Hillary's Private Server

[hooper56]

Can someone explain to me the possible reasons the Secretary of State would want her emails on a private server in her home. forget partisanship, just from a tech view, why would she do this? Is this not a giant security risk? The Secretary of State must receive classified or secret emails every day, right? Why would she not use the Govt email account provided to her? What would the motivation be? Please help an old man understand this....

"The IT company Hilary Clinton chose to maintain her private email account was run from a loft apartment and its servers were housed in the bathroom closet, Daily Mail Online can reveal.

Daily Mail Online tracked down ex-employees of Platte River Networks in Denver, Colorado, who revealed the outfit's strong links to the Democratic Party but expressed shock that the 2016 presidential candidate chose the small private company for such a sensitive job.

One, Tera Dadiotis, called it 'a mom and pop shop' which was an excellent place to work, but hardly seemed likely to be used to secure state secrets. And Tom Welch, who helped found the company, confirmed the servers were in a bathroom closet.

It can also be disclosed that the small number of employees who were aware of the Clinton contract were told to keep it secret.

The way in which Clinton came to contract a company described as a 'mom and pop' operation remains unclear.

However Daily Mail Online has established a series of connections between the firm and the Democratic Party."

 

[Greenway12]

Chris Christie yesterday -

"Can you imagine, if after the bridge investigation began, I came out and said 'Oh, I've done all my business as governor on a private email server. And, I've deleted now 30,000 of those emails. But trust me none of it had to do with the bridge.' Give me a break," Christie said on CNN's "New Day."

 

[codflyer]

Can someone explain to me the possible reasons the Secretary of State would want her emails on a private server in her home. forget partisanship, just from a tech view, why would she do this? Is this not a giant security risk? The Secretary of State must receive classified or secret emails every day, right? Why would she not use the Govt email account provided to her? What would the motivation be? Please help an old man understand this....

"The IT company Hilary Clinton chose to maintain her private email account was run from a loft apartment and its servers were housed in the bathroom closet, Daily Mail Online can reveal.

Daily Mail Online tracked down ex-employees of Platte River Networks in Denver, Colorado, who revealed the outfit's strong links to the Democratic Party but expressed shock that the 2016 presidential candidate chose the small private company for such a sensitive job.

One, Tera Dadiotis, called it 'a mom and pop shop' which was an excellent place to work, but hardly seemed likely to be used to secure state secrets. And Tom Welch, who helped found the company, confirmed the servers were in a bathroom closet.

It can also be disclosed that the small number of employees who were aware of the Clinton contract were told to keep it secret.

The way in which Clinton came to contract a company described as a 'mom and pop' operation remains unclear.

However Daily Mail Online has established a series of connections between the firm and the Democratic Party."

To avoid complying with FOIA requests and other oversight. That is really the only answer. There is no other advantage at all that I can think of, and plenty of disadvantages.

 

[unIowa]

It really makes no sense, none at all. Very negligent of her part and, outside of the dishonesty of it, really shows her incompetence to lead IMO.

 

[fredjr82]

To avoid complying with FOIA requests and other oversight. That is really the only answer. There is no other advantage at all that I can think of, and plenty of disadvantages.

It's not really the only answer. This is going to probably sound partisan but it's strictly coming from an IT point of view.

With cyber security becoming a growing factor and with our own government getting hacked a few weeks ago and having employees information stolen it does make sense to try to isolate where things are located. Could a hacker break into the government's Exchange environment and start stealing these emails anyways? If they can get access to SSNs then I assume they can get to .pst files just as easy. With a "secret server" located off-prem and only isolated to her it would be more difficult for a hacker to sniff out that server because it would probably reside on a isolated VLAN and probably have some limited routing. So instead of having her reside on the "public" Exchange environment that is at risk for a breach you try to limit who even knows about the server and keep it as isolated/locked down as possible.

That said, she's slimy as hell and a habitual liar, but I just wanted to point out that there are more reasons than just "because she's a crook trying to hide stuff". I'm kind of surprised cod went that route because his posts are usually well thought out and not such a knee jerk reaction.

 

[unIowa]

It's not really the only answer. This is going to probably sound partisan but it's strictly coming from an IT point of view.

With cyber security becoming a growing factor and with our own government getting hacked a few weeks ago and having employees information stolen it does make sense to try to isolate where things are located. Could a hacker break into the government's Exchange environment and start stealing these emails anyways? If they can get access to SSNs then I assume they can get to .pst files just as easy. With a "secret server" located off-prem and only isolated to her it would be more difficult for a hacker to sniff out that server because it would probably reside on a isolated VLAN and probably have some limited routing. So instead of having her reside on the "public" Exchange environment that is at risk for a breach you try to limit who even knows about the server and keep it as isolated/locked down as possible.

That said, she's slimy as hell and a habitual liar, but I just wanted to point out that there are more reasons than just "because she's a crook trying to hide stuff". I'm kind of surprised cod went that route because his posts are usually well thought out and not such a knee jerk reaction.

I get the "hiding it in plain sight" theory but that doesn't trump policy and responsible practices. Her job of SOS is to worry about the happenings of the world and the US position on said happenings. It isn't to come up with her own IT policy and practices.

Really stupid and irresponsible move on her part IMO.

 

[hooper56]

Fred, so you are saying Hillary could argue she was only trying to "increase" the security of her emails? Would this not have had to have been pre-disclosed and/or approved by someone?

 

[fredjr82]

I get the "hiding it in plain sight" theory but that doesn't trump policy and responsible practices. Her job of SOS is to worry about the happenings of the world and the US position on said happenings. It isn't to come up with her own IT policy and practices.

Really stupid and irresponsible move on her part IMO.

Who said she came up with it? They probably just hand her a laptop with Exchange already configured. Do you think our CEO of the company makes many IT decisions? He doesn't.

 

[hooper56]

I am starting to think that if this was not Hillary who did this....if it were a deputy director or something they would have been fired instantly.

Which begs the question: Are others in our government treating their emails similarly and are we alright with that?

 

[fredjr82]

Fred, so you are saying Hillary could argue she was only trying to "increase" the security of her emails? Would this not have had to have been pre-disclosed and/or approved by someone?

I don't know the policy of the federal government and especially someone as high as Secretary of State when it comes to those decisions. I'm just stating that the only reason it happened is so she could "hide something" is a naive road to go down. Especially for anyone that hasn't worked in some type of "IT Security" capacity. Isolated servers, that live on isolated VLANs, and have limited routing to ensure it has minimal broadcast capabilities is pretty normal in the IT field. I guess my brain just didn't jump to something illegal when I first heard about the private server.

 

[DanL53]

Thanks fredjr82, and if only I had a guy like you to help me with my computer when it does strange things.

To me, the most likely case is Clinton didn't know jack about what the computer was doing or how it was done. Like me, right now.

 

[codflyer]

It's not really the only answer. This is going to probably sound partisan but it's strictly coming from an IT point of view.

With cyber security becoming a growing factor and with our own government getting hacked a few weeks ago and having employees information stolen it does make sense to try to isolate where things are located. Could a hacker break into the government's Exchange environment and start stealing these emails anyways? If they can get access to SSNs then I assume they can get to .pst files just as easy. With a "secret server" located off-prem and only isolated to her it would be more difficult for a hacker to sniff out that server because it would probably reside on a isolated VLAN and probably have some limited routing. So instead of having her reside on the "public" Exchange environment that is at risk for a breach you try to limit who even knows about the server and keep it as isolated/locked down as possible.

That said, she's slimy as hell and a habitual liar, but I just wanted to point out that there are more reasons than just "because she's a crook trying to hide stuff". I'm kind of surprised cod went that route because his posts are usually well thought out and not such a knee jerk reaction.

I actually did think about that, but I just don't think it makes sense. She is not an IT person. Why would she want to take on the responsibility of contracting out the security of her email on her own? And if this was her motivation, why would she turn to a company like the one she did? That, and I don't think it would actually be very hard for a hacker to discover this server at all. Her email would be all over the governments exchange environment and it would not be hard at all for a hacker to find it once they realized what was going on. All that being said, I am also not an IT expert, and most of my more technical knowledge is pretty dated by now. I just can't think of any reason besides maintaining control of your emails to do what she did.

 

[gusto79]

I actually did think about that, but I just don't think it makes sense. She is not an IT person. Why would she want to take on the responsibility of contracting out the security of her email on her own? And if this was her motivation, why would she turn to a company like the one she did? That, and I don't think it would actually be very hard for a hacker to discover this server at all. Her email would be all over the governments exchange environment and it would not be hard at all for a hacker to find it once they realized what was going on. All that being said, I am also not an IT expert, and most of my more technical knowledge is pretty dated by now. I just can't think of any reason besides maintaining control of your emails to do what she did.

I very much doubt it had anything to do with security. My guess is she used this clintonmail (or whatever it was) email already for her personal stuff and didn't want to bother with a second email address. She said before that she didn't want to carry multiple device which was stupid because you can setup multiple accounts on one device, but if she would have said she didn't want to deal with multiple accounts, that's more believable. Not saying that makes it right, but it's more believable.

 

[Hawki97]

I've been in IT Security and Compliance for almost 20 years now and worked in numerous public and private organizations. If going to a mom and pop shop to hide in plain sight was the best security strategy her staff could come up with to "protect" her sensitive communications beyond what controls were in place in the federal government's systems...I don't know what to say but wow. Not saying the fed is a digital Fort Knox, but segregating VLANs and controlling routing are a drop in the bucket of the control requirements that should be employed and required for federal contractors with this type of data. Without knowing exactly what the data use and protection policies are for the Sec of State and the actual technical environment this mom and pop shop has in place - I couldn't make a definitive statement. However, from my experience with govt agencies - from a pure policy perspective - this smells of significant non-compliance..

 

[N_fuego]

Read this in the NYT a while back and thought it was interesting, but I really think she did it so she could have control over the situation.


So there may have been other reasons for using a private server. For an oft-attacked politician considering a presidential run, the server would give Mrs. Clinton some control over what would become public from her four years as the nation’s top diplomat. “I’ve been following it very carefully,” said Shiva Ayyadurai, an email pioneer who has designed email systems for both government and large corporations. A private system, he noted, “would make it possible to decide what would be disclosed and what would not.”

There is another factor that some former colleagues say puts Mrs. Clinton’s decision in a more reasonable light: the archaic, dysfunctional computer systems at the State Department. Only a tiny fraction of emails sent on the State.gov system in recent years have been permanently archived. And former State Department employees describe the unclassified email system in 2009 as frustratingly inadequate.

Using State Department email outside the building involved “incredibly unreliable software,” said one former senior official. “If you had to write a priority message that was more than a paragraph long, it could leave you streaming sweat and screaming at the screen. And that’s when people would turn to their private accounts out of desperation.”

Another official described landing in foreign capitals late at night and having to go to the American Embassy and wake people up simply to check his unclassified email. He called the situation “ludicrous,” though he said the system slowly improved, especially as more people got government BlackBerry devices

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/09/us/hillary-clinton-emails-take-long-path-to-controversy.html

 

[ICParrent]

The server was built and in use for her 2008 run. It was transitioned into use for her SOS duties later.

 

[DanL53]

Don't mean to keep...well, I do so why lie.....I mean to keep putting in my opinion without knowing anything.

I'll bet the whole problem is Hillary knows jack about computers and what gusto said, I remember Hillary saying. She didn't want to carry around multiple devices. But I'll bet that she didn't know about "accounts" or anything. Like me, she probably wonders how this computer thing really works about as often as she wonders how the microwave heats food.

But that would sound great explaining the whole thing, "I don't know what I was doing...was it bad?" For me though, if that's what it is, and I think it is...I'd actually admire a tiny bit of something about her for being honest about it.

 

[hooper56]

I've been in IT Security and Compliance for almost 20 years now and worked in numerous public and private organizations. If going to a mom and pop shop to hide in plain sight was the best security strategy her staff could come up with to "protect" her sensitive communications beyond what controls were in place in the federal government's systems...I don't know what to say but wow. Not saying the fed is a digital Fort Knox, but segregating VLANs and controlling routing are a drop in the bucket of the control requirements that should be employed and required for federal contractors with this type of data. Without knowing exactly what the data use and protection policies are for the Sec of State and the actual technical environment this mom and pop shop has in place - I couldn't make a definitive statement. However, from my experience with govt agencies - from a pure policy perspective - this smells of significant non-compliance..

I am pretty sure the Govt requires its Private contractors who are involved with sensitive work to maintain much tighter control than what HRC used.

 

[Hawki97]

I am pretty sure the Govt requires its Private contractors who are involved with sensitive work to maintain much tighter control than what HRC used.

As I said, I don't know anything about this contractor so I can't definitively pass judgement. However, if it is true the environment was in a "bathroom closet," I can pretty quickly jump to agreeing with your assessment that compliance is very unlikely.

 

[unIowa]

Don't mean to keep...well, I do so why lie.....I mean to keep putting in my opinion without knowing anything.

I'll bet the whole problem is Hillary knows jack about computers and what gusto said, I remember Hillary saying. She didn't want to carry around multiple devices. But I'll bet that she didn't know about "accounts" or anything. Like me, she probably wonders how this computer thing really works about as often as she wonders how the microwave heats food.

But that would sound great explaining the whole thing, "I don't know what I was doing...was it bad?" For me though, if that's what it is, and I think it is...I'd actually admire a tiny bit of something about her for being honest about it.

If that is the case no one should want her as POTUS.

 

[DanL53]

If that is the case no one should want her as POTUS.

I don't want to elect someone because they are the best IT guy! Not that I'd want her anyway, for many reasons, but that isn't one of them.

In fact if she cancels her campaign, goes back to school, becomes the smartest GEEK on the planet.......I'll want her even less.

 

[TexMichFan]

Thanks fredjr82, and if only I had a guy like you to help me with my computer when it does strange things.

To me, the most likely case is Clinton didn't know jack about what the computer was doing or how it was done. Like me, right now.

So Clinton goes with a home server and does not even know how secure it is? As silly as this would be that is not her argument - her argument is she did not use it for classified information.

 

[aflachawk]

It's not really the only answer. This is going to probably sound partisan but it's strictly coming from an IT point of view.

With cyber security becoming a growing factor and with our own government getting hacked a few weeks ago and having employees information stolen it does make sense to try to isolate where things are located. Could a hacker break into the government's Exchange environment and start stealing these emails anyways? If they can get access to SSNs then I assume they can get to .pst files just as easy. With a "secret server" located off-prem and only isolated to her it would be more difficult for a hacker to sniff out that server because it would probably reside on a isolated VLAN and probably have some limited routing. So instead of having her reside on the "public" Exchange environment that is at risk for a breach you try to limit who even knows about the server and keep it as isolated/locked down as possible.

That said, she's slimy as hell and a habitual liar, but I just wanted to point out that there are more reasons than just "because she's a crook trying to hide stuff". I'm kind of surprised cod went that route because his posts are usually well thought out and not such a knee jerk reaction.

So she puts her e mail at an unsecured server at her house, then has a tech company who has no security clearance manage it? You are trying too hard. For a woman who always wanted total control of everything she touches, the reasons no more than that....total control... In addition, there were communications she wanted to hide.

 

[Hawki97]

But that would sound great explaining the whole thing, "I don't know what I was doing...was it bad?" For me though, if that's what it is, and I think it is...I'd actually admire a tiny bit of something about her for being honest about it.

I tried that one once...cop still gave me the damn ticket.

 

[DanL53]

So Clinton goes with a home server and does not even know how secure it is? As silly as this would be that is not her argument - her argument is she did not use it for classified information.

I already made the point that she isn't going to come out and say she didn't know what she was doing.

Yes, I'm wagering Clinton went with whatever a home server is and assumed all the people around her would make sure that whatever security was required would be handled.

Hillary Clinton was born in 1947 and studied law. On top of that she has had people around her to do the "little" stuff since who knows when, but certainly by the time she was First Lady of Arkansas which was in 1978. To her, a server is the person who brings her a drink.

Before we get too upset, imagine the last time Donald Trump fixed his dishwasher.

 

[TexMichFan]

I already made the point that she isn't going to come out and say she didn't know what she was doing.

Yes, I'm wagering Clinton went with whatever a home server is and assumed all the people around her would make sure that whatever security was required would be handled.

Hillary Clinton was born in 1947 and studied law. On top of that she has had people around her to do the "little" stuff since who knows when, but certainly by the time she was First Lady of Arkansas which was in 1978. To her, a server is the person who brings her a drink.

Before we get too upset, imagine the last time Donald Trump fixed his dishwasher.

Donald's dishwasher and Hillary's server might have been the same person at one time so that is another ground for a conspiracy investigation.

 

[DanL53]

Donald's dishwasher and Hillary's server might have been the same person at one time so that is another ground for a conspiracy investigation.

Yeah, and if the Don tried fixing the dishwasher it is no wonder Hillary's server may not have been secure!

 

[TexMichFan]

Yeah, and if the Don tried fixing the dishwasher it is no wonder Hillary's server may not have been secure!

We are getting close to turning this thread into an abortion debate - success!

 

[DanL53]

We are getting close to turning this thread into an abortion debate - success!

LMFAO!!!

 

[Bob Pelini_]

She put this country at risk thus she is a traitor and traitors should go to prison or worse.

 

[Lone Clone]

I don't know the policy of the federal government and especially someone as high as Secretary of State when it comes to those decisions. I'm just stating that the only reason it happened is so she could "hide something" is a naive road to go down. Especially for anyone that hasn't worked in some type of "IT Security" capacity. Isolated servers, that live on isolated VLANs, and have limited routing to ensure it has minimal broadcast capabilities is pretty normal in the IT field. I guess my brain just didn't jump to something illegal when I first heard about the private server.

The policy of the federal government is that she is prohibited from doing what she did.

 

[ICWestfan]

Going Oit here- As mentioned if she uses a private server she can keep hidden what she wanted hidden and that would be her solicitation of foreign governments and the payments they made to the Clinton Foundation.

Viola!

 

[Bob Pelini_]

I already made the point that she isn't going to come out and say she didn't know what she was doing.

Yes, I'm wagering Clinton went with whatever a home server is and assumed all the people around her would make sure that whatever security was required would be handled.

Hillary Clinton was born in 1947 and studied law. On top of that she has had people around her to do the "little" stuff since who knows when, but certainly by the time she was First Lady of Arkansas which was in 1978. To her, a server is the person who brings her a drink.

Before we get too upset, imagine the last time Donald Trump fixed his dishwasher.

Forget the campaign Hillary's going to need a miracle to keep out of prison.

 

[ottumwan in tx]

surprised she and bill have not done time over all the murders and drug dealing in mena, arkansas