Using Private Email, Hillary Clinton Thwarted Record Requests • Hacker News Board

Re: Using Private Email, Hillary Clinton Thwarted Record Requests

#71

Post by ohjesusthatguy » Wed, Mar 04, 2015, 2:43 PM UTC

mootothemax wrote: post #6

Hilary Clinton's not the first nor only politician guilty of doing this, NY Daily News just put together five other notables: - Sarah Palin - Mitt Romney - Karl Rove - Andrew Cuomo - Chris Christie aide Bridget Anne Kelly http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/5-examples-lawmaker... It definitely seems less than ideal for these rules to be abused like this. The problem is, how do you stop it? It's unreasonable to e…

>It's unreasonable to expect all private communications to be on public record, and if you write a note to your babysitter during office hours, why should the wider world have to know about it?

>It's a difficult balance.

No it's not, and you know it. If you're discussing job-related matters, use your work email, not the system you had set up so that you could evade your workplace data-retention policies. Who knows; maybe Clinton and Blumenthal send all their "re: re: re: funny" cat pictures to each other through this, but I doubt it.

Any maybe your parents never taught you, but just because other people break the rules doesn't give you an excuse to break the rules. If only our politicians had any sense of right and wrong...

Re: Using Private Email, Hillary Clinton Thwarted Record Requests

#72

Post by untog » Wed, Mar 04, 2015, 2:44 PM UTC

orbifold wrote: post #66

sanderjd wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "everything's terrible!" tone of your comment is one of the major problems and main contributors to the partisan divide. It would be harder to get people riled up for their pet party if more people were aware that, hey, things are going pretty well! It would make the things that aren't going as well easier to identify and work on.

Well things are not going pretty well, there is still no real solution to the crash of 2008 in sight, right now we still have essentially bankrupt banks that are trading worthless assets in an artificially created market. Look at the charts in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_... for example, real average hourly wages are still lower than in the 1970s, gdp growth has largely decoupled from…

Well that's the core of the problem, isn't it? "Pretty well" is extremely relative. The US is recovering from the crash of 2008 better than most countries in the world. Unemployment is down and getting better, but as you say, household income is still not doing great. So what is "pretty well" in this context? Damned if I know.

Re: Using Private Email, Hillary Clinton Thwarted Record Requests

#73

Post by shortoncash » Wed, Mar 04, 2015, 2:48 PM UTC

EdSharkey wrote: post #70

shortoncash wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't blame the public for this. I blame the media. Elections aren't won on the votes of principled liberals or conservatives. They're won based on the easy-votes of people who haven't dedicated the time to investigating whether there's substance behind any of the marketing claims of the two major parties. So what happens to these people during election season? Candidates are hidden from them, some candidates are g…

The media has a huge hand in this, sure. But fiscal conservatives have been complaining about the corporatists and big spenders in the gop since Goldwater at least. There should have been a popular backlash. You can claim Reagan was that backlash, but he was just another big government guy. Tea party is interesting, but it seems like it has too many social conservative cranks to breakthrough.

How do you expect there to be a popular backlash if the the public is misinformed? It was even worse in the Goldwater days because there was no internet for the public to use.

Re: Using Private Email, Hillary Clinton Thwarted Record Requests

#74

Post by Spooky23 » Wed, Mar 04, 2015, 2:51 PM UTC

mootothemax wrote: post #6

Hilary Clinton's not the first nor only politician guilty of doing this, NY Daily News just put together five other notables: - Sarah Palin - Mitt Romney - Karl Rove - Andrew Cuomo - Chris Christie aide Bridget Anne Kelly http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/5-examples-lawmaker... It definitely seems less than ideal for these rules to be abused like this. The problem is, how do you stop it? It's unreasonable to e…

I work in a .gov and have had exposure to this issue directly in a few different contexts.

The advocates for full disclosure imo are biting their nose to spite their face. Normal people running everything from little leagues to major corporations use email for strategy development, information delivery, deliberative functions and other normal business processes.

Known figures in government cannot do that, because the second they do, that information is available to the universe. The consequence is that officials don't use email, and either go through couriers, use some grey area communications mechanism, or do something else that is lost to the public record. It's ridiculous that President Obama or any smart governor cannot have a computer on this desk because of this stuff.

I think the current law was designed for paper memos and letters and works counter to its intended goal. Leaders cannot lead if everything they write needs to be staged for this evening's news. There should be a long aging process for this type of material.

Re: Using Private Email, Hillary Clinton Thwarted Record Requests

#75

Post by higherpurpose » Wed, Mar 04, 2015, 2:51 PM UTC

Private as in not public, as a government employee's email should be, not necessarily a secure email.

Re: Using Private Email, Hillary Clinton Thwarted Record Requests

#76

Post by navait » Wed, Mar 04, 2015, 2:54 PM UTC

Given the sheer number of officials doing thing this, I can only assume this is done mostly out of ignorance about how email works. If I knew nothing about email, I could see myself assuming IT has a magic way to archive this. Remember when Sarah Palin's account got hacked? She probably never thought about how the security questions could easily be looked up once she was in the public spotlight. Once your email account is set up, I imagine most people don't really think about it.

Of course, it's also 2014, there is no reason a high-level official should be this ignorance, but it wouldn't hurt for aides to make sure they are using the correct email account.

Re: Using Private Email, Hillary Clinton Thwarted Record Requests

#77

Post by higherpurpose » Wed, Mar 04, 2015, 2:54 PM UTC

Wissmania wrote: post #33

How is this supposed to be a scandal exactly? The issue seems to be that she could of hid something in her personal emails by not turning everything over. But couldn't any official have just used their gov email for "official business" and use their personal email for stuff they want to hide? Doesn't every politician actually do this? The fact that Clinton is letting personal correspondence mix with government corres…

Maybe, maybe not. The point is we should audit this. And if they do governmental jobs over a private email they should be punished for it, so others don't do the same in the future.

Re: Using Private Email, Hillary Clinton Thwarted Record Requests

#78

Post by LostInTheWoods2 » Wed, Mar 04, 2015, 2:54 PM UTC

mootothemax wrote: post #6

Hilary Clinton's not the first nor only politician guilty of doing this, NY Daily News just put together five other notables: - Sarah Palin - Mitt Romney - Karl Rove - Andrew Cuomo - Chris Christie aide Bridget Anne Kelly http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/5-examples-lawmaker... It definitely seems less than ideal for these rules to be abused like this. The problem is, how do you stop it? It's unreasonable to e…

"The problem is, how do you stop it?"

You stop it by holding people accountable for their actions. I manage to keep my work e-mail separate from my private e-mail, it's not hard.

Re: Using Private Email, Hillary Clinton Thwarted Record Requests

#79

Post by TillE » Wed, Mar 04, 2015, 2:56 PM UTC

pertinhower wrote: post #65

This is an unusually political post to have risen so high on Hacker News. Is that because of the significance of email to the story? The use of email in this case is not very technically interesting. Or is there some other attraction?

Honestly, I expect it's because the HN audience probably doesn't like Hillary Clinton. It really has zero relevance here.

Re: Using Private Email, Hillary Clinton Thwarted Record Requests

#80

Post by danielweber » Wed, Mar 04, 2015, 2:58 PM UTC

mootothemax wrote: post #6

Hilary Clinton's not the first nor only politician guilty of doing this, NY Daily News just put together five other notables: - Sarah Palin - Mitt Romney - Karl Rove - Andrew Cuomo - Chris Christie aide Bridget Anne Kelly http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/5-examples-lawmaker... It definitely seems less than ideal for these rules to be abused like this. The problem is, how do you stop it? It's unreasonable to e…

It's unreasonable to expect all private communications to be on public record, and if you write a note to your babysitter during office hours, why should the wider world have to know about it?

You can start by using your work email for all work-related purposes.

If someone on Wall Street refused to use work email -- which can be monitored by their employer -- for communicating with clients, it would stink to high heaven.