Clinton's email excuses are falling apart

[Gaidin]

The difference is that Hillary has done all of this as a public official on the public dime. While claiming she is an expert in that sphere to boot. Trump, whatever his indiscretions, has done them on his own time and of course none of his antics in the present or past involve things like compromising top secret information, drone strikes, and facilitating the near complete collapse of two nations.

Now, you might think it prudent to assume Trump will continue to nefarious things in office. Clinton HAS done nefarious things in office. Repeatedly. Unapologeticly. "What, with a cloth or something?"

----

I am currently working on my graduate degree in an IT related area. This level of basic indifference to cyber security is breathtaking. Clinton deserves jail time for what she did, but for these IT "professionals" to grossly compromise the entire State Department system just to accommodate an asshole boss should get each one of them canned immediately. Its there job to tell their boss no on these sorts of things. If she insists they stick to their guns and call up the IG. If they won't hold the line as the SMEs nobody will as we have ample proof of at this point.

So Trump's ok because...fraud...elsewhere? Am I reading this right? Seriously?

[Patroklos]

Did I mention fraud?

[Gaidin]

Did I mention fraud?

Let's get one thing straight. Trump is the one with an actual indictment against him. You expect me to take shit seriously with Clinton you better get your own Federal Government on the phone and tell them to get their asses in gear.

[Mr Bean]

Did I mention fraud?

Let's get one thing straight. Trump is the one with an actual indictment against him. You expect me to take shit seriously with Clinton you better get your own Federal Government on the phone and tell them to get their asses in gear.

The case won't be going to trial until after the election
Also Trump does not have an indictment against him unless there's a Grand Jury case I'm unaware or I'm misreading Trump V Cohen which everything I can find says it's a class action civil lawsuit.

[Gaidin]

The case won't be going to trial until after the election
Also Trump does not have an indictment against him unless there's a Grand Jury case I'm unaware or I'm misreading Trump V Cohen which everything I can find says it's a class action civil lawsuit.

I'm talking about New York's Trump U case which their Appeals Court said could go forward in March. They're charges brought forth by their Attorney General. Patroklos can be as dickish as he wants about "Official Positions" and "Authority" and he can be as proud as he wants of his totally irrelevant "IT Education" but what we're seeing play out here is 40 years of Trump's career and the idea of him play however many people as he can get away with and the idea of "Consequences". The writing is actually on the wall as to whether Trump is actually trustworthy. And it doesn't make it ok just because he was doing those things as a private businessman. Otherwise the New York AG wouldn't have been able to get that case going again.

And yet. No matter how much they try, the Republicans can't seem to get much more than bad publicity for themselves from Hillary. Maybe that'll change. But again. Somebody needs to make a phone call and tell the government to hurry.

[Mr Bean]

The case won't be going to trial until after the election
Also Trump does not have an indictment against him unless there's a Grand Jury case I'm unaware or I'm misreading Trump V Cohen which everything I can find says it's a class action civil lawsuit.

I'm talking about New York's Trump U case which their Appeals Court said could go forward in March. They're charges brought forth by their Attorney General.

Yeah that's a civil lawsuit
Original 2013 article about the case here
Let me quote from it.

The New York State attorney general’s office filed a civil lawsuit on Saturday accusing Trump University, Donald J. Trump’s for-profit investment school, of engaging in illegal business practices.

That case is a civil case, every Trump university case is a civil case. If there's one involving criminal charges please correct me. But if there's not, Mr Trump is due to be out some money at most in any conviction.

[Dominus Atheos]

disabled software on their systems intended to block phishing email

So they turned off the spam filters, big fucking deal.

What is it with people who don't understand security talking about it. Spam != phishing.

Phishing, usually spear-phishing, is sending targeted mails with malware to people, tricking them into opening it. A classic defense is blocking outbound mails from unknown servers and/or blocking attachments from external servers.

No, that isn't what phishing is at all. Phishing is an email that appears to be from someplace like your bank and asks you to enter your login data, but is actually from hackers trying to get your login data so they can steal the money out of your account. Spear phishing is just more targeted, including real details like your name and address.

It has nothing to do with malware. Tell me that Clinton demanded to run her computer as an administrator, and then I will be concerned about security vulnerabilities she introduced.

[Gaidin]

The case won't be going to trial until after the election
Also Trump does not have an indictment against him unless there's a Grand Jury case I'm unaware or I'm misreading Trump V Cohen which everything I can find says it's a class action civil lawsuit.

I'm talking about New York's Trump U case which their Appeals Court said could go forward in March. They're charges brought forth by their Attorney General.

Yeah that's a civil lawsuit
Original 2013 article about the case here
Let me quote from it.

The New York State attorney general’s office filed a civil lawsuit on Saturday accusing Trump University, Donald J. Trump’s for-profit investment school, of engaging in illegal business practices.

That case is a civil case, every Trump university case is a civil case. If there's one involving criminal charges please correct me. But if there's not, Mr Trump is due to be out some money at most in any conviction.

OK so the old article spells it out more clearly than the ones from a few months ago. The New York one was the only one I was seeing that was coming to what I was speaking of, where the others, well, they literally have their law firms telling a movie's worth of story for them a week.

[Ace Pace]

No, that isn't what phishing is at all. Phishing is an email that appears to be from someplace like your bank and asks you to enter your login data, but is actually from hackers trying to get your login data so they can steal the money out of your account. Spear phishing is just more targeted, including real details like your name and address.

It has nothing to do with malware. Tell me that Clinton demanded to run her computer as an administrator, and then I will be concerned about security vulnerabilities she introduced.

Jesus fucking h christ.

Phishing is any impersonation. Phishing is also incredibly commonly used to get people to click on links that lead to exploits (either embedded in the mail or online).
I don't need the victim to run as admin in order to get anything I want, which is usually documents the user has access to.

[Patroklos]

Patroklos can be as dickish as he wants about "Official Positions" and "Authority"

Are you saying there is no difference between doing the same things perceived as crooked but not illegal when acting in your private capacity and when acting as an agent of the people?

and he can be as proud as he wants of his totally irrelevant "IT Education"

Which has what to do with your inane ranting on this line? Do you deny that IT professionals entrusted with protecting an IT system as the SMEs should do their fucking job?

but what we're seeing play out here is 40 years of Trump's career and the idea of him play however many people as he can get away with and the idea of "Consequences". The writing is actually on the wall as to whether Trump is actually trustworthy. And it doesn't make it ok just because he was doing those things as a private businessman. Otherwise the New York AG wouldn't have been able to get that case going again.

You said it yourself. The writing it on the wall but he hasn't actually broken the public's trust. He has never had the trust to break. Clinton has. We KNOW Clinton is a corrupt rule breaking asshole while under the mantle or public servant. We KNOW she does as she pleases without any regard to accountability or the law.

And yet. No matter how much they try, the Republicans can't seem to get much more than bad publicity for themselves from Hillary. Maybe that'll change. But again. Somebody needs to make a phone call and tell the government to hurry.

60% of the voting populous considers her untrustworthy. Much of that is a direct result of her law breaking and subsequent lying regarding these emails.

[Gaidin]

Patroklos can be as dickish as he wants about "Official Positions" and "Authority"

Are you saying there is no difference between doing the same things perceived as crooked but not illegal when acting in your private capacity and when acting as an agent of the people?

and he can be as proud as he wants of his totally irrelevant "IT Education"

Which has what to do with your inane ranting on this line? Do you deny that IT professionals entrusted with protecting an IT system as the SMEs should do their fucking job?

but what we're seeing play out here is 40 years of Trump's career and the idea of him play however many people as he can get away with and the idea of "Consequences". The writing is actually on the wall as to whether Trump is actually trustworthy. And it doesn't make it ok just because he was doing those things as a private businessman. Otherwise the New York AG wouldn't have been able to get that case going again.

You said it yourself. The writing it on the wall but he hasn't actually broken the public's trust. He has never had the trust to break. Clinton has. We KNOW Clinton is a corrupt rule breaking asshole while under the mantle or public servant. We KNOW she does as she pleases without any regard to accountability or the law.

And yet. No matter how much they try, the Republicans can't seem to get much more than bad publicity for themselves from Hillary. Maybe that'll change. But again. Somebody needs to make a phone call and tell the government to hurry.

60% of the voting populous considers her untrustworthy. Much of that is a direct result of her law breaking and subsequent lying regarding these emails.

Man, Trump is getting sued in multiple places for outright defrauding people and Clinton is not. And the government can not seem to make it's decision whether or not to try to indict her. Keep in mind at the state level at most places they can bypass the grand jury and just indict her. But no at the federal level they have to try. And every time the Republican Party tries to do something it embarrasses itself.

And 60% of the voting populous considers her untrustworthy? 70% of the voting populous considers him untrustworthy. Or had you missed the bullshit since the primaries had been wrapped up but he missed the memo about pivoting and decided to be racist to the Latino judge? But that's neither here nor there. This is about me. The man has outright defrauded people and is in court for it. She isn't in court for anything. You need to get the government on the phone and tell them to get their ass in gear if you want me to take the Republican Party seriously in any way about the word "Email" when they're nominating a man by the name "Trump".

See, Simon_Jester was right. Your bullshit might work if they nominated someone with something I can call ethics you can hide behind like Kasich, or Bush, or Rubio. But they didn't. They nominated a fraud.

[Exonerate]

I'm a little surprised to see Simon think the relevancy of this topic depends on its impact on the election alone. It's worth remembering that after a candidate wins the election, we still have to live with them for 4 years. And as frightening as a Trump presidency might be, I'm not going to blind myself to Clinton's very significant shortcomings (and in any case, better than Trump is a very low bar to pass). All this bellyaching about Trump being worse just seems like a poor attempt at deflecting a real issue - I don't think anybody in this thread has even indicated a willingness to vote for Trump.

Perhaps I'm in the minority here, but beyond stated platforms and positions, I also care about a candidate's character and in my view, the trickle of news that comes out regarding this doesn't reflect well upon her at all. What this saga has revealed is that Clinton, for whatever reasons, didn't want to use the State Department email system and when questioned on it, rather than coming clean, she proceeded to defend the propriety of it with lies. It revealed she attempted to outright ignore FOIA laws by not turning over emails related to official business in her possession and went to lengths to conceal their existence. It revealed that she's a hypocrite who told others to not use private email for official business while all of hers were going through a basement server.

By the way, a colleague of mine received a phishing email not too long ago, which he reported to IT without clicking on the link. They took his computer and completely wiped it just to be safe. It boggles the mind that all us little people are going through the trouble of following procedure for the sake of security, but a presidential candidate gets to not only ignore the rules but put an entire government agency at risk for her personal convenience at the same time.

[Soontir C'boath]

By the way, a colleague of mine received a phishing email not too long ago, which he reported to IT without clicking on the link. They took his computer and completely wiped it just to be safe. It boggles the mind that all us little people are going through the trouble of following procedure for the sake of security, but a presidential candidate gets to not only ignore the rules but put an entire government agency at risk for her personal convenience at the same time.

As written before, apparently positions of power is a valid reason to excuse it. So I guess when Trump becomes President, anything he does is fine just as his predecessor Bush before him.


But hey look this way, Trump is worse so vote for Hillary who'd get away with doing less evil and stupid things!

[Gaidin]

As written before, apparently positions of power is a valid reason to excuse it. So I guess when Trump becomes President, anything he does is fine just as his predecessor Bush before him.


But hey look this way, Trump is worse so vote for Hillary who'd get away with doing less evil and stupid things!

Not really that. It's more that when both parties are nominating people that have taken the actions they have I more find myself again back to a normal political election because based on the asshattery of the both of them it's six one way a half dozen the other.

[Simon_Jester]

The difference is that Hillary has done all of this as a public official on the public dime. While claiming she is an expert in that sphere to boot.

In what sphere, IT? Handling classified information? I can't remember Clinton arguing that she's an IT expert or an expert in handling secrets.

If you mean the sphere of public policy as a whole... bluntly, that's not the sphere where Clinton is accused of being an incompetent in regards to the email scandal.

Trump, whatever his indiscretions, has done them on his own time and of course none of his antics in the present or past involve things like compromising top secret information, drone strikes, and facilitating the near complete collapse of two nations.

That's only because no one ever let him close to that kind of power. Do you really think that if Trump had somehow been made secretary of state in 2009, he wouldn't have done similar things as soon as

Do you really think Trump will make any effort whatsoever to separate his personal communications regarding his business life and his professional communications regarding his public responsibilities?

Now, you might think it prudent to assume Trump will continue to nefarious things in office. Clinton HAS done nefarious things in office. Repeatedly. Unapologeticly. "What, with a cloth or something?"
---
I am currently working on my graduate degree in an IT related area. This level of basic indifference to cyber security is breathtaking. Clinton deserves jail time for what she did, but for these IT "professionals" to grossly compromise the entire State Department system just to accommodate an asshole boss should get each one of them canned immediately. Its there job to tell their boss no on these sorts of things. If she insists they stick to their guns and call up the IG. If they won't hold the line as the SMEs nobody will as we have ample proof of at this point.

I'm going to make a simple prediction.

We are going to continue to have tempest-in-teapot scandals like this forever, as long as we allow powerful people to tlel their own IT departments what to do or to hire their own IT departments. As long as the boss gets to say "my way or the highway" and ride roughshod over procedures that are in place to protect the organization as a whole.

Electing Trump instead of Clinton would do absolutely nothing to solve this problem. He's spent his entire life running roughshod over procedures. He builds his public image around doing it, for crying out loud!

The email scandal might have been a reason to vote against Clinton in favor of Jeb Bush or John Kasich or, hell, even Ted Cruz who's a loony. But clearly, in this election cycle, the voters aligned against Clinton have spoken, and whatever they do value, they sure don't value the idea of a president who is discreet with national secrets and willing to follow rules and procedures that inconvenience them.

If you want to fix this problem, you need to convince all the high-powered executive types in this country that they are not above the law. In which case electing Clinton is sending a bad message, and electing Trump sends a worse message.

So they turned off the spam filters, big fucking deal.

Imagine the headline was this: "Department of defense removes security cameras and lamps around the Pentagon because the SecDef insists on driving his own vehicle and keeps hitting the poles." That's the level of stupid we're dealing with here. It isn't about the filters, it's about the arrogance and stupidity that could easily have been avoided just by following proper procedures. But no, rules are for other people, so we should fuck everything up just because doing it right inconveniences the boss.

I agree with you, and I hate stuff like this, and if the Republicans had chosen to nominate someone who follows procedures and respects them rather than being a big ball of puffery and ego who can't go more than a few years without defrauding someone, I might seriously consider letting the sheer stupidity of what Clinton did impact my vote.

I'm not sure it'd flip my vote but I'd at least entertain the notion seriously.

But that's not what wound up happening.

Patroklos can be as dickish as he wants about "Official Positions" and "Authority"

Are you saying there is no difference between doing the same things perceived as crooked but not illegal when acting in your private capacity and when acting as an agent of the people?

When you HAVE no record as an agent of the people, you cannot claim that "I never did anything crooked as an agent of the people" is somehow a qualification in your favor.

Meanwhile, Trump's entire business career for several decades has been riddled with frauds, manipulations, and him misrepresenting himself, his businesses, and his legacy. If we judge his likely performance as a public servant by his behavior when he served himself... he doesn't come out looking very good. He is not an honest man, he is not sorry for the times he's abused power, and he has continued to defraud people and abuse power throughout his career.

Why would we expect him to change?

but what we're seeing play out here is 40 years of Trump's career and the idea of him play however many people as he can get away with and the idea of "Consequences". The writing is actually on the wall as to whether Trump is actually trustworthy. And it doesn't make it ok just because he was doing those things as a private businessman. Otherwise the New York AG wouldn't have been able to get that case going again.

You said it yourself. The writing it on the wall but he hasn't actually broken the public's trust. He has never had the trust to break. Clinton has. We KNOW Clinton is a corrupt rule breaking asshole while under the mantle or public servant. We KNOW she does as she pleases without any regard to accountability or the law.

At least when it comes to email. Do you know, there are a lot of other rules a public servant might break, that I'm frankly more worried about...

I mean, yes, I get that if she continues to be reckless about handling email in the White House that would be bad. Potentially very bad, because, well, compromised national security is bad. Though I kind of doubt that she would keep doing that anyway, since she has to know by now that this is an area where people will cheerfully watch and scream at her, and since the White House actually does have special IT arrangements to make handling email more convenient, and convenience is the original reason Clinton did these reckless and arrogant things in the first place.

But if Trump committed frauds and cheats in the White House that are proportionate to what he did with the limited power of his own financial 'empire,' he will make the Clinton email scandal look like small potatoes. If he cheated and lied on scale X when he had a billion dollars to do it with, how much will he do when he has a trillion dollars to do it with?

I'm a little surprised to see Simon think the relevancy of this topic depends on its impact on the election alone. It's worth remembering that after a candidate wins the election, we still have to live with them for 4 years. And as frightening as a Trump presidency might be, I'm not going to blind myself to Clinton's very significant shortcomings (and in any case, better than Trump is a very low bar to pass). All this bellyaching about Trump being worse just seems like a poor attempt at deflecting a real issue - I don't think anybody in this thread has even indicated a willingness to vote for Trump.

I don't disagree.

My observation is simply that people have been talking up the Clinton email issue for a long time now. And back before the primaries this was considered (by some) a very serious black mark against Clinton's chances of winning office. My point was simply that in terms of the election cycle itself, events have made it irrelevant. Because the Republicans, amazingly given that it woul not have been hard to avoid this, picked someone even more arrogant, hypocritical, reckless, and mendacious than Clinton.
The whole affair still reflects poorly on Clinton's character, but in my opinion mostly serves to demote her to that often-despised moral level of "politician." We're only ever going to fix things like this after we find a way to convince the top-level management class in America as a whole that they are not above the law. We've spent several decades creating that attitude.

As written before, apparently positions of power is a valid reason to excuse it. So I guess when Trump becomes President, anything he does is fine just as his predecessor Bush before him.

But hey look this way, Trump is worse so vote for Hillary who'd get away with doing less evil and stupid things!

Not really that. It's more that when both parties are nominating people that have taken the actions they have I more find myself again back to a normal political election because based on the asshattery of the both of them it's six one way a half dozen the other.

Bluntly, yes. It's like, both parties elected untrustworthy moral degenerates, one of whom is even more degenerate than the other, and in a wider variety of ways.

So we're stuck picking whichever degenerate is least bad, and who seems likely to abuse the office in the smallest number of ways. Then we can try to figure out why the primary system served us such a pair of reeking garbage sandwiches.

[Wild Zontargs]

We're only ever going to fix things like this after we find a way to convince the top-level management class in America as a whole that they are not above the law. We've spent several decades creating that attitude.

[...]

So we're stuck picking whichever degenerate is least bad, and who seems likely to abuse the office in the smallest number of ways. Then we can try to figure out why the primary system served us such a pair of reeking garbage sandwiches.

I'm not an American, and I don't have a solution handy, but I suspect "we had to elect Reeking Garbage Sandwich #2 because Reeking Garbage Sandwich #1 was worse" isn't going to do a goddamned thing to convince anyone in power to stop nominating (or being) reeking garbage sandwiches. After all, being a reeking garbage sandwich doesn't stop you from being President!

I know "everyone stays home", "write in Mickey Mouse" or "vote third party" isn't going to fly in the US system, and "burn it all down and hope something worthwhile survives to take over" is a shitshow of an option, so... I've got nothing here. Any of the long-term "just educate everyone and try to vote in people who'll fix the problem" are just as likely to fail, since the management class will just have that much longer to tighten their grip on things, so I expect that option really translates to "let it collapse under its own weight and hope something worthwhile survives to take over", AKA "the slow version of the shitshow option".

[Grumman]

So we're stuck picking whichever degenerate is least bad, and who seems likely to abuse the office in the smallest number of ways. Then we can try to figure out why the primary system served us such a pair of reeking garbage sandwiches.

The first sentence is your answer to the second. As long as "She might be an egotistical bastard with an overinflated sense of her own competence who wants our constitutional rights to exist only at the whim of the executive, but she's our egotistical bastard with an overinflated sense of her own competence who wants our constitutional rights to exist only at the whim of the executive!" passes as justification, there's nothing to stop just this sort of race to the bottom. The solution is to not settle for second-worst. Vote for Bernie Sanders, tell Republicans to vote for Gary Johnson, and maybe you won't allow the self-fulfilling prophecy to come true after all.

[Gaidin]

The first sentence is your answer to the second. As long as "She might be an egotistical bastard with an overinflated sense of her own competence who wants our constitutional rights to exist only at the whim of the executive, but she's our egotistical bastard with an overinflated sense of her own competence who wants our constitutional rights to exist only at the whim of the executive!" passes as justification, there's nothing to stop just this sort of race to the bottom. The solution is to not settle for second-worst. Vote for Bernie Sanders, tell Republicans to vote for Gary Johnson, and maybe you won't allow the self-fulfilling prophecy to come true after all.

I think Bernie Sanders is about as bad as her given how many times he managed to set himself up for the moral title of 'politician' in the Primary instead of stick to his principles for certain issues. If he'd won, we'd have something to talk about. But I have no reason to try to a write-in campaign.

[Tsyroc]

Vote for Bernie Sanders, tell Republicans to vote for Gary Johnson, and maybe you won't allow the self-fulfilling prophecy to come true after all.

Unless Bernie really pulls it out of nowhere at the convention I think I am going to have to go with Gary Johnson. He probably won't be able to get much done if he does win the office but he's unlikely to mess things up too badly.

I do have concerns as to what kind of people a Libertarian would put on the Supreme Court.

He's a weed smoker so maybe he'd get that legalized or at least decriminalized nationwide? Not that I want to smoke weed or be around a lot of pot smokers but it is such a waste of resources to keep fighting its use.


I'm tending to think that whoever we get there isn't going to be much positive getting done the next 4 years. It will either be a dumpster fire of a mess or a constant series of pissing matches where the president blocks congress and vice versa.

[Simon_Jester]

We're only ever going to fix things like this after we find a way to convince the top-level management class in America as a whole that they are not above the law. We've spent several decades creating that attitude.

[...]

So we're stuck picking whichever degenerate is least bad, and who seems likely to abuse the office in the smallest number of ways. Then we can try to figure out why the primary system served us such a pair of reeking garbage sandwiches.

I'm not an American, and I don't have a solution handy, but I suspect "we had to elect Reeking Garbage Sandwich #2 because Reeking Garbage Sandwich #1 was worse" isn't going to do a goddamned thing to convince anyone in power to stop nominating (or being) reeking garbage sandwiches. After all, being a reeking garbage sandwich doesn't stop you from being President!

I know "everyone stays home", "write in Mickey Mouse" or "vote third party" isn't going to fly in the US system, and "burn it all down and hope something worthwhile survives to take over" is a shitshow of an option, so... I've got nothing here. Any of the long-term "just educate everyone and try to vote in people who'll fix the problem" are just as likely to fail, since the management class will just have that much longer to tighten their grip on things, so I expect that option really translates to "let it collapse under its own weight and hope something worthwhile survives to take over", AKA "the slow version of the shitshow option".

Frankly... probably yes.

There's a lot we can do to make things less bad in the long term if people start mobilizing, organizing, and acting with some political conscience and sanity. But in the short term, knowingly embracing a disaster won't solve the problem.

Remembering the disaster, not trusting Clinton to follow procedure or maintain a functional, secure, tight organizational structure, is worthwhile, mind you.

So we're stuck picking whichever degenerate is least bad, and who seems likely to abuse the office in the smallest number of ways. Then we can try to figure out why the primary system served us such a pair of reeking garbage sandwiches.

The first sentence is your answer to the second. As long as "She might be an egotistical bastard with an overinflated sense of her own competence who wants our constitutional rights to exist only at the whim of the executive, but she's our egotistical bastard with an overinflated sense of her own competence who wants our constitutional rights to exist only at the whim of the executive!" passes as justification, there's nothing to stop just this sort of race to the bottom. The solution is to not settle for second-worst. Vote for Bernie Sanders, tell Republicans to vote for Gary Johnson, and maybe you won't allow the self-fulfilling prophecy to come true after all.

Bernie Sanders put up a very credible race for the primary. And I'm glad that he did. Hopefully that's at least the first hint of a way forward out of this mess.

Several Republicans who at least don't have the "I'm an ass who regularly ignores rules of my office for personal benefit" as a mark against them put up credible runs against Trump. I wish one of them had succeeded.

But Trump has won, and Clinton has won. There's no realistic way that between now and November we can somehow stage a voters' revolt with a mass write in campaign. It's not going to happen, unfortunately.

You can make a great argument that Americans of all political stripes should be grossly dissatisfied with their political parties at this point That we've got an election between a corrupt blowhard and a hypocritical heir-apparent because of the inferior, inadequate performance of the two party system. That is a very real long term problem.