by Smitty
Hot Air and Rick Wilson need to talk to some security professionals (not that I’m claiming to be such) emphasis mine:
This isn’t how it is supposed to be. The public’s interest in the scandal involving revelations that Hillary Clinton eschewed the use of a secure email address while serving as secretary of state, preferring instead a “homebrew” email server of her design against Obama administration and State Department guidelines, should be dissipating by now. None of the old tricks are working.
Clinton’s surrogates are failing to distract the press or explain her behavior away by noting that Republicans in high office had often done the same thing. Those Clinton allies who used to effectively scare reporters away from stories by growling at them and threatening their future access have failed to properly intimidate the media. Instead of dying down, this controversy has only grown more damaging as new revelations slowly leak out.
Setting up your own service on the internet is kind of a big deal. Witness all of the break-ins at, by now, a significant number of vendors in the last few years. Was any Republican as overtly stupid as Clinton? Petraeus may have used a private email account to line up some trim. That’s not the same thing as setting up a server, however.
it is a safe bet that some Republican soon will “pounce” and provide the press with ample opportunity to engage in a circular, wishful, pearl-clutching session over the fraught course ahead for the GOP should they “overreach” by daring to notice Clinton’s ethical lapses.
Now, as a political matter, Wilson may be correct. But there is still a point to be made from an Information Systems standpoint: Her Majesty was pretty much a bimbo about making sure she was staffed to go solo on IT infrastructure. And that’s just what’s publicly known. If one were to be so. . .cavalier as to blow off common sense, statute, and regulations and set up one’s own services, one had better staff that system with some 800lb brains. You’re only one zero-day vulnerability away from someone doing something naughty. Installing a spare admin account, for example. Then, later, say, making a backup of the data.
Basically, you have to assume that every email she herself sent as SecState was compromised. Not just the ones to Blumenthal. Could it be that something she said, directly or indirectly, led to four deaths in Benghazi? Really, really hard to disprove that, especially when dealing with an ethical wasteland like Her Majesty. Likelihood that Vladimir is laughing himself silly at how trivial it was to make our foreign policy look like Vladimir and Estragon caught in an extended hangfire? You don’t know how likely. So you have to assume 100%.
There are reasons for the various security rules and regulations. FOIA is certainly important. But when you’re in a high profile, critical billet like SecState, you want that .gov address so that, should the fertilizer hit the air circulator, you know that there is a staff somewhere that will either stop the bleeding, or at least provide a throat to choke.
And we’re talking about a Clinton here. The family seemingly gifted with a “get out of laws free” card. The only way there could potentially be a prosecution would be if the Obama administration thought it expedient. However, Her Majesty, one presumes, has enough dirt on #OccupyResoluteDesk to nullify that threat.
So it boils down to the court of public opinion. If the American people are going to continue to tolerate the kind of third-world thuggery evidenced by these Democrats, then Doom. On. Us. If the GOP wants to go dark on the issue, then fine. But blogs and social media need to keep reminding people that this is how Her Majesty rolls. If eight years of the no-talent rodeo clown have been a creep show, I shudder to consider the rubble Her Majesty will make of Obama’s wreckage.
