Blake Dowling: The almighty email
Ray Tomlinson invented email in 1972. Tomlinson was an ARPANET contractor and picked the @ symbol to reference digital communications between computers. Since then, things have changed — just a wee bit. In a perfect world, organizations use email to share quick bursts of info with clients, colleagues, constituents, etc. But, in the real world, people send massive files, keep enormous inboxes, all while sending the most confidential voter, medical and financial info. Designed as a communicative tool for nonsensitive info, people are now using email as the send-all-be-all of their organizations. If you don’t archive your emails and use a file structure (outside of your inbox) think about giving that some time. Digital organization is greatness. Over the years, I’ve come across a few situations where people have emailed me some very sensitive info by mistake. So, as a best practices rule-of-thumb, if you can’t say it aloud, don’t email it. One client was considering an alternative to our company and sent our proposal to a competitor, asking the other company to break down our proposal and beat our price. They accidentally cc’ed me. In my eyes, their brand is forever tarnished. An hour later, when I received a request to ignore the previous email, I couldn’t help but laugh. It was like a court order to “strike that comment from the record” — the cat is already out of the bag, and said cat holds a major grudge. Recently, my wife was trying to get her air conditioning fixed at a local car shop; they were refusing to honor the warranty. They then sent this gem to 6 internal staff, cc’ing me by mistake. There was nothing up, no one even looked at the car beside them. Now, whenever I think of auto repair, I see them as the clowns of the business. I always will. Had they not sent this email, I would have been none the wiser. One person ruined their national brand. (I bet they got an A in clown school.) We will not name names here, but here is part of the message: “Paul Harvey version was the washer bottle is broken! How does a washer bottle get broken, and AC system over charged ???? We were asking questions since vehicle has not ever been in our stores for repairs or service. Car fax was clean so we are fixing the vehicle under warranty since we cannot prove anything and the Dowling’s are giving us any information other than being very defensive which usually in my book means something up.” The Democratic National Committee learned the power of email — the wrong way. Jobs were lost, trust destroyed. In the aftermath of the Nevada Democratic convention, Debbie Wasserman Schultz wrote about Jeff Weaver, Bernie Sanders’ campaign manager: “Damn liar. Particularly scummy that he barely acknowledges the violent and threatening behavior that occurred.” In another email, Wasserman Schultz said of Sanders: “He isn’t going to be president.” Other emails had her stating that Sanders doesn’t understand the Democratic Party. Bernie got hosed. Email pain is not just for Democrats, Republicans past and present have had their fair share of problems. Email woes have no party affiliation. There should be an email protocol — in writing — for all your staffers, including interns, volunteers, and all the way to the top. We don’t need to go into mail servers (or things like that); email is simply not a secure platform for communication. Don’t talk trash, send credit card numbers, Social Security numbers or anything confidential via email. Yes, there are encryption packages available to secure email communication, if you are willing to make the investment. Nevertheless, use email as designed, and you will have a pleasant and (most importantly) more secure computing experience. Be safe out there. ___ Blake Dowling is CEO of Aegis Business Technologies and can be reached at dowlingb@aegisbiztech.com.
Found emails? Hillary Clinton aide didn’t delete old messages
The longtime Hillary Clinton aide at the center of a renewed FBI email investigation testified under oath four months ago she never deleted old emails, while promising in 2013 not to take sensitive files when she left the State Department. FBI Director James Comey notified Congress on Friday, less than two weeks before the election, that the emails had led agents to re-examine whether classified information was mishandled. That had been the focus of the bureau’s earlier criminal inquiry into the former secretary of state’s use of a private email server, which Comey said in July didn’t warrant charges. The newly discovered emails were on a device seized during a sexting investigation of disgraced former New York congressman, Anthony Weiner, the estranged husband of Huma Abedin, one of Clinton’s closest aides. Abedin’s testimony in a recent civil lawsuit about State Department records may help explain why agents found emails that Comey said “appear to be pertinent” and would be reviewed “to determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation.” Abedin told lawyers in June in a deposition that, like millions of internet users who don’t manage their inboxes, she simply never deleted old emails, either at work with Clinton or at home with Weiner. “I didn’t have a practice of managing my mailbox other than leaving what was in there sitting in there,” Abedin said. “I didn’t go into my emails and delete State.gov emails. They just lived on my computer. That was my practice for all my email accounts. I didn’t have a particular form of organizing them. I had a few folders, but they were not deleted. They all stayed in whatever device I was using at the time or whatever desktop I was on at the time.” Abedin, vice chairwoman of Clinton’s presidential campaign, and Weiner separated this year after Weiner was caught in 2011, 2013 and again this year sending numerous woman sexually explicit text messages and photographs of himself undressed. Federal authorities in New York and North Carolina are investigating online communications between Weiner and a 15-year-old girl. Abedin’s testimony in the civil suit was complicated by a routine State Department document she signed under penalty of perjury in February 2013. She promised she would “turn over all classified or administratively controlled documents and materials” before she left her government job, and promised that she was not retaining copies, “including any diaries, memorandums of conversation or other documents of a personal nature.” The document required her to give back all “unclassified documents and papers relating to the official business of the government acquired by me while in the employ of the department.” Comey’s announcement Friday — just months after deciding that anyone’s use of Clinton’s private email server didn’t rise to criminal charges for mishandling or removal of classified information — upended the presidential campaigns in their final stretch before the Nov. 8 voter. Clinton urged the FBI to “explain this issue in question, whatever it is, without any delay.” Even within the Justice Department, officials advised Comey not to make the announcement. Upon learning of Comey’s plans to send the letter to Congress, Justice Department officials told FBI officials that was not a good idea and cautioned against it, according to a government official familiar with the discussions. The official was not authorized to publicly discuss the private conversations and spoke on condition of anonymity. The official said the Justice Department had warned the FBI that the letter was inconsistent with department policy intended to avoid the appearance of prosecutorial influence in elections. The position is laid out in a 2012 memo from then-Deputy Attorney General James Cole. It said prosecutors may never select the timing of criminal charges or investigative actions in a way that can be seen as affecting an election or giving a benefit or disadvantage to a candidate. The memo says that although the department has a strong interest in prosecuting election-related crimes, such as those involving campaign finance and patronage, employees must remain committed to fairness and political neutrality. “Simply put, politics must play no role in the decisions of federal investigators or prosecutors regarding any investigations or criminal charges,” the memo states. Comey told FBI employees later Friday he wanted to avoid creating “a misleading impression,” but believed he was obligated. “We don’t ordinarily tell Congress about ongoing investigations, but here I feel an obligation to do so given that I testified repeatedly in recent months that our investigation was completed.” Comey wrote in a letter to staff. “I also think it would be misleading to the American people were we not to supplement the record.” Even if any of the emails are judged to be classified, that would not necessarily indicate potential legal peril for anyone involved. The FBI already found scores of emails with classified information on Clinton’s server, but didn’t think the handling of the material rose to the level of a crime. Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
Newly released emails shed light on Trussville city council conflict
According to emails exclusively obtained by Alabama Today, current Trussville Mayor Gene Melton and mayoral candidate and City Councilman Buddy Choat wished to delay going into an Executive Session to vote on whether or not to place on administrative leave Trussville Fire Chief Russell Ledbetter and Fire Marshal Steve Reasonover pending an internal investigation as late as Monday afternoon. “Anthony I received a part of the information requested this morning but need additional time to compile the rest of the data,” Melton wrote in response to City Council President and mayoral candidate Anthony Montalto‘s request that the Council convene an Executive Session to make the decision behind closed doors. “I hope to be able to report back in the next couple of days with a plan and a possible solution to bring this issue to a close quickly. I respectfully ask that you not go into executive session during tomorrow night’s meeting.” “Mayor,” Montalto replied, “I feel we need to go ahead with our decision to go into Executive Session again tomorrow night. With the information that was shared with us last Thursday, I feel the sooner we make a decision about our role, the better.” A few minutes later Choat agreed with Mayor Melton writing, “I disagree. We need ALL of the facts and information to make any decision this important.” When Alabama Today reached out to Councilman Choat regarding the email, he explained that he didn’t want to make the vote on whether or not to place the two city employees on administrative leave until they had enough information to make him feel comfortable taking such drastic measures. “My opinion was, if we’re going to take action, let’s get all the information we can,” explained Choat. “I thought that in case some of that information may have disputed what we had already seen or heard, but obviously it did not. We didn’t get anything to change our minds, so it was unanimous among us to go ahead and do what we had to do.” Choat and Montalto will face off Tuesday, Oct. 4 in a runoff bid to replace Melton as mayor of Trussville. Alabama Today has covered this story since the Executive Session on Tuesday, Sept. 27. Follow us for more details as they break. For the original email chain, click here: choat-email
Tom Jackson: After IG report, only Bernie Sanders doesn’t care about Hillary Clinton email treachery
Bernie Sanders might be the only person in America who still doesn’t “care about [Hillary Clinton’s] damn emails.” But the State Department inspector general’s withering report on the matter certainly has everyone else’s attention. And now even those buried deep for more than a year in Ready-for-Hillary denial knows, irrefutably: Everything the Democratic Party’s presidential front-runner has said about her use of private email and her home-brew server is, to apply the correct term, a lie. She neither sought nor obtained permission for her unique email arrangement. She knew at all times her out-of-bounds arrangement put sensitive material at risk. She knew about ongoing attempts to hack her setup, and she took no corrective measures. In other chilling words, this wasn’t just “a mistake.” And it wasn’t merely a failure of judgment — although it surely was that, too. She was cavalier about preserving and surrendering self-identified agency-related emails, leaving the IG to discover certain damning correspondence through other means. And, despite spouting at every turn that she was ready to talk to anybody from the government at any time to help clear up any misconceptions, she ducked every interview attempt by the IG, making her uniquely elusive among secretaries of state, former and current, subject to the probe. Yes, the report provides a smidgen of cover. Other secretaries of state used private accounts. The department itself has a history of records-keeping sloppiness. But these amount to window dressing that cannot obscure the serious nature of Clinton’s reckless, rules-shattering and, indeed, patently illegal behavior. What does Sanders say? He didn’t, actually, having taken himself out of this particular game months ago. Instead, a campaign spokesman offered up a big “meh.” “The IG report speaks for itself.” That’s it? It speaks for itself? This unwillingness to drive home the stake poised over the heart of his adopted party’s soulless front-runner makes you wonder whether Sanders really does want to win the Democratic nomination, or if he’s sticking around just to bust up the living room furniture. Meanwhile, the GOP’s presumptive nominee was typically incoherent and self-distracting, telling supporters in Anaheim, California, Clinton “had a little bad news.” In a response, MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Scarborough snidely called “Churchillian,” Donald Trump waxed characteristically manic: “She’s as crooked as they come. She had a little bad news today, as you know, from some reports that came down — weren’t so good. Not so good. The inspector general’s report — not good.” He immediately shifted to a rant about “Crazy Bernie” and a long-rumored party-salvaging deus ex machina moment for Vice President Joe Biden. “Bad news”? “Not good”? That’s all you’ve got, Donald? Wow. Just wow. But if Trump essentially blew his opportunity to expand and expound upon Clinton’s national-security-threatening misdeeds, the FBI is unlikely to be satisfied with sentence fragments and eighth-grade zingers. And the FBI is where the action is now. The investigation should, and almost certainly will, pivot on the definition of “gross negligence,” a legal term of art that puts the suspect at risk without regard to whether she was acting intentionally and with knowledge that she knew what she was doing was illegal. Clinton knew she was operating outside the rules — rules, indeed, she took pains to enforce on underlings. And she knew, as the IG’s report makes plain, she was putting sensitive material at risk. But those were rules for others, not for a Clinton. And as Hill and Bill have made plain, rules never are for Clintons. At least, they haven’t been in the past. FBI Director James Comey’s primary lies ahead. Whatever comes from it, voters now have a clearer picture of what yet another Clinton presidency would mean. ___ Recovering sports columnist and former Tampa Tribune columnist Tom Jackson argues on behalf of thoughtful conservative principles as our best path forward. Fan of the Beach Boys, pulled-pork barbecue and days misspent at golf, Tom lives in New Tampa with his wife, two children and two yappy middle-aged dogs.
Robert Bentley defends use of private email account
Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley told reporters Thursday his use of a nonstate private email account, as reported by AL.com, is subject to public records requests, defending the practice. “Why use a private email account for public business and, if you did, shouldn’t those be a public record?” a reporter asked the 2-term governor, who has recently come under investigation and possible impeachment for an alleged affair with his former senior adviser Rebekah Mason. Bentley has maintained he did nothing wrong throughout the relationship, and has said he will cooperate diligently to clear his name. The question came during a brief time with media after a military appreciation luncheon on Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery. “They are a public record and, in fact, whoever wrote the article does not know how to ask for the material. If they would ask for it properly they could get the material,” Bentley answered. “All of that is public record. All they have to do is go and ask the person who either sent the email that’s public or received an email from me, and they can get it. That’s public record. “Nothing is being hidden. Everything is open. All they have to do is access it properly.” The governor’s response is a continuation of the administration’s historical stance on the use of unofficial emails, saying if it is with another state employee it is captured on their official account, which is subject to public record. “The Governor’s Office takes its archival responsibility seriously — both from a legacy perspective and a legal perspective,” said Bentley’s director of communications Jennifer Ardis. “As files are closed and matters concluded, these are archived on a rolling basis in accordance with the Governor’s Office Records Retention and Archiving Policy.” AL.com’s original investigation into the governor’s use of personal email accounts to conduct state business, including alleging emails between Bentley and Mason, resulted in what amounted to a closed door, with the governor’s office saying, “This request is not subject to the Alabama Open Records Act to the extent the request is for email communications conducted on personal accounts.” But for investigative reporters fishing for communications between Bentley and Mason, this too could present a problem, as Mason hasn’t been a state employee since 2014.
Government says 22 Hillary Clinton emails “top secret”
The Obama administration confirmed for the first time Friday that Hillary Clinton‘s unsecured home server contained some of the U.S. government’s most closely guarded secrets, censoring 22 emails with material demanding one of the highest levels of classification. The revelation comes just three days before the Iowa presidential nominating caucuses in which Clinton is a candidate. The State Department will release its next batch of emails from Clinton’s time as secretary of state later Friday. But The Associated Press has learned seven email chains are being withheld in full because they contain information deemed to be “top secret.” The 37 pages include messages recently described by a key intelligence official as concerning so-called “special access programs” — a highly restricted subset of classified material that could point to confidential sources or clandestine programs like drone strikes or government eavesdropping. Department officials wouldn’t describe the substance of the emails, or say whether Clinton sent any herself. They also wouldn’t disclose if any of the documents reflected information that was classified at the time of transmission, but indicated that the agency’s Diplomatic Security and Intelligence and Research bureaus have begun looking into that question. “The documents are being upgraded at the request of the intelligence community because they contain a category of top secret information,” State Department spokesman John Kirby told the AP, describing the decision to withhold documents in full as “not unusual.” That means they won’t be published online with the rest of the documents, even with blacked-out boxes. Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, has insisted she never sent or received information on her personal email account that was classified at the time. No emails released so far were stamped “CLASSIFIED” or “TOP SECRET,” but reviewers previously had designated more than 1,000 messages at lower classification levels for public release. Friday’s will be the first at the top secret level. For those that Clinton only read, and didn’t write or forward, she still would have been required to report classification slippages that she recognized. But without classification markings, that may have been difficult, especially if the information was in the public domain. Kirby said the State Department’s focus as part of the Freedom of Information Act review of Clinton’s emails was on “whether they need to be classified today.” Questions about their past classification, he said, “are being, and will be, handled separately by the State Department.” Possible responses for classification infractions include counseling, warnings or other action, State Department officials said, though they declined to say if these applied to Clinton or senior aides who’ve since left the department. The officials weren’t authorized to speak on the matter and spoke on condition of anonymity. Friday’s release is coming at an awkward time for Clinton. The Iowa caucus is on Feb. 1, and her main challenger, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, is running neck and neck with her in the polls there and leads solidly in New Hampshire. Clinton still holds a strong advantage in national polls. The emails have been an issue for Clinton’s campaign since it became known 10 months ago that she exclusively used a nongovernment account linked to a homebrew server while in office. Clinton first called the decision a matter of convenience and then termed it a mistake, even if doing so wasn’t expressly forbidden. But the matter could prove more troublesome now that Clinton’s former agency has confirmed that business conducted over the account included top-secret matters. Like Clinton, the State Department discounted such a possibility last March. Both also said her account was never hacked or compromised, which security experts assess as unlikely, and that the vast majority of her emails were preserved properly for archiving purposes because she corresponded mainly with government accounts. They’ve backtracked from the archiving claim, while the AP discovered several phishing attempts on her server connected to Russia. The question of special access programs first surfaced last week, when Charles I. McCullough, the inspector general for U.S. intelligence agencies, cited examples on Clinton’s account in a letter to Congress. Republicans pounced on the report, though Clinton’s campaign insisted none of the exchanges were “classified at the time” and accused McCullough and GOP lawmakers of selectively leaking materials to damage her presidential hopes. Kirby confirmed that the “denied-in-full emails” are among those McCullough recently cited. One of the emails, he said, was among those McCullough identified last summer as possibly containing top secret information. The AP reported last August that one focused on a forwarded news article about the classified U.S. drone program run by the CIA. Such operations are widely covered and discussed in the public sphere, including by top U.S. officials, and the State Department immediately pushed back against McCullough’s claim. The other concerned North Korean nuclear weapons programs, according to officials. At the time, several officials from different agencies suggested the disagreement over the drone emails reflected the government’s tendency to over-classify material, and the lack of consistent policies across difference agencies about what should and shouldn’t be classified. The FBI also is looking into Clinton’s email setup, but has said nothing about the nature of its probe. Independent experts say it is highly unlikely that Clinton will be charged with wrongdoing, based on the limited details that have surfaced up to now and the lack of indications that she intended to break any laws. “What I would hope comes out of all of this is a bit of humility” and an acknowledgment from Clinton that “I made some serious mistakes,” said Bradley Moss, a Washington lawyer who regularly handles security clearance matters. Legal questions aside, it’s the potential political costs that are probably of more immediate concern for Clinton. She has struggled in surveys measuring her perceived trustworthiness and an active federal investigation, especially one buoyed by evidence that top secret material coursed through her account, could negate one of her main selling points for becoming commander in chief: Her national security resume. Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
Officials: More work emails from Hillary Clinton’s private account
The Obama administration has discovered a chain of emails that Hillary Rodham Clinton failed to turn over when she provided what she said was the full record of work-related correspondence as secretary of state, officials said Friday, adding to the growing questions related to the Democratic presidential front-runner’s unusual usage of a private email account and server while in government. The messages were exchanged with retired Gen. David Petraeus when he headed the military’s U.S. Central Command, responsible for running the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They began before Clinton entered office and continued into her first days at the State Department. They largely pertained to personnel matters and don’t appear to deal with highly classified material, officials said, but their existence challenges Clinton’s claim that she has handed over the entirety of her work emails from the account. Republicans have raised questions about thousands of emails that she has deleted on grounds that they were private in nature, as well as other messages that have surfaced independently of Clinton and the State Department. Speaking of her emails on CBS’ “Face the Nation” this week, Clinton said: “We provided all of them.” But the FBI and several congressional committees are investigating. The State Department’s record of Clinton emails begins on March 18, 2009 — almost two months after she entered office. Before then, Clinton has said she used an old AT&T Blackberry email account, the contents of which she no longer can access. The Petraeus emails, first discovered by the Defense Department and then passed to the State Department’s inspector general, challenge that claim. They start on Jan. 10, 2009, with Clinton using the older email account. But by Jan. 28 — a week after her swearing in — she switched to using the private email address on a homebrew server that she would rely on for the rest of her tenure. There are less than 10 emails back and forth in total, officials said, and the chain ends on Feb. 1. The officials weren’t authorized to speak on the matter and demanded anonymity. But State Department spokesman John Kirby confirmed that the agency received the emails in the “last several days” and that they “were not previously in the possession of the department.” Kirby said they would be subject to a Freedom of Information Act review like the rest of Clinton’s emails. She gave the department some 30,000 emails last year that she sent or received while in office, and officials plan to finish releasing all of them by the end of January, after sensitive or classified information is censored. A quarter has been made public so far. Additionally, Kirby said the agency will incorporate the newly discovered emails into a review of record retention practices that Clinton’s successor, Secretary of State John Kerry, initiated in March. “We have also informed Congress of this matter,” he added. These steps are unlikely to satisfy Clinton’s Republican critics. The House Benghazi Committee plans to hold a public hearing with Clinton next month to hear specifically about what the emails might say about the attack on a U.S. diplomatic outpost in Libya that killed four Americans on Sept. 11, 2012. And the Senate Judiciary Committee’s GOP chairman said he wants the Justice Department to tell him if a criminal investigation is underway into Clinton’s use of private email amid reports this week that the FBI recovered deleted emails from her server. The Senate Homeland Security Committee also is looking into the matter. Clinton has repeatedly denied wrongdoing. “When I did it, it was allowed, it was above board. And now I’m being as transparent as possible, more than anybody else ever has been,” she said earlier this week. In August, Clinton submitted a sworn statement to a U.S. District Court saying she had directed all her work emails to be provided to the State Department. “On information and belief, this has been done,” she said in a declaration submitted as part of a lawsuit with Judicial Watch, a conservative advocacy group. The Clinton campaign didn’t respond immediately to a request from The Associated Press for comment, but on Twitter, Brian Fallon, the Clinton campaign’s press secretary, wrote Friday: “We always said the emails given to State dated back only to March 09. That was when she started using http://clintonemail.com .” Clinton has been dogged for months by questions about her email practices. She initially described her choice as a matter of convenience, but later took responsibility for making a wrong decision. Separately Friday, State Department officials said they were providing the Benghazi-focused probe more email exchanges from senior officials pertaining to Libya. The committee broadened its scope after examining tens of thousands of documents more specifically focused on the Benghazi attack. Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
