[Lanny_McDonald]

Originally Posted by Gozer

https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...239_story.html
Quote from link:
The SoS' staff made no action to preserve the records on government servers.

You're missing a key facet of what they are saying. They made no effort to preserve information from her private email address on the server, which would not have been a requirement prior to the 2014 amendment. Her private correspondence on the server we not required to be accounted for, only her government business, which was responded to with her government account. The records on the government server would already be accounted for.

You're also missing a key facet of how email is used. A device may receive information from multiple accounts, and be configured to respond through to the appropriate server from the mobile device. This has been a common practice for people in all walks of life, including high ranking government employees. I know of one that got burned by this because they responded to a privileged conversation, but used the wrong email address to respond from. This put the email in the open and brought the individual under an incredible amount of unnecessary scrutiny. I suspect that Clinton was receiving emails on her personal device from multiple emails, but had also set up an auto-forward on her State Department email so she would have a copy on her private server. This was also a very popular practice prior to the 2014 amendment and something only a governance and policy change at all agencies put a halt to.

The paper trail was compromised.

If she was forwarding emails to her personal server, while still responding from her device, the email paper trail is intact. Based on information in her testimony she lived on her Blackberry, so I would contend the government email was whole. Anything sent from her personal account is another story, but she was not required to do anything with emails from her personal account.

There is no way to evaluate whether or not records were preserved properly because Hillary's staff (alone) made the determination of what records were private - and they (claim to have) used keyword searches to separate personal-from-professional. This is another layer of denialbility. Hillary destroyed the records she wanted destroyed. That's not good enough.

That is what the FBI would have investigated.

You are deferring to the FBI, which is emminently reasonable, but I am not for two reasons.
1) the FRA and violations thereof, we're not under the purview of the FBI investigation. (See a The Hill link I posted previously)

The Hill is incorrect in their understanding of the process. The FBI are responsible for investigating such transgressions. That is their purview. I'm very curious who you think would be responsible for doing such an investigation, or who would have the assets to complete such an investigation?

2) investigations a) high-level officials and b) political candidates add additional layers of scrutiny to pressing charge, and rightfully so. Any charges that are levied against a Presidential nominee would be blown out of proportion by the press/public. While this does not pre-empt charges being filed, there is a disinclination to prosecute a relatively minor offense.

The FBI will follow the law and deal with non-compliance in the ways the law is written. Especially with the incredible scrutiny this particular political candidate receives.

I think of it as comparable to the NHL needing a greater infraction to punish a superstar over a plug. (If Toews had crosschecked a ref, the league would be less inclined to proclaim it malicious) There are really good reasons for a double standard, but inaction of the league against a superstar is less exculpatory.

This isn't the NHL and national security is not a joke. The FBI takes their charge very seriously and do not cut "superstars" a break. Just the contrary. The FBI wants to make sure their is not the slightest hint of impropriety and investigate matters to their fullest.

I also want to address your comments on the time-sensitivity of markings, but I'm struggling to find my supporting evidence. It's an Intelligence official that placed the burden on the handler of the documents - classified is contents, not markings. I intend to amend this post when I have more time.

Documents receive handling labels based on how they stack up against classification standards. Someone doesn't arbitrarily pull a sensitivity label out of their ass and say this document is now classified or top secret. There are events that elevate information to meet particular classifications. Once the information meets a given classification it is assigned a label and it now must comply with the handling standards set by the FRA. That is why a document can be private during its initial dissemination, but days or weeks later receive an elevated label. Each of those labels will have different handling requirements including how they are moved electronically, right up to the cipher used to encrypt the data in transit and at rest.

Again, I hope this clears up any confusion presented in the press. I don't think they have done a very good job explaining this stuff, mostly because it is tedious and boring for the average reader. I hope I've made it as accessible as possible.