Hillary Used High Tech Scrubber, BleachBit, To Delete Emails

[MrSpikey]

I think it is suspicious that she has been ordered to turn everything over and started having folks delete them, yes.

Maybe you have some timeline information I'm missing, but Comey's statement was the deletion was a regular practice prior to the legal orders - he didn't give weight to claims that there was a purge after.

My question about suspicious activity was in relation to emails being missed through keyword searches. Any thoughts?

 

[tall73]

As I mentioned originally, he does talk about personal domains, servers and accounts. The distinctions between these things isn't something that people will necessarily understand unless they have some background there.

The paragraph I pointed out is the only one where he uses personal email account rather than the other two; his statement that "She also used her personal e-mail extensively while outside the United States, including sending and receiving work-related e-mails" seems pretty clear in distinguishing a personal email account (from which she sent some work emails) from a work one, dedicated to the subject.

But you never established she had a work one in the first place! All of this was relative to her personal. If you want to comb through all the FOIA released documents and show the presence of both of these accounts feel free. But he is relating the personal domain to the personal account in that paragraph. Because the personal account would be an account AT that personal domain. And it was obvious it was tied to her because her name, clinton, appeared in the domain name.

I'd agree it could be clearer and I'm prepared to recognize the ambiguities in the statement. How about you?

It is not ambiguous. His whole conversation related to her personal account, domain, server, etc. because that is what she used.

And you did not address the obvious fact. If she had separate accounts for work and personal, why would she need to week through them and delete? She would have all the work emails on one account. That is precisely what she did not do.

 

[MrSpikey]

But you never established she had a work one in the first place! All of this was relative to her personal. If you want to comb through all the FOIA released documents and show the presence of both of these accounts feel free. But he is relating the personal domain to the personal account in that paragraph. Because the personal account would be an account AT that personal domain. And it was obvious it was tied to her because her name, clinton, appeared in the domain name.



It is not ambiguous. His whole conversation related to her personal account, domain, server, etc. because that is what she used.

And you did not address the obvious fact. If she had separate accounts for work and personal, why would she need to week through them and delete? She would have all the work emails on one account. That is precisely what she did not do.

As I already pointed out, a personal account is not the same as a personal server or a personal domain. You seem to have a little knowledge around this, but if you think she used "her personal account, domain, server, etc." in all interactions, they you need to do a little more research.

The original implication I was responding to, in terms of her personal account rather than personal domain, was about dissemination of classified material. That is an account level issue, not a server or domain issue.

I haven't concluded beyond doubt she had separate personal and work accounts. There really isn't enough there to do so. Comey talked about a personal account being used to send work emails in certain circumstances - do you think he'd describe her work email in that way? If not, how do you justify his wording?

 

[tall73]

Maybe you have some timeline information I'm missing, but Comey's statement was the deletion was a regular practice prior to the legal orders - he didn't give weight to claims that there was a purge after.

My question about suspicious activity was in relation to emails being missed through keyword searches. Any thoughts?

The servers being taken out of commission, etc. resulted in loss of emails on those servers. As he described in one case the email system was deleted, so the data was fragmented. This happened over time. However, it is thought Clinton likely preserved some of the emails and transitioned them to the next server.

Hence his statement later about the purging by the lawyers, which he places in 2014, but for which there is no definitive date.


The lawyers doing the sorting for Secretary Clinton in 2014 did not individually read the content of all of her e-mails, as we did for those available to us; instead, they relied on header information and used search terms to try to find all work-related e-mails among the reportedly more than 60,000 total e-mails remaining on Secretary Clinton’s personal system in 2014. It is highly likely their search terms missed some work-related e-mails, and that we later found them, for example, in the mailboxes of other officials or in the slack space of a server.



Hillary's head lawyer and another lawyer on staff received security clearance in late 2014, November and December respectively.

Either way, it ls likely this purge happened in late 2014.

Per this CNN article Gowdy requested the emails in December 2014, around that time frame.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/08/politics/hillary-clinton-benghazi-subpoena-gowdy/


Incidentally she was supposed to turn over records in her possession when she left the State Department. Certainly the deletions were after that.

And as I said, either way, she was supposed to preserve all documents, not delete work related documents. It is clear from the IG report and Comey's report she did not turn over all records, which she was required to do. She simply benefited politically from the fact that FOIA compliance was not investigated as part of Comey's team's work because it was out of the scope of the initial request.

 

[MrSpikey]

The servers being taken out of commission, etc. resulted in loss of emails on those servers. As he described in one case the email system was deleted, so the data was fragmented. This happened over time. However, it is thought Clinton likely preserved some of the emails and transitioned them to the next server.

Hence his statement later about the purging by the lawyers, which he places in 2014, but for which there is no definitive date.


The lawyers doing the sorting for Secretary Clinton in 2014 did not individually read the content of all of her e-mails, as we did for those available to us; instead, they relied on header information and used search terms to try to find all work-related e-mails among the reportedly more than 60,000 total e-mails remaining on Secretary Clinton’s personal system in 2014. It is highly likely their search terms missed some work-related e-mails, and that we later found them, for example, in the mailboxes of other officials or in the slack space of a server.



Hillary's head lawyer and another lawyer on staff received security clearance in late 2014, November and December respectively.

Either way, it ls likely this purge happened in late 2014.

Per this CNN article Gowdy requested the emails in December 2014, around that time frame.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/08/politics/hillary-clinton-benghazi-subpoena-gowdy/


Incidentally she was supposed to turn over records in her possession when she left the State Department. Certainly the deletions were after that.

And as I said, either way, she was supposed to preserve all documents, not delete work related documents. It is clear from the IG report and Comey's report she did not turn over all records, which she was required to do. She simply benefited politically from the fact that FOIA compliance was not investigated as part of Comey's team's work because it was out of the scope of the initial request.

I did ask if you had a timeline I haven't seen in earlier post - there are quite a lot of assumptions about when things happened here. If you have one, I'd be interested in seeing it.

I've asked twice if you think failure to discover all work emails via a keyword search is suspicious, care to reply? I don't dispute she was required to do so, I wonder what an acceptable level of success for such a thing is, given that technology and humans are involved.

 

[tall73]

As I already pointed out, a personal account is not the same as a personal server or a personal domain. You seem to have a little knowledge around this, but if you think she used "her personal account, domain, server, etc." in all interactions, they you need to do a little more research.

I have run multiple accounts under my own web domain. I just set up another recently in fact.

And you have yet to show she even had a business account, and she would not in fact have to go through and weed out these emails if they were under different accounts. You need to show my why you think she used multiple accounts. And then explain why it would be at all hard to sort if she did?

Now if you say there were different accounts, present your evidence. Show me the different email addresses in the FOIA releases.

The original implication I was responding to, in terms of her personal account rather than personal domain, was about dissemination of classified material. That is an account level issue, not a server or domain issue.

It is, and he goes right into the damage assessment using the terms interchangeably because she used the one account for both personal and business. Otherwise she would not have to sort through and delete.

I haven't concluded beyond doubt she had separate personal and work accounts. There really isn't enough there to do so. Comey talked about a personal account being used to send work emails in certain circumstances - do you think he'd describe her work email in that way? If not, how do you justify his wording?

No, he didn't say in certain circumstances. He specifically noted her frequent overseas use because it was more dangerous than domestic use. He did not ever use the term "work" account. And if she had separate accounts, again, this would not be an issue. as it wouldn't need sorting. She used the same for personal and work, which was the issue all along.

As to overseas use:

Beginning in 2009, the Cyber Threat Analysis Division (CTAD) in DS issued regular notices to Department computer users highlighting cybersecurity threats. CTAD notices addressed BlackBerry security vulnerabilities, citing this device as a weak link in a computer network.67 CTAD warned that BlackBerry devices must be configured in accordance with Department security guidelines.
CTAD’s concerns also included cybersecurity risks faced during international travel. According to an article posted by CTAD, digital threats begin immediately after landing in a foreign country. A primary threat is traced to the traveler’s mobile device (BlackBerry or other smart device) which is necessarily connected to the local cellular tower. This connection gives foreign entities the opportunity to intercept voice and email transmissions immediately after the traveler arrives overseas.68
IG report

This is all part of the threat assessment:

a. did they hack the server-unknown but likely
b. did she email accounts that were compromised-yes
c. did she email in foreign lands where the threat was greater-yes
d. was her domain recognizable-yes

These all comprise not different email accounts, but different contributing factors to risk.

 

[tall73]

I can't say I'm surprised that a term based search approach to identifying emails was "highly likely" to have missed some. Can you honestly say you think that is suspicious? I struggle to find archived items in my own email using keyword searches.

Of course it is not suspicious that they missed some. The part that is suspicious is that they would use this method in the first place as everyone realizes they are almost sure to miss some this way.

 

[MrSpikey]

No, he didn't say in certain circumstances. He specifically noted her frequent overseas use because it was more dangerous than domestic use. He did not ever use the term "work" account. And if she had separate accounts, again, this would not be an issue. as it wouldn't need sorting. She used the same for personal and work, which was the issue all along.

OK, we can boil our disagreement down to this, I think:

"She also used her personal e-mail extensively while outside the United States, including sending and receiving work-related e-mails in the territory of sophisticated adversaries"

If her personal and work email accounts were the same, why would he even mention her sending "work-related emails" from her personal account? She would be doing that all the time if they were the same. Yet, he drew a distinction - why?

 

[MrSpikey]

Of course it is not suspicious that they missed some. The part that is suspicious is that they would use this method in the first place as everyone realizes they are almost sure to miss some this way.

What would be a better approach, then?

 

[tall73]

I did ask if you had a timeline I haven't seen in earlier post - there are quite a lot of assumptions about when things happened here. If you have one, I'd be interested in seeing it.

I gave you a time reference from Comey's own statement. There are of course timelines online, but I am not sure which of the sources you would think credible.

So again, let's go through what he says with time references.


For example, when one of Secretary Clinton’s original personal servers was decommissioned in 2013, the e-mail software was removed. Doing that didn’t remove the e-mail content, but it was like removing the frame from a huge finished jigsaw puzzle and dumping the pieces on the floor. The effect was that millions of e-mail fragments end up unsorted in the server’s unused—or “slack”—space. We searched through all of it to see what was there, and what parts of the puzzle could be put back together.

The FBI also discovered several thousand work-related e-mails that were not in the group of 30,000 that were returned by Secretary Clinton to State in 2014. We found those additional e-mails in a variety of ways. Some had been deleted over the years and we found traces of them on devices that supported or were connected to the private e-mail domain. Others we found by reviewing the archived government e-mail accounts of people who had been government employees at the same time as Secretary Clinton, including high-ranking officials at other agencies, people with whom a Secretary of State might naturally correspond.

Our assessment is that, like many e-mail users, Secretary Clinton periodically deleted e-mails or e-mails were purged from the system when devices were changed. Because she was not using a government account—or even a commercial account like Gmail—there was no archiving at all of her e-mails, so it is not surprising that we discovered e-mails that were not on Secretary Clinton’s system in 2014, when she produced the 30,000 e-mails to the State Department.

Now the point of all of this is that emails were deleted or lost over time. But that in itself is a violation of the Records Act. These are supposed to be preserved. And that is why attempts were made to put her on a government device and account for archiving purposes, as outlined in the IG report.

Now, separate from the "periodically" deleted emails "deleted over the years" there was a particular purging by the lawyers by keyword and subject in 2014.

The lawyers doing the sorting for Secretary Clinton in 2014 did not individually read the content of all of her e-mails, as we did for those available to us; instead, they relied on header information and used search terms to try to find all work-related e-mails among the reportedly more than 60,000 total e-mails remaining on Secretary Clinton’s personal system in 2014. It is highly likely their search terms missed some work-related e-mails, and that we later found them, for example, in the mailboxes of other officials or in the slack space of a server.The lawyers doing the sorting for Secretary Clinton in 2014 did not individually read the content of all of her e-mails, as we did for those available to us; instead, they relied on header information and used search terms to try to find all work-related e-mails among the reportedly more than 60,000 total e-mails remaining on Secretary Clinton’s personal system in 2014.


This later purge was an attempt to sort out the personal from the work emails. Again, that would be unnecessary if they were on separate work and personal accounts.

 

[PapaZoom]

The source you quoted did.

"Comey states that: “Hostile actors gained access"

"To date, we have known only that the Romanian hacker, Guccifer"

"Comey, however, states that hostile actors (plural) gained access"

"So the FBI has evidence of more than one "

If you didn't agree with it, why quote it?



Agreed



Those charged with investigating it didn't agree. Your own opinion may differ, but that doesn't make it "clear".



I am far from being a support of Clinton. But it's been investigated, concluding in a decision it was not criminal behaviour and she did not deliberately mislead. Efforts to misrepresent that decision are mudslinging in it's most basic form, whoever you support.

You're spinnining it and I'm on iPad so I'll just say I don't agree with your post.

 

[tall73]

OK, we can boil our disagreement down to this, I think:

"She also used her personal e-mail extensively while outside the United States, including sending and receiving work-related e-mails in the territory of sophisticated adversaries"

If her personal and work email accounts were the same, why would he even mention her sending "work-related emails" from her personal account? She would be doing that all the time if they were the same. Yet, he drew a distinction - why?

Notice he did not even use the word account in the sentence you highlighted, but her personal email. And of course he referred to this same personal email earlier in his statement. That was the whole point of their investigation. She used her personal email (not a government account) to conduct all of her business, work and personal. If she sent her own personal email on her account overseas, nothing is harmed. But if she sends work email on that same personal email, something is harmed because it is more vulnerable there.

Notice the same term "personal e-mail" used earlier:

As new servers and equipment were employed, older servers were taken out of service, stored, and decommissioned in various ways. Piecing all of that back together—to gain as full an understanding as possible of the ways in which personal e-mail was used for government work—has been a painstaking undertaking, requiring thousands of hours of effort.

The personal email was what she used through this personal email system, server, domain, etc. as opposed to a government email account on a government email system, with a government domain.

Now why he makes a distinction is that if she sends private email about her yoga routine on her private account overseas, nothing is harmed. If she sends work related emails, something may be harmed. The distinction again is about risk.

 

[MrSpikey]

For example, when one of Secretary Clinton’s original personal servers was decommissioned in 2013, the e-mail software was removed. Doing that didn’t remove the e-mail content, but it was like removing the frame from a huge finished jigsaw puzzle and dumping the pieces on the floor. The effect was that millions of e-mail fragments end up unsorted in the server’s unused—or “slack”—space. We searched through all of it to see what was there, and what parts of the puzzle could be put back together.

So, decomissioned, not deleted - and certainly not destroyed. This isn't unusual - server software costs money, you replace a server, you uninstall the software and reinstall it on the replacement.

The FBI also discovered several thousand work-related e-mails that were not in the group of 30,000 that were returned by Secretary Clinton to State in 2014. We found those additional e-mails in a variety of ways. Some had been deleted over the years and we found traces of them on devices that supported or were connected to the private e-mail domain. Others we found by reviewing the archived government e-mail accounts of people who had been government employees at the same time as Secretary Clinton, including high-ranking officials at other agencies, people with whom a Secretary of State might naturally correspond.

Deleted over the years, a practice he accepts is commonplace.

Our assessment is that, like many e-mail users, Secretary Clinton periodically deleted e-mails or e-mails were purged from the system when devices were changed. Because she was not using a government account—or even a commercial account like Gmail—there was no archiving at all of her e-mails, so it is not surprising that we discovered e-mails that were not on Secretary Clinton’s system in 2014, when she produced the 30,000 e-mails to the State Department.

Again, how is this abnormal?

Now the point of all of this is that emails were deleted or lost over time. But that in itself is a violation of the Records Act. These are supposed to be preserved. And that is why attempts were made to put her on a government device and account for archiving purposes, as outlined in the IG report.

OK, there you have a point. She wouldn't be the first politician to be a little slippery with her emails.

Now, separate from the "periodically" deleted emails "deleted over the years" there was a particular purging by the lawyers by keyword and subject in 2014.

The lawyers doing the sorting for Secretary Clinton in 2014 did not individually read the content of all of her e-mails, as we did for those available to us; instead, they relied on header information and used search terms to try to find all work-related e-mails among the reportedly more than 60,000 total e-mails remaining on Secretary Clinton’s personal system in 2014. It is highly likely their search terms missed some work-related e-mails, and that we later found them, for example, in the mailboxes of other officials or in the slack space of a server.The lawyers doing the sorting for Secretary Clinton in 2014 did not individually read the content of all of her e-mails, as we did for those available to us; instead, they relied on header information and used search terms to try to find all work-related e-mails among the reportedly more than 60,000 total e-mails remaining on Secretary Clinton’s personal system in 2014.

Sorry, there's no way you can call that a "purge" - no deletions are mentioned, it's about searching for relevant emails and missing some.

This later purge was an attempt to sort out the personal from the work emails. Again, that would be unnecessary if they were on separate work and personal accounts.

I agree with your last sentence, and Comey indicated that boundary was breached. That doesn't then mean she has to turn over personal emails as part of the investigation. It still wasn't a "purge", but searching in that manner isn't going to be 100% effective.

 

[MrSpikey]

You're spinnining it and I'm on iPad so I'll just say I don't agree with your post.

If only you could have started by saying you didn't agree with the post you originally quoted, you'd have saved us both some time.

 

[tall73]

What would be a better approach, then?

a. Using a classified government system to discuss classified material, as Comey agrees. The IG report indicates attempts to get her to do this.

b. Using separate work and personal accounts. Which if she had done so they wouldn't need to weed out the personal from the business, they would already be separate. The IG report also spells out that it was proposed she use two devices, one personal and government, but that also was not ultimately done.

c. Since she already put her own server, then she should have, as the government employee, have gone through and personally searched each email to differentiate by content, not just subject or key word.

 

[tall73]

OK, there you have a point. She wouldn't be the first politician to be a little slippery with her emails.

And I support going after ALL of them, regardless of party. This government doesn't accept "slippery" from businesses or citizens that they oversee. But complete, blatant disregard for public documents they are legally required to retain is overlooked? Why?

 

[MrSpikey]

a. Using a classified government system to discuss classified material, as Comey agrees. The IG report indicates attempts to get her to do this.

Well, obviously. But given the fact she didn't, what's a better method of identifying which emails are which?

b. Using separate work and personal accounts. Which if she had done so they wouldn't need to weed out the personal from the business, they would already be separate. The IG report also spells out that it was proposed she use two devices, one personal and government, but that also was not ultimately done

See above

c. Since she already put her own server, then she should have, as the government employee, have gone through and personally searched each email to differentiate by content, not just subject or key word.

Are you honestly saying that if she herself had done that, you would have been happy that all the relevant emails were extracted?

 

[MrSpikey]

And I support going after ALL of them, regardless of party. This government doesn't accept "slippery" from businesses or citizens that they oversee. But complete, blatant disregard for public documents they are legally required to retain is overlooked? Why?

The quoted reason was "mens rea". She did not deliberately break the law in the eyes of the investigators - there was no "guilty mind".

 

[PapaZoom]

"Comey states that: “Hostile actors gained access to the private commercial email accounts of people with whom Secretary Clinton was in regular contact.” As the New York Times put it: “And that would have meant that tracking the trail of electronic breadcrumbs back to her server would have been a pretty simple task. After that, their ability to break in would have been a mix of skill and luck, but they had plenty of time to get it right.”"

"To date, we have known only that the Romanian hacker, Guccifer, breached Clinton advisor, Sidney Blumenthal’s account. Comey, however, states that hostile actors (plural) gained access to the accounts (plural) of Clinton’s regular contacts. So the FBI has evidence of more than one successful hack of accounts of Clinton associates. In this light, Comey’s statement that a hack of Clinton’s account was “possible” is a gross and peculiar understatement."

https://ricochet.com/comey-hostile-foreign-actors-plural-hack-hillarys-associates/

If Hillary wasn't hacked, she's very very lucky. We may never know for sure. Or we'll find out in October.

FTR, I stand by this post.

 

[tall73]

Sorry, there's no way you can call that a "purge" - no deletions are mentioned, it's about searching for relevant emails and missing some.

It could also be that some of the additional work-related e-mails we recovered were among those deleted as “personal” by Secretary Clinton’s lawyers when they reviewed and sorted her e-mails for production in 2014.


Deletions are plainly mentioned.