Thursday, June 23, 2016

Reckless

It gets worse for Hillary Clinton:
State Department staffers wrestled for weeks in December 2010 over a serious technical problem that affected emails from then-Secretary Hillary Clinton's home email server, causing them to temporarily disable security features on the government's own systems, according to emails released Wednesday.

The emails were released under court order Wednesday to the conservative legal advocacy group Judicial Watch, which has sued the State Department over access to public records related to the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee's service as the nation's top diplomat between 2009 and 2013.

The emails, reviewed by The Associated Press, show that State Department technical staff disabled software on their systems intended to block phishing emails that could deliver dangerous viruses. They were trying urgently to resolve delivery problems with emails sent from Clinton's private server.
Think about that -- to accommodate Clinton, the government disabled security software. And there's more:
Days after the technical crisis, on Jan. 9, 2011, an IT worker was forced to shut down Clinton's server because he believed "someone was trying to hack us." Later that day, he wrote, "We were attacked again so I shut (the server) down for a few min." It was one of several occasions when email access to Clinton's BlackBerry smartphone was disrupted because her private server was down, according to the documents.

The AP reported last year that in the early morning hours of Aug. 3, 2011, Clinton received infected emails, disguised as speeding tickets from New York. The emails instructed recipients to print the attached tickets. Opening an attachment would have allowed hackers to take over control of a victim's computer.

In a blistering audit released last month, the State Department's inspector general concluded that Clinton and her team ignored clear internal guidance that her email setup broke federal standards and could leave sensitive material vulnerable to hackers. Her aides twice brushed aside concerns, in one case telling technical staff "the matter was not to be discussed further," the report said.
Actually, I can think of an excellent work-related reason to remove the spam filters — as a diplomat, 
Mrs. Clinton needed unfettered access to the large number of Nigerian princes who are always eager to correspond with Americans of all stations. It was actually an egalitarian move on her part. Meanwhile, we had this particular spectacle:
The man believed to have set up and maintained the private server in the basement of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s New York home invoked his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination more than 125 times during a deposition as part of a civil court case on Wednesday.

Fox News reported that Bryan Pagliano’s sworn testimony with conservative organization Judicial Watch lasted roughly 90 minutes, during which the IT expert repeatedly read a carefully worded statement off of an index card while refusing to answer questions.
I don't mind the guy pleading the Fifth, actually. It's a sign that at least some due process remains in Washington, even as the juice boxers on Capitol Hill stage their "historic" tantrum in the well of the House. Might as well enjoy the Bill of Rights while you can.

1 comment:

Bike Bubba said...

The question I've got regarding Pagliano is why he didn't testify, given that he has been given some degree of immunity. We would infer his crimes are pretty darned significant.

And really, it's again striking why no one raised Hell about this. You're opening up State Department networks to every penny-ante hacker out there, and NOBODY speaks up? Really?