Hillary/FBI Thread

[Hank Reardon]

"The employee told the FBI in a May 3, 2016 interview that “he was aware of the existence of the preservation request and the fact that it meant he should not disturb Clinton’s e-mail data on the PRN Server.”

Sounds like he admitted that he was fully aware of what he was doing. Now, obviously this doesn't mean he was instructed to do it by Hillary but common sense dictates that he's not sticking his neck out on his own. Why would he do that?

Bottom line is, this guy, on his own or under instruction from someone, willfully destroyed these files knowing they were under subpoena. And he testified as such to the FBI. What else does one need?

http://www.denverpost.com/2016/09/0...rk-employee-bleachbit-delete-clinton-e-mails/

http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/02/politics/hillary-clinton-fbi-interview-notes/

 

[TheOriginalHappyGoat]

"The employee told the FBI in a May 3, 2016 interview that “he was aware of the existence of the preservation request and the fact that it meant he should not disturb Clinton’s e-mail data on the PRN Server.”

Sounds like he admitted that he was fully aware of what he was doing. Now, obviously this doesn't mean he was instructed to do it by Hillary but common sense dictates that he's not sticking his neck out on his own. Why would he do that?

Bottom line is, this guy, on his own or under instruction from someone, willfully destroyed these files knowing they were under subpoena. And he testified as such to the FBI. What else does one need?

http://www.denverpost.com/2016/09/0...rk-employee-bleachbit-delete-clinton-e-mails/

http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/02/politics/hillary-clinton-fbi-interview-notes/

It's tough to say. He got an email referencing the preservation request, but the FBI report doesn't say that he was aware of any subpoena. It sounds to me like he was covering his own ass, because he never did his job, but it's not clear he did anything criminal. However, the report also makes it clear he was acting on his own.

Again, it's perfectly possible this guy committed a crime when he wiped the server, but the report doesn't make that explicitly clear, so I'll defer to the experts (FBI) on the matter. At any rate, I don't think some lackey at a tech company in Jersey is the desired target, and there's certainly no evidence of Hillary committing obstruction in the report.

Here is the full report. Relevant parts on page 19:
https://vault.fbi.gov/hillary-r.-clinton/hillary-r.-clinton-part-01-of-02/view

 

[Hank Reardon]

It's tough to say. He got an email referencing the preservation request, but the FBI report doesn't say that he was aware of any subpoena. It sounds to me like he was covering his own ass, because he never did his job, but it's not clear he did anything criminal. However, the report also makes it clear he was acting on his own.

Again, it's perfectly possible this guy committed a crime when he wiped the server, but the report doesn't make that explicitly clear, so I'll defer to the experts (FBI) on the matter. At any rate, I don't think some lackey at a tech company in Jersey is the desired target, and there's certainly no evidence of Hillary committing obstruction in the report.

Here is the full report. Relevant parts on page 19:
https://vault.fbi.gov/hillary-r.-clinton/hillary-r.-clinton-part-01-of-02/view

Maybe, but awfully fortuitous for Ms. Clinton, no? And the report also notes that the Datto backups of the PRN server were manually deleted in the same time frame. What an odd coincidence. You'll really need to forgive me for not buying into the whole "nothing to see here" defense.

 

[cosmickid]

And to do it after receiving the subpoena for the contents of the servers is a federal felony - Obstruction of Justice. Now, is there any lefty here who will claim that destroying subpoenaed material - which it is certain that she or her staff did - is not a crime? Go ahead and defend that.

Not so fast there...Have you read the FBI report? Here is an analysis of that very issue by someone who has actually read the entire report...

"Pages 18-19: According to Mills, in December 2014, Clinton decided she no longer needed access to any of her e-mails older than 60 days. [...] On March 2, 2015, The New York Times (NYT) published an article titled "Hillary Clinton Used Personal Email Account at State Dept., Possibly Breaking Rules." [...] In his interviews with the FBI, REDACTED [a PRN techie] indicated that sometime between March 25-31, 2015, he realized he did not make the e-mail retention policy changes to Clinton's clintonemail.com e-mail account that Mills had requested in December 2014. [...] He believed he had an "oh shit" moment and sometime between March 25-31, 2015 deleted the Clinton archive mailbox from the PRN server and used BleachBit to delete the exported .PST files he had created on the server system containing Clinton's e-mails.

This explains why data was removed from the PRN server after the NYT article and after the Benghazi committee had subpoenaed Hillary's emails. It had nothing to do with anyone around Hillary Clinton. An IT guy at PRN realized one day that he'd forgotten about the retention order and went ahead and implemented it.

The report makes clear that Cheryl Mills sent an email, which the PRN techie received, telling PRN about the preservation request from the Benghazi committee. The techie said he knew it meant he shouldn't disturb the Clinton server, but apparently got confused and didn't realize this meant he shouldn't touch the old archives or the backups."

One man's conclusion is that there really isn't a lot in the report damaging to HRC.In fact he describes it as "pretty small beer"...

Based on my own lack of technical proficiency,I'm inclined to believe that Hillary's main issue was the technology,rather than the classified info itself.I can relate since I don't even know how to set up email using POPP (whatever that is)...

"Oddly, the FBI never really addresses the issue of whether Hillary violated federal record retention rules. They obviously believe that she should have used a State email account for work-related business, but that's about it. I suppose they decided it was a non-issue because Hillary did, in fact, retain all her emails and did, in fact, turn them over quickly when State requested them.

There's also virtually no discussion of FOIA. What little there is suggests that Hillary's only concern was that her personal emails not be subjected to FOIA simply because they were held on the same server as her work emails.

If you read the entire report, you'll find bits and pieces that might show poor judgment on Hillary's part. The initial decision to use one email device is the obvious one, something that Hillary has acknowledged repeatedly. Another—maybe—is her staff's view of what was safe to send over unclassified email. But this is very fuzzy. It could be that her staff knew exactly what it was doing, and it's the subsequent classification authorities who are wrong. This is something that it's impossible to judge since none of us will ever see the emails in question.

That said, this report is pretty much an almost complete exoneration of Hillary Clinton. She wasn't prohibited from using a personal device or a personal email account, and others at state did it routinely. She's told the truth all along about why she did it. Colin Powell did indeed advise her about using personal email shortly after she took office, but she chose to follow the rules rather than skirt them, as Powell did. She didn't take her BlackBerry into her office. She communicated with only a very select group of 13 people. She took no part in deciding which emails were personal before handing them over to State. She had nothing to do with erasing information on the PRN server. That was a screw-up on PRN's end. She and her staff all believed at the time that they were careful not to conduct sensitive conversations over unclassified email systems. And there's no evidence that her server was ever hacked.

There's remarkably little here. If you nonetheless believe that it's enough to disqualify Hillary from the presidency, that's fine. I have no quarrel with you. But if the FBI is to be believed, it's all pretty small beer."


You can read the entire analysis by Kevin Drum here...

excerpts from FBI report

 

[CO. Hoosier]

That's what I'm getting at. If this actually is the case, then obstruction charges should be a slam dunk. If they aren't brought, then I can only think of two rational explanations, a) it really is not the case, or b) Comey is willfully ignoring the law.

I think you are wrong with this post

There is no "law" that says Comey must take a case to the prosecutors for prosecution. That is all within his discretion and his view of his public charge. It could be that Comey, like so many people, doesn't ever want to see Trump near the Oval Office. So he won't do anything to help him. Lynch's dodge (that came after her airplane meeting with WJC) that she will follow whatever the recommendation is of the FBI is just crap. Her professional duty is for the prosecutor to always make their own independent decisions based upon their sense of public duty. She cannot delegate that duty to the cops. The US attorney within whose district this crime happened to this day has the authority to pick up the FBI investigation and prosecute.

For whatever reason, I think it is fair to say the Hillary caught a huge break here.

 

[Hank Reardon]

...This explains why data was removed from the PRN server after the NYT article and after the Benghazi committee had subpoenaed Hillary's emails. It had nothing to do with anyone around Hillary Clinton. An IT guy at PRN realized one day that he'd forgotten about the retention order and went ahead and implemented it....

There quite a bit of difference between retroactively implementing a retention policy (which would have deleted the affected emails as previously requested) and using a product like Bleachbit to do a full security wipe. Had the original retention policy been implemented as requested then those emails would still have been recoverable. Why the extra security wipe?

 

[CO. Hoosier]

Not so fast there...Have you read the FBI report? Here is an analysis of that very issue by someone who has actually read the entire report...

"Pages 18-19: According to Mills, in December 2014, Clinton decided she no longer needed access to any of her e-mails older than 60 days. [...] On March 2, 2015, The New York Times (NYT) published an article titled "Hillary Clinton Used Personal Email Account at State Dept., Possibly Breaking Rules." [...] In his interviews with the FBI, REDACTED [a PRN techie] indicated that sometime between March 25-31, 2015, he realized he did not make the e-mail retention policy changes to Clinton's clintonemail.com e-mail account that Mills had requested in December 2014. [...] He believed he had an "oh shit" moment and sometime between March 25-31, 2015 deleted the Clinton archive mailbox from the PRN server and used BleachBit to delete the exported .PST files he had created on the server system containing Clinton's e-mails.

This explains why data was removed from the PRN server after the NYT article and after the Benghazi committee had subpoenaed Hillary's emails. It had nothing to do with anyone around Hillary Clinton. An IT guy at PRN realized one day that he'd forgotten about the retention order and went ahead and implemented it.

The report makes clear that Cheryl Mills sent an email, which the PRN techie received, telling PRN about the preservation request from the Benghazi committee. The techie said he knew it meant he shouldn't disturb the Clinton server, but apparently got confused and didn't realize this meant he shouldn't touch the old archives or the backups."

One man's conclusion is that there really isn't a lot in the report damaging to HRC.In fact he describes it as "pretty small beer"...

Based on my own lack of technical proficiency,I'm inclined to believe that Hillary's main issue was the technology,rather than the classified info itself.I can relate since I don't even know how to set up email using POPP (whatever that is)...

"Oddly, the FBI never really addresses the issue of whether Hillary violated federal record retention rules. They obviously believe that she should have used a State email account for work-related business, but that's about it. I suppose they decided it was a non-issue because Hillary did, in fact, retain all her emails and did, in fact, turn them over quickly when State requested them.

There's also virtually no discussion of FOIA. What little there is suggests that Hillary's only concern was that her personal emails not be subjected to FOIA simply because they were held on the same server as her work emails.

If you read the entire report, you'll find bits and pieces that might show poor judgment on Hillary's part. The initial decision to use one email device is the obvious one, something that Hillary has acknowledged repeatedly. Another—maybe—is her staff's view of what was safe to send over unclassified email. But this is very fuzzy. It could be that her staff knew exactly what it was doing, and it's the subsequent classification authorities who are wrong. This is something that it's impossible to judge since none of us will ever see the emails in question.

That said, this report is pretty much an almost complete exoneration of Hillary Clinton. She wasn't prohibited from using a personal device or a personal email account, and others at state did it routinely. She's told the truth all along about why she did it. Colin Powell did indeed advise her about using personal email shortly after she took office, but she chose to follow the rules rather than skirt them, as Powell did. She didn't take her BlackBerry into her office. She communicated with only a very select group of 13 people. She took no part in deciding which emails were personal before handing them over to State. She had nothing to do with erasing information on the PRN server. That was a screw-up on PRN's end. She and her staff all believed at the time that they were careful not to conduct sensitive conversations over unclassified email systems. And there's no evidence that her server was ever hacked.

There's remarkably little here. If you nonetheless believe that it's enough to disqualify Hillary from the presidency, that's fine. I have no quarrel with you. But if the FBI is to be believed, it's all pretty small beer."


You can read the entire analysis by Kevin Drum here...

excerpts from FBI report

Hm

Timelines are important. Bleachbit deletions did not occur until after the private server existence became publicly known.

Hillary, as SOS, was one of the handful of people in the United States government who had authority to mark material secret and to what level of secrecy. She was also for most, if not all, of her senate career a member of the armed services committee, a committee whose members regularly receive and deal with classified material. For her to say that she didn't know what "C" meant on a document, or to suggest that she thought it was part of an alphabetical list when there was no "A" "B" or "D" present doesn't pass the smell test. She is lying.

The question is, does anybody care?

 

[cosmickid]

There quite a bit of difference between retroactively implementing a retention policy (which would have deleted the affected emails as previously requested) and using a product like Bleachbit to do a full security wipe. Had the original retention policy been implemented as requested then those emails would still have been recoverable. Why the extra security wipe?

Are you asking me why Drum reached the conclusions he did? I just quoted his article,where he said the (redacted) techie apparently got confused.That may have been his (Drum's) conclusion or it my have been the FBI's.I'm not sure...

 

[cosmickid]

Hm

Timelines are important. Bleachbit deletions did not occur until after the private server existence became publicly known.

Hillary, as SOS, was one of the handful of people in the United States government who had authority to mark material secret and to what level of secrecy. She was also for most, if not all, of her senate career a member of the armed services committee, a committee whose members regularly receive and deal with classified material. For her to say that she didn't know what "C" meant on a document, or to suggest that she thought it was part of an alphabetical list when there was no "A" "B" or "D" present doesn't pass the smell test. She is lying.

The question is, does anybody care?

I thought I heard that it was a small (c),and it was within the text of the message.Wasn't it only 3 emails we're talking here?

 

[Joe_Hoopsier]

One question for Goat. If you were hired to prosecute this, how would you frame what we know? This is a no way out of it, can't refuse the case you have no choice but to take this to trial. How would you present the case to win?

 

[TheOriginalHappyGoat]

Maybe, but awfully fortuitous for Ms. Clinton, no? And the report also notes that the Datto backups of the PRN server were manually deleted in the same time frame. What an odd coincidence. You'll really need to forgive me for not buying into the whole "nothing to see here" defense.

Hey, you don't have to buy it. I just expect people to understand that "where there's smoke..." isn't a valid argument for bringing criminal charges.

 

[TheOriginalHappyGoat]

One question for Goat. If you were hired to prosecute this, how would you frame what we know? This is a no way out of it, can't refuse the case you have no choice but to take this to trial. How would you present the case to win?

What case would that be?

 

[CO. Hoosier]

I thought I heard that it was a small (c),and it was within the text of the message.Wasn't it only 3 emails we're talking here?

I think that is correct

3 that the public knows about. I know nothing about upper or lower case, other than to say whatever the case is, the marking was in accordance with custom and practice about confidentiality.

 

[Hank Reardon]

Are you asking me why Drum reached the conclusions he did? I just quoted his article,where he said the (redacted) techie apparently got confused.That may have been his (Drum's) conclusion or it my have been the FBI's.I'm not sure...

Well, as someone who admins an Exchange server every day I can say that anyone who comes to that conclusion has no idea what they're talking about. Retention policies are to Bleachbit like wiping off a counter is to burning down the house.

If he was worried about not having implemented a 60 day retention policy all he had to do was implement it. Boom. Emails deleted. But obviously that wouldn't be good enough.

 

[Rockfish1]

Well, as someone who admins an Exchange server every day I can say that anyone who comes to that conclusion has no idea what they're talking about. Retention policies are to Bleachbit like wiping off a counter is to burning down the house.

If he was worried about not having implemented a 60 day retention policy all he had to do was implement it. Boom. Emails deleted. But obviously that wouldn't be good enough.

A techie saw a preservation request from Hillary's aide. This reminded him that he didn't effectuate a prior deletion order. So effectuated the prior order. Maybe the techie committed obstruction, and the FBI just didn't care, but there is no evidence that Hillary did anything wrong here. There is just you, without any evidence, insisting that there must be something sinister, because Clinton.

 

[stollcpa]

Hm

Timelines are important. Bleachbit deletions did not occur until after the private server existence became publicly known.

Hillary, as SOS, was one of the handful of people in the United States government who had authority to mark material secret and to what level of secrecy. She was also for most, if not all, of her senate career a member of the armed services committee, a committee whose members regularly receive and deal with classified material. For her to say that she didn't know what "C" meant on a document, or to suggest that she thought it was part of an alphabetical list when there was no "A" "B" or "D" present doesn't pass the smell test. She is lying.

The question is, does anybody care?

Prove it

 

[Hank Reardon]

A techie saw a preservation request from Hillary's aide. This reminded him that he didn't effectuate a prior deletion order. So effectuated the prior order. Maybe the techie committed obstruction, and the FBI just didn't care, but there is no evidence that Hillary did anything wrong here. There is just you, without any evidence, insisting that there must be something sinister, because Clinton.

He didn't effectuate the prior order, which was a 60 day retention policy on email. You do know the difference between an Exchange retention policy and a security wipe, correct? We have a 1 year retention policy in place on our Exchange server. You don't need Bleachbit for just that. You need Bleachbit to destroy things. Like entire had drives. On purpose. But don't suggest that the IT guy was just effectuating a prior request. That's laughable.

If you had read my posts I never said HRC ordered it or was herself guilty of obstruction. I said that someone obviously was and the FBI ignored it.

 

[Rockfish1]

He didn't effectuate the prior order, which was a 60 day retention policy on email. You do know the difference between an Exchange retention policy and a security wipe, correct? We have a 1 year retention policy in place on our Exchange server. You don't need Bleachbit for just that. You need Bleachbit to destroy things. Like entire had drives. On purpose. But don't suggest that the IT guy was just effectuating a prior request. That's laughable.

If you had read my posts I never said HRC ordered it or was herself guilty of obstruction. I said that someone obviously was and the FBI ignored it.

So apparently the FBI should prosecute the techie, then. Why do we care about this?

 

[Hank Reardon]

So apparently the FBI should prosecute the techie, then. Why do we care about this?

My original point was about why I doubted the FBI's overall conclusion when they so obviously ignored an instance of obstruction There's no way I could be privy to all of the facts, nor can you. But we're privy to enough of them to see that certain crimes were ignored. Makes a guy wonder why.

 

[Rockfish1]

My original point was about why I doubted the FBI's overall conclusion when they so obviously ignored an instance of obstruction There's no way I could be privy to all of the facts, nor can you. But we're privy to enough of them to see that certain crimes were ignored. Makes a guy wonder why.

It makes me wonder why you're such a fact-free poster, at least on this subject. The zombie Hillary signature offered a clue.

 

[Hank Reardon]

It makes me wonder why you're such a fact-free poster, at least on this subject. The zombie Hillary signature offered a clue.

My posts contained facts. Facts documented by the FBI. I don't understand your need to resort to snark, especially when it's not justified in this conversation.

 

[UncleMark]

If he was worried about not having implemented a 60 day retention policy all he had to do was implement it. Boom. Emails deleted. But obviously that wouldn't be good enough.

Is this the tech that took the 5th and then got immunity?

 

[Hank Reardon]

Is this the tech that took the 5th and then got immunity?

His name was redacted so we don't know. Or at least I haven't seen it. My impression is that it's a different guy.

 

[Ladoga]

Not so fast there...Have you read the FBI report? Here is an analysis of that very issue by someone who has actually read the entire report...

"Pages 18-19: According to Mills, in December 2014, Clinton decided she no longer needed access to any of her e-mails older than 60 days. [...] On March 2, 2015, The New York Times (NYT) published an article titled "Hillary Clinton Used Personal Email Account at State Dept., Possibly Breaking Rules." [...] In his interviews with the FBI, REDACTED [a PRN techie] indicated that sometime between March 25-31, 2015, he realized he did not make the e-mail retention policy changes to Clinton's clintonemail.com e-mail account that Mills had requested in December 2014. [...] He believed he had an "oh shit" moment and sometime between March 25-31, 2015 deleted the Clinton archive mailbox from the PRN server and used BleachBit to delete the exported .PST files he had created on the server system containing Clinton's e-mails.

This explains why data was removed from the PRN server after the NYT article and after the Benghazi committee had subpoenaed Hillary's emails. It had nothing to do with anyone around Hillary Clinton. An IT guy at PRN realized one day that he'd forgotten about the retention order and went ahead and implemented it.

The report makes clear that Cheryl Mills sent an email, which the PRN techie received, telling PRN about the preservation request from the Benghazi committee. The techie said he knew it meant he shouldn't disturb the Clinton server, but apparently got confused and didn't realize this meant he shouldn't touch the old archives or the backups."

One man's conclusion is that there really isn't a lot in the report damaging to HRC.In fact he describes it as "pretty small beer"...

Based on my own lack of technical proficiency,I'm inclined to believe that Hillary's main issue was the technology,rather than the classified info itself.I can relate since I don't even know how to set up email using POPP (whatever that is)...

"Oddly, the FBI never really addresses the issue of whether Hillary violated federal record retention rules. They obviously believe that she should have used a State email account for work-related business, but that's about it. I suppose they decided it was a non-issue because Hillary did, in fact, retain all her emails and did, in fact, turn them over quickly when State requested them.

There's also virtually no discussion of FOIA. What little there is suggests that Hillary's only concern was that her personal emails not be subjected to FOIA simply because they were held on the same server as her work emails.

If you read the entire report, you'll find bits and pieces that might show poor judgment on Hillary's part. The initial decision to use one email device is the obvious one, something that Hillary has acknowledged repeatedly. Another—maybe—is her staff's view of what was safe to send over unclassified email. But this is very fuzzy. It could be that her staff knew exactly what it was doing, and it's the subsequent classification authorities who are wrong. This is something that it's impossible to judge since none of us will ever see the emails in question.

That said, this report is pretty much an almost complete exoneration of Hillary Clinton. She wasn't prohibited from using a personal device or a personal email account, and others at state did it routinely. She's told the truth all along about why she did it. Colin Powell did indeed advise her about using personal email shortly after she took office, but she chose to follow the rules rather than skirt them, as Powell did. She didn't take her BlackBerry into her office. She communicated with only a very select group of 13 people. She took no part in deciding which emails were personal before handing them over to State. She had nothing to do with erasing information on the PRN server. That was a screw-up on PRN's end. She and her staff all believed at the time that they were careful not to conduct sensitive conversations over unclassified email systems. And there's no evidence that her server was ever hacked.

There's remarkably little here. If you nonetheless believe that it's enough to disqualify Hillary from the presidency, that's fine. I have no quarrel with you. But if the FBI is to be believed, it's all pretty small beer."


You can read the entire analysis by Kevin Drum here...

excerpts from FBI report

She or someone under her authority, destroyed evidence which was under subpoena. What is THAT?

 

[TheOriginalHappyGoat]

She or someone under her authority, destroyed evidence which was under subpoena. What is THAT?

That's an inaccurate description of what the report describes.

The report suggests that a techie with Platte River may have violated sections 1001 and/or 1505 of the US criminal code*. Maybe. That's as far as it goes. As to Hillary, it's just 49 more pages of "She's innocent."

*Note: the report doesn't name the sections, but those seem like the most likely sections that the techie's actions would fall under, if any.

 

[Rockfish1]

My posts contained facts. Facts documented by the FBI. I don't understand your need to resort to snark, especially when it's not justified in this conversation.

You're raising "questions" about the FBI's treatment of HRC based on its failure to prosecute a techie for obstruction, when you admittedly don't even know all the facts relevant to the techie, let alone the applicable law. And once again the word "obvious" is employed.

Yes, your post contains facts. They just don't lead anywhere other than "questions". And you don't need any facts for those.

 

[Hank Reardon]

You're raising "questions" about the FBI's treatment of HRC based on its failure to prosecute a techie for obstruction, when you admittedly don't even know all the facts relevant to the techie, let alone the applicable law. And once again the word "obvious" is employed.

Yes, your post contains facts. They just don't lead anywhere other than "questions". And you don't need any facts for those.

I see. The only valid conclusions to be drawn are the ones that Rockfish might draw. Good to know

You're certainly free to look at the timeline of factual events resulting with a security wipe of the server (again, not a simple retention adjustment) and separate simultaneous deletions of all of that server's backups and see nothing odd. But I guess some of us have a more suspicious nature.

There is only one reason to take those steps. And that is to insure that the data is 100% unrecoverable. Seems extreme for getting rid of Yoga appointments, etc. But again, I'm just a tin foil hat guy.

 

[IUBBALLAWOL]

Based on what I read, her preferred method of receiving classified info was in person, and her backup was the secure fax.

I don't know the technical details, but she received tons and tons of classified diplomatic cables, per the wiki leaks dump. Weren't those transferred over SIPRNet?

How did she know those were classified?

 

[Rockport Zebra]

A techie saw a preservation request from Hillary's aide. This reminded him that he didn't effectuate a prior deletion order. So effectuated the prior order. Maybe the techie committed obstruction, and the FBI just didn't care, but there is no evidence that Hillary did anything wrong here. There is just you, without any evidence, insisting that there must be something sinister, because Clinton.

That is the tempered view of how it went down and why. I know you aren't surprised that I see it in a slightly different light.

 

[Rockfish1]

I see. The only valid conclusions to be drawn are the ones that Rockfish might draw. Good to know

You're certainly free to look at the timeline of factual events resulting with a security wipe of the server (again, not a simple retention adjustment) and separate simultaneous deletions of all of that server's backups and see nothing odd. But I guess some of us have a more suspicious nature.

There is only one reason to take those steps. And that is to insure that the data is 100% unrecoverable. Seems extreme for getting rid of Yoga appointments, etc. But again, I'm just a tin foil hat guy.

I'm not contrasting my conclusions with yours. I'm observing that you're getting high on your own supply. #zombiehillary

 

[SuperHoosierFan]

There quite a bit of difference between retroactively implementing a retention policy (which would have deleted the affected emails as previously requested) and using a product like Bleachbit to do a full security wipe. Had the original retention policy been implemented as requested then those emails would still have been recoverable. Why the extra security wipe?

I have built computers from scratch, rebuilt computers, bought/sold all kinds of parts, and thrown parts away. These parts include hard drives. If you don't have a program that is reliable to completely wipe a hard drive so nothing can be recovered then you're taking an unnecessary risk. Even if you are selling a hard drive to someone you know. Wipe it...then wipe it again. I even wiped hard drives I bought used. I don't want to potentially be responsible for something someone left on there. I also don't want someone seeing my banking info or whatever else I did on my computer related to personal info and my personal life/relationships. The fact that Hillary's hard drives were wiped doesn't bother me. If there was more classified info on there and the FBI can't recover it, it's highly likely no one else, like Russia, could recover it either. To me that's a good thing.

Now, some ask "why not just destroy old drives and not screw with it at all?". I'm not made of money. Sometimes you have to deal in used parts.

 

[Hank Reardon]

I have built computers from scratch, rebuilt computers, bought/sold all kinds of parts, and thrown parts away. These parts include hard drives. If you don't have a program that is reliable to completely wipe a hard drive so nothing can be recovered then you're taking an unnecessary risk. Even if you are selling a hard drive to someone you know. Wipe it...then wipe it again. I even wiped hard drives I bought used. I don't want to potentially be responsible for something someone left on there. I also don't want someone seeing my banking info or whatever else I did on my computer related to personal info and my personal life/relationships. The fact that Hillary's hard drives were wiped doesn't bother me. If there was more classified info on there and the FBI can't recover it, it's highly likely no one else, like Russia, could recover it either. To me that's a good thing.

Now, some ask "why not just destroy old drives and not screw with it at all?". I'm not made of money. Sometimes you have to deal in used parts.

Seriously? Of course that that's the reason for the wipe. To get rid of the data. Permanently. That's the point.

The question is, why were they getting rid of the data AND all associated backups three weeks after a preservation order was given? No other answer other than "to hide stuff" makes any sense whatsoever. None.

 

[TheOriginalHappyGoat]

Seriously? Of course that that's the reason for the wipe. To get rid of the data. Permanently. That's the point.

The question is, why were they getting rid of the data AND all associated backups three weeks after a preservation order was given? No other answer other than "to hide stuff" makes any sense whatsoever. None.

I think it's pretty obvious what the answer is. The dude who did the wiping got this notice, and thought to himself, "Oh, crap, I never did my job before like I was supposed to, I'm just going to quietly take care of this now, and hope no one notices." Redacted techie was just covering his ass. The "Oh shit" moment mentioned in the report had nothing to do with Hillary and everything to do with the fact that he forgot to do his job, and he was afraid people might find out.

 

[UncleMark]

I have built computers from scratch, rebuilt computers, bought/sold all kinds of parts, and thrown parts away. These parts include hard drives. If you don't have a program that is reliable to completely wipe a hard drive so nothing can be recovered then you're taking an unnecessary risk. Even if you are selling a hard drive to someone you know. Wipe it...then wipe it again. I even wiped hard drives I bought used. I don't want to potentially be responsible for something someone left on there. I also don't want someone seeing my banking info or whatever else I did on my computer related to personal info and my personal life/relationships. The fact that Hillary's hard drives were wiped doesn't bother me. If there was more classified info on there and the FBI can't recover it, it's highly likely no one else, like Russia, could recover it either. To me that's a good thing.

Now, some ask "why not just destroy old drives and not screw with it at all?". I'm not made of money. Sometimes you have to deal in used parts.

The only reference we have (to my knowledge) to wiping with Bleachbit is a remark by Gowdy. Bleachbit is a consumer grade general purpose file system cleaner, in the same general category as CCleaner. I use it myself in this Linux platform to clear caches and to do general tidying up. Perhaps it also will "wipe" free space; I've not bothered to look. What I do know is that it's not used to "wipe" entire drives, and in fact there is no reason to believe wiping entire drives was done. They deleted the PST files (i.e. Outlook mail store), and then "wiped"... something. If they actually had "wiped" the drive(s) in the true sense of the word, they wouldn't have used Bleachbit and it wouldn't have been necessary to delete anything first.

 

[Rockport Zebra]

Maybe some of you guys are right, but at least it shows she lacks savvy. How could she get herself in this mess if she were competent?

 

[TheOriginalHappyGoat]

The only reference we have (to my knowledge) to wiping with Bleachbit is a remark by Gowdy. Bleachbit is a consumer grade general purpose file system cleaner, in the same general category as CCleaner. I use it myself in this Linux platform to clear caches and to do general tidying up. Perhaps it also will "wipe" free space; I've not bothered to look. What I do know is that it's not used to "wipe" entire drives, and in fact there is no reason to believe wiping entire drives was done. They deleted the PST files (i.e. Outlook mail store), and then "wiped"... something. If they actually had "wiped" the drive(s) in the true sense of the word, they wouldn't have used Bleachbit and it wouldn't have been necessary to delete anything first.

He "used BleachBit to delete the PST files" according to the FBI report. There is no talk of "wiping" anything. I've never used BleachBit, but I assume it has a tool for permanently deleting files, probably by blanking them out or replacing them with random noise before deleting them from the file directory, correct? I assume that's what he did. Since he was a techie at a data company, it's possible that using BleachBit to delete old files was simply standard practice to protect the privacy of clients.

 

[Rockport Zebra]

Dear God, I only have one more statement to add,

 

[Hank Reardon]

I think it's pretty obvious what the answer is. The dude who did the wiping got this notice, and thought to himself, "Oh, crap, I never did my job before like I was supposed to, I'm just going to quietly take care of this now, and hope no one notices." Redacted techie was just covering his ass. The "Oh shit" moment mentioned in the report had nothing to do with Hillary and everything to do with the fact that he forgot to do his job, and he was afraid people might find out.

And all of the backups of that particular server were manually deleted...why? Information under request? Just another mistake?

I'm sorry, but it's all too convenient that every "oops" moment plays into HRC's favor. She may not have requested these actions but I have no doubt that people looking out for her did. The sequence doesn't come close to any smell test.

Sorry, I deal with email, data, and data archives and backups every day. That's not the way professionals act unless it's on purpose.

 

[UncleMark]

He "used BleachBit to delete the PST files" according to the FBI report. There is no talk of "wiping" anything. I've never used BleachBit, but I assume it has a tool for permanently deleting files, probably by blanking them out or replacing them with random noise before deleting them from the file directory, correct? I assume that's what he did. Since he was a techie at a data company, it's possible that using BleachBit to delete old files was simply standard practice to protect the privacy of clients.

There is no need to use Bleachbit to simply "delete" files; that can be done from the file manager. Bleachbit has a "Shred files" capability which most likely is a delete+overwrite function, whereby the space that holds the "deleted" data is overwritten with random data. (So-called "deleted" data really is still there, it's just that they are no longer visible to the file system and the space they reside on is now free to be overwritten. Unless overwritten, this data is easily recovered, even by non-professionals like myself.) Additionally, in the Preference settings for the general cleaning functions (cache, history, temp files, etc.) there is an option to "overwrite files to hide contents".

If a techie was tasked to "delete" sensitive data in an enterprise setting, using a tool like Beachbit would be a good practice, although I doubt it would meet any high DoD-like specification.

 

[Hank Reardon]

If a techie was tasked to "delete" sensitive data in an enterprise setting, using a tool like Beachbit would be a good practice, although I doubt it would meet any high DoD-like specification.

Here's my problem. I manage an IT Dept at a medium sized company, maybe 500 users. I have had occasion to deal with legal holds on email and data. Even a shlub like me in Fort Wayne Indiana knows enough not to delete (er, shred and wipe) data like this. It'd never occur to me, and if my CEO requested it I'd refuse. Yet we're supposed to believe that this tech company took it upon themselves to delete and wipe the data of the freaking former Secretary of State, data they knew was under government request? I'm sorry, but the idea is outrageous. If they deleted it in the manner they did, especially given when they did it, it was because someone pretty darn influential requested that it be done. Full stop.