apparently) that it was Mrs. Clinton who was arranging violent provocations at Trump events
Are you sure about that? Because our TV media over here showed this odd-looking thing that apepared to be an oversized and rather deformed karp with a bad toupee spouting off about how it would like to hit people, and how it wanted others to attack them. ISTR it even said it would pay for the legal fees of anyone charged with assault in such an event as well, although I could be confusing him with someone else. Now, unless you're saying that chump really is a puppet of that other thing.....
As to your so-called "body counts", one has to wonder.. The policies of many in the right-wing (such as NZ's National party) lead to some nasty levels of poverty, hardship and desperation among the poor. This has a tendency to cause increased child mortality rates, increases in suicide, and increases in deaths from otherwise-preventable disease1. And just how much can be laid at the feet of shrub? They claim to be Christian, yet follow few (if any) of the teachings of Christ...
I wonder how, if all things were taken into account, the counts would stack up?
1 That said, last year one of my best long-term friends died in the US. From an illness that shouldn't normally kill people but since he'd had to stop working he couldn't pay for his medical bills. The details I received say he lived on $US a few hundred a month in some housing estate that'd make the worst slum lords wet with ecstasy.
After sidelining the Clinton email investigation this summer, he publicly promised Congress that he would notify them if any more/any of the missing emails were found. He did so, but rather than wait for one of the Republican members of the oversight committee or their staffs to leak the letter about emails (which surely would have happened), he chose to do it via the FBI.
1) Given that he had publicly made the promise to Congress and that the new potential evidence was within the scope of the investigation, he was bound to notify Congress.
2) It was better for the FBI, Congress and the government in general that the FBI released the letter, given that Congress would have leaked it anyway and the you would REALLY have conspiracy buffs on the left and right baying for blood.
3) Obviously not all 650,000 emails/messages involve Hillary Clinton, much less those that involve Hillary and were part of the 30K emails that Clinton had deleted.
4) 95% of 650,000 is still a big-ass number, when you are potentially talking about classified email.
5) What if Comey had not leaked the emails, and something relevant had been found after the election? The FBI and Department of Justice would have credibly been accused of hiding damaging information to save Hillary Clinton's presidential chances. This was a no-win either way.
I dislike Trump too, but you don't do the cause of good government or freedom in general any help by blindly enabling bad behavior from Hillary Clinton. Remember, the fault that any of this is even a newstory is ENTIRELY on Hillary Clinton. Especially given that she used to be a top-flight lawyer and that she knew she wanted to run for President, she should have been smart enough to realize that running a private email server for public business that sometimes involved classified info and then giving instructions that resulted in the deletion of 30,000 messages off that server might not be a very smart thing to do.
I can take issue with aspects of a lot of famous investigations and prosecutions, but that doesn't excuse stupid, antisocial and sometimes illegal decisions on the part of the people being investigated.
Is there a reliable source for the 650,000 number? In a moderate amount of web searching, I have not found it. And in view of that, is not the 5% simply a made up number derived from the quotient of ~30,000 by 650,000?
If there are, indeed, 650,000 State Departmente emails on Weiner's laptop, the relevant number can be found by eliminating duplicates and matches to already known email messages from Clinton's illegal server. The first, as the article states, can be done partly by use of hash comparisons, but that still may leave semantic duplicates that give different hash values as a result of forwarding or inclusion in forwarded messages. The notion that hash comparison with emails that Clinton turned over is rubbish, since those were printed and if available in hashable form almost will give a different hash value than their original form. The "expert" opinions reported seem to have been based on assumptions that are known to be incorrect, and can be discounted heavily.
"5) What if Comey had not leaked the emails, and something relevant had been found after the election? The FBI and Department of Justice would have credibly been accused of hiding damaging information to save Hillary Clinton's presidential chances."
Just like Obama and Mrs. Clinton's treasonous actions involving Benghazi were covered up by vicious lies about a video for the purpose of getting Obama elected again. It worked that time, but now the stench is too great, and too many people are smelling it for them to pull it off again.
I thought what matters is the CONTENT of said emails.
You can't use the argument criminality doesn't matter because it only occured in a few emails out of hundreds of thousands.
Logically any criminal could use this nonsense argument.
Well, I don't think I should be sent down for robbing those 3 houses and molesting those 5 people your honour.
Oh, and why is that?
Because there was a thousand houses and 2,300 people living on that street. So I didn't rob 99.95% of houses, and I didn't molest 99.995% of the people on it.
Oh well, if you put it like that.
What a stupid article.
That picture of Clinton
https://regmedia.co.uk/2016/11/04/hillary_clinton_photo_by_evan_el-amin_via_shutterstock.jpg
reminds me of
https://regmedia.co.uk/2016/06/02/geeks_guide_bt_tower_photo_the_register.jpg
How about a Geek's Guide to the US?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/06/02/geeks_guide_to_britain_book/
Government emails are recorded and archived, and are subject to Freedom Of Information requests. Later, historians can pick over them. The national security arguement is to miss the point. She probably did not leak anything that "the enemy" did not know or care about. Her crime was keeping stuff out of the reach of Americains using FOI. She does not dispute the facts.
Yes she did do it to maintain a curtain of secrecy around her pay-to-play State Dept. operation, but she also enabled outside actors to grab a lot of state secrets while she was protecting her crime spree. Probably some people are now dead because of her, besides the ones she let die in Benghazi.
There is no way in heck that Hillary's primary State Dept. "clintonemail.com" Inbox and Outbox only contained 62,000 emails. ZIp, nada, none.
What it sounds like is that someone set up that laptop with an automatic sync to clintonemail.com and while Huma may not have used it personally very much, all the time it was running it silently synced EVERYTHING to it.And now the FBI has every email that Huma had access to.
For clarity: "Impeached" means she would be tried by the Senate. They would have to convict to have her removed.
The really interesting question, which could kick an attempt like this to the Supreme Court, is can a President be impeached for things that took place before election?
The language is not at all clear, and the Supremes might decide that Congress can't reach back before the election; as "the people have spoken".
for further clarity (same anonymous coward here replying to my own post)...
To be a crime they have to prove BOTH mishandling AND intent. Comey has admitted they cannot prove intent. What on earth could possibly be in additional emails that would alter that calculation??
I understand that political pressure can alter that calculation, but why would anything in the new cache change things? Even if there was a tippy-top secret document? That just confirms the mishandling.
You are incorrect about intent. The statue in question (the Espionage Act) specifically states that intent is not to be allowed as a defense. Yet it was allowed by Comey, apparently by personal fiat. That is why so many people feel Hillary was allowed to skate. The statute was basically rewritten by Comey on the fly to shield Hillary from her misdeeds.
Now Comey has withdrawn his protection, for whatever reason. Hillary is exposed as the criminal she is, and she will never be president.
"The statue in question (the Espionage Act) specifically states that intent is not to be allowed as a defense".
I'd like to see that wording. Here's some wording I have found:
(a) Whoever, for the purpose of obtaining information respecting the national defense with intent or reason to believe that the information is to be used to the injury of the United States...
(b) Whoever, for the purpose aforesaid, and with like intent or reason to believe...
(c)...having reason to believe, at the time he receives or obtains, or agrees or attempts to receive or obtain it, that it has been or will be obtained, taken, made, or disposed of by any person contrary to the provisions of this chapter..
(d)... transmit or cause to be communicated, delivered or transmitted the same to any person not entitled to receive it,
(e) Whoever having unauthorized possession of...
(f) Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense, (1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust..
f is probably the most interesting one, but it requires proof someone accessed documents (hacked) due to gross negligence. Maybe it happened, but somebody has to prove it. The other sections don't apply to any of her alleged actions or require proving intent.
A different section says this:
(a) Whoever knowingly and willfully communicates, furnishes, transmits, or otherwise makes available to an unauthorized person, or publishes, or uses in any manner prejudicial to the safety or interest of the United States or for the benefit of any foreign government to the detriment of the United States any classified information—
Here you have to prove 'knowingly' (she knew it was going to be hacked) and 'willfully' did it anyway. Good luck proving that.
These statutes CLEARLY speak to intent, so which broadcast on Faux News told you otherwise (or please quote the applicable statute)?
In this case the only written requirement for prosecution is "gross negligence." Comey chose to convert that to "intent," obviously to get the Democrat candidate off the hook. Or are you now going to claim there wasn't any gross negligence? Or that she is so thick that she was unaware of what she was doing, namely hiding her criminal enterprise (influence peddling) via an illegal home email server?
Then there were all the lies, remember? Mrs. Clinton stated there were NO classified emails on that server. Why? Because she knew it was a crime to have them there. But now we know there were thousands. And now the test for criminality has magically shifted much higher. Lucky for Hillary! She could not be president under the old standard, eh?
In this case the only written requirement for prosecution is "gross negligence."
Which was?
Comey chose to convert that to "intent," obviously to get the Democrat candidate off the hook.
Why would he need to do this, when it was clearly evident that she had not committed any crime in this matter?
Or that she is so thick that she was unaware of what she was doing, namely hiding her criminal enterprise (influence peddling) via an illegal home email server?
How is her alleged "influence peddling" illegal? How was her having her own email server "illegal" (or has the US really fallen that far that private servers are illegal?)
Actual answers would be appreciated. With relevant citations where they're not otherwise easily locatable.
Having a private server is perfectly legal. Using one to conduct federal business generally is not. The exception would be systems that are certified and accredited by the appropriate federal official who, in the case of the State Department, was the CIO. Lest anyone raise the question, that has been the law since 2002 or before. According to the DoS Inspector General's report earlier this year, the CIO stated he was unaware of Clinton's use of the private server (which seems depressingly like he was on what we used to call "indoor annual leave") and that he had not and would not have approved it if he knew. Relevant citation: FISMA (2002_ - 44 U.S.C. § 3551, et seq. along with Chapter 35 generally.
Influence peddling may or may not be illegal. Done by an official in exchange for cash or objects of more than nominal value, it generally is illegal. For the federal civil service, the usual limit was set at $10 - anything of greater value might be considered a bribe. Jimmy Dimora, former Cuyahoga County (OH) commissioner, is working on a 28 year sentence at the Beckley federal prison in Beaver, WV. In many cases, Clinton's probably included, the normal favor granting activities, such as arranging for access, are legal, but those who exceed limits, or who come to be seen as deplorable human beings, as Dimora did, can be prosecuted. As in most such things, prosecutors have a lot of discretion.
"Whoever knowingly and willfully communicates"
using an insecure server to communicate this information, in violation of the law (which Mrs. Clinton DID do), would be sufficient. State Department employees were REQUIRED to use a government server for all of their communications, primarily because of the 'Freedom of Information' act, and also because of the classified nature of many of their communications.
For several high profile people (like General Petraeus), this was sufficient. But Mrs. Clinton is "above the law" in the eyes of the Obaka administration's justice department, and THAT is why it's 'at issue' right now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Petraeus#Criminal_charges_and_probation
in short, UNAUTHORIZED REMOVAL AND RETENTION of classified material was what he plead guilty to. That _could_ be a) Mrs. Clinton's e-mail server, OR b) Huma's husband's laptop
either would be sufficient to qualify as 'removal and retention', and since it was NOT 'authorized', it becomes a punishable CRIME.
Petraeus essentially got a public 'noodle whipping' but that was about it. Probation and a big fat fine. Could have been a LOT worse.
Mrs. Clinton, on the other hand, gets lots of HOWLER MONKEY NOISE in her favor, and the willing media fanbois trying to OBFUSCATE it all, and make her President, in spite of it.
because, the CLINTONS are ABOVE the LAW. [and THIS is why they should be prosecuted to the FULLEST EXTENT, because they've been so ARROGANT about it for SO long!]
let's see if this is too far down the list of replies to get the dozens of howler-monkey downvotes...
General Petraeus, by then Director of the CIA. It's not in the Wikipedia page but seemingly the investigators faced fewer legal hurdles due to the fact the communication was in a shared folder rather than emailed communications.
It is quite clear the author of this article spoke to only 1 or 2 individuals with poor hands on experience in actual analysis.
Yes, there are all manner of e-discovery tools that can "access" masses of data, but they do this primarily via keyword searching.
Secondly, Hashes are in no way a guarantee because the storage medium (Outlook?, OST?, PST?, Web mail?, something else?) will affect the message storage parameters and thus affect the hash.
If you're actually trying to understand context, you have to actually read a lot of the content.
Lastly, if the FBI is actually trying to find all possible leaked classified data, they have to read all the content. Merely searching for "secret" isn't going to cut it.
Comparing a journalist looking for scoops vs. a professional investigation betrays ignorance of the highest degree.
For the sake of argument lets say that there are 40 classified email that Clinton wanted to hide, but have now been found on that laptop. Would the FBI just walk out and announce they are going to charge her with a crime? What if they are low level classified, what if they may lead to other possible charges, but are not in and of themselves super interesting. There are a ton of reasons why the FBI would not publicly announce anything yet. Also, they may be scrubbing the HDD for deleted email files as well, which would take time. Imagine the things Anthony Weiner has deleted from that laptop.. *SHUDDERS*
Well, as far as I'm concerned, one classified (or more sensitive) email is 1 too many. How many joint operations could she have compromised? She may be the smartest woman in the world, but as someone who spends 10-12 hours a day looking around for crap like this for my my employer, she's pretty damn dumb and the fact that the FBI opted not to charge her with anything in July, is proof to me that she gets a lot of political favor. I'm sorry, but nobody is above the law and in my opinion, people in lofty positions like that should and must be held to a much higher standard.
Furthermore, I'm still not convinced that Russia is involved in this, because those who conduct cyber espionage at the state level usually don't use a whole lot of IP's from their own country... Don't get me wrong, I'm certainly not saying that they couldn't have been involved, but given the nauseating understanding I've been given of how my government works, I don't trust a damn thing that comes out of the FBI, Justice Department, Congress, State Department or the executive branch.
" one classified (or more sensitive) email is 1 too many."
I agree, and shall expand:
"For official use only" - can compromise military readiness or policies that take away advantage or put the country at a disadvantage in any kind of war or conflict. Example, the press shows up at a beach landing of U.S. marines, and gets in the way. Yes, this has happened.
"Confidential" - is likely to compromise military readiness, or take away advantages, etc. example, significant improvements in foreign anti-submarine warfare and submarine technology suddenly "happening" due to the activities of 'the Walkers' back in the 80's...
"Secret" - is likely to comprise agents or soldiers in the field, possibly getting them killed. No example, though I can think of a few. Best not to go there.
"Top Secret" - serious harm to defense, lots of people killed, and so forth. A 'top secret' thing might be a device that allows a ship, plane, or platoon of soldiers to be undetectable, or a new type of weapon that could easily end (or prevent) a war. Even knowledge of its existence would be a serious problem. The manhattan project is probably the best example of this.
(when referring to such a secret, in a conversation to those to whom such a secret has been disclosed, it is not uncommon to use a generic term, like "the device" or "the gadget" or similar, NOT even using the real name that both parties are fully aware of, to avoid disclosure)
Mrs. Clinton was authorized for Top Secret (and possibly 'eyes only') information. And when I was in the military, you didn't get this, even if you had clearance, unless you had "need to know". It's treated VERY seriously, for obvious reasons. If ANY of that information went onto her non-government insecure e-mail server, which she OBVIOUSLY kept for DISHONORABLE purposes (i.e. HIDING things from 'freedom of information'), it was a CRIME.
Once the PST file is indexed, which can take an hour or several, Outlook's search feature is nearly instantaneous. It's not a smart search, like Google. It's very literal. But it would be easy to sort the wheat from the chaff based on simple strings.
If the FBI needs my help to learn how to use Outlook, well, they know where to find me.
He has revealed the identity of a minor who was a victim of a sexual attack, causing them considerable further distress due to an extremely large amount of media attention that was instantly predictable.
On that fact alone, he must be fired for gross misconduct, arrested and held criminally liable.
On top of that he has directly interfered with the election process. If done intentionally, this is illegal and so he must be prosecuted to determine the facts.
If done by accident, he is incompetent and must be fired for gross negligence.
Why is he still in post? He should be preparing his legal defence against these two charges while in jail or on bail.
He broke the law.
Here's a thought experiment:
Someone sexually harrasses your daughter.
She reports it to the local police, who say they will investigate it.
The local police chief then publishes her name, the name of the alleged perpetrator and the name of a local mayoral candidate who happened to have employed a partner of the alleged perpetrator on the local news - without your permission or knowledge.
You would not accept this, and it would be illegal.
That's what Comey did, except on an international rather than local scale. He must be prosecuted, and given the opportunity to defend his actions in court.
He's either deliberately broken the law (prison time) or he's an idiot, so he is clearly not fit to serve in his current role.
Please cite a source to confirm that Comey (or any FBI agent) revealed the name of the victim in Weiner's alleged crime. Please note that on September 21 the Daily Mail published a lengthy article, with numerous redacted text messages between Weiner and the girl, based on an interview with the girl and her father. The article, however, did not reveal the Mail's sources.
With the allegations of the brown envelope $650k bungs from friends of the ex-sec.state to the wife of the FBI deputy director. [Like many on el'Reg, happy at not having to vote to choose 'dum or 'dee, but enjoying the spectacle; it will eventually make a great opera, especially the aria about the accidental .pst backup]
It was NYPD who did a proper investigation and uncovered the emails, disgusting 'spirit cooking' images and videos of the worst kind imaginable.
It was the DoJ who ordered the NYPD to stand down on Friday and to cancel the press conference but there is mutiny going on within rank and file and it is coming out but not in the mainstream media.
@Big John
Always imagining committing violence against your political opponents (when not actually doing so). It really is a mental disorder.
Totally correct BJ. Are you called BJ because that is what you are always doing to other guys?
No different to someone saying they could shoot a person dead in Times Square and not lose voters.
Same as suggesting the Second Amendment people (who have some, not all, just some seriously disturbed gun owners) could act against Hillary Clinton.
Not to different saying if you grab them by the pussy you can do anything.
Are these the violent images that you are reefing to Big John? I assume you call yourself Big John because your hands and other wishfully thinking appendages are Drumpf sized.
Seeing how you think these violent images are really a mental disorder then you should grab your intellectual capacity equal, idol Donald J Drumpf, and both pop down to Bellevue to ask for a room each. Don't be surprised if the other "residents" look down on you both since they are in 95% of the cases shall be tour intellectual and physical superiors.
The GOP machine decided long ago that Hillary was guilty. They've spent the past 20 years or so trying to find a crime in order to justify the label, but in their eyes she's guilty anyway. Always was, always will be.
That isn't rational behaviour, but hey, their own candidate is possibly a child molesting serial con artist who also dodges his taxes. Rational people would spot which candidate should be "locked up" within seconds.
(Hint for the utterly blinkered - it isn't Hillary)
Since this is El Reg, someone must know the answer. What exactly was this email server? I have visions of a FreeBSD box sitting under Bill's desk at the Clinton residence, connected through his wifi and with a bit of port forwarding on the house broadband router. Is that remotely accurate? Or was it a box in a bit barn somewhere? Office 365?
I'm not getting into the politics of this...I'm just genuinely curious about what the rig was.
If I recall correctly , there was a thread or two on Reddit about the actual server, including a hilarious request from the PFY mail server technician who allegedly asked the Reddit community 'how to permanently delete emails for a very important person'
I think the server was kept in a bathroom, but I might be completely wrong , if I get 27 down votes from agency robots then I'll presume I was right!
According to the Daily Mail it was a hosted server, really stored in a bathroom closet
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3201367/Hillary-s-email-firm-run-loft-apartment-servers-BATHROOM-raising-new-questions-security-sensitive-messages-held.html
and Reddit mostly helped the PFY to use 'bleachbit' according tho this
http://dailycaller.com/2016/09/21/house-committee-orders-reddit-to-preserve-hillary-email-technicians-posts/
Quick question guys...
When Colin Powell was Secretary of State, and a republican, would you have had the same issues with him using his own email address for work related stuff, much like Shillary?
Just reading the article at http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/4/13500018/clinton-email-scandal-bullshit which indicates he did (NOTE I am unfamiliar with this news source and am making no claim about it's reliability)
The two cases are considerably different. Colin Powell used a personal email account maintained by a commercial service provider. He did so at a time (2001 - 2005) when email was much less widely used than during Clinton's tenure (2009 - 2013). During at least part of that time, too, it was not possible to send or receive email between the State Department non-classified network and other government agencies or the public. General Powell expended significant effort to improving that situation, unlike Hillary Clinton, who chose to not use the upgraded State Department system, which by then was connected to the public internet and usable for all purposes. She chose instead to use, not a commercial service, but an insecure personally owned* system located in her New York residence.
* Or possibly owned by or with her husband.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
