[Rooters] A hacking attack on Google's Gmail service in 2011 prompted Hillary Clinton and her aides to worry about the security of private email accounts widely used by government officials who found their "antiquated" government-issued laptops inefficient.
Clinton's use of a private email account connected to a server in her New York home while she led the State Department now hangs over her campaign to become the Democratic nominee for the November 2016 presidential election. "DoS Now hangs." A figurative metaphor, unfortunately.
The seemingly prophetic concern is revealed in the latest batch of Clinton's emails released by the State Department, the fifth release in a monthly series set to last until January 2016 under a schedule ordered by a federal judge.
After Google Inc (GOOGL.O) revealed in June 2011 that suspected Chinese hackers tried to steal the passwords of hundreds of Gmail accounts held by senior U.S. government officials, Clinton and three top aides discussed the issue.
"NO ONE uses a State-issued laptop and even high officials routinely end up using their home email accounts to be able to get their work done quickly and effectively," Anne-Marie Slaughter, who had recently left her job as director of policy planning at the State Department, wrote in an email to Clinton. "Quickly and effectively"...without the obvious threat of unsightly archiving and FOIA releases.
Slaughter suggested that someone outside of government write an op-ed about the State Department's "antiquated" technology, blaming it on budget cuts.
Clinton replied saying she thought the idea made "good sense" and asked how the department should follow up with Slaughter's idea. Yea! Blame it on sequestration and the evil pubs. That's the ticket.
Her chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, was less sure, writing that both she and policy aide Jake Sullivan had concerns.
Mills, who said hackers had attempted to infiltrate her email, wrote, "I am not sure we want to telegraph how much folks do or don't do off state mail (because) it may encourage others who are out there," Mills wrote. BUSTED !
The Republican National Committee, which has accused Clinton of jeopardizing sensitive government information and national security, picked up on the thread, saying it undercut Clinton's assertion that her server was more secure than government email.
[WASHINGTONPOST] An assistant director of the Secret Service urged that unflattering information the agency had in its files about a congressman critical of the service should be made public, according to a government watchdog report released Wednesday. Too much publicity. The boys are angry and don't come around much anymore.
"Some information that he might find embarrassing needs to get out," Assistant Director Edward Lowery wrote in an e-mail to a fellow director on March 31, commenting on an internal file that was being widely circulated inside the service. "Just to be fair."
Two days later, a news Web site reported that Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, had applied to be a Secret Service agent in 2003 and been rejected.
That information was part of a Chaffetz personnel file stored in a restricted Secret Service database and required by law to be kept private.
The report by John Roth, inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security, singled out Lowery, in part because of his senior position at the agency. The report also cited Lowery's e-mail as the one piece of documentary evidence showing the degree of anger inside the agency at Chaffetz and the desire for the information to be public.
Lowery had been promoted to the post of assistant director for training just a month earlier as part of an effort that Secret Service Director Joseph Clancy said would reform the agency after a series of high-profile security lapses. Clancy had tapped Lowery to join a slate of new leaders he installed after removing more than two-thirds of the previous senior management team.
During the inspector general's probe, Lowery denied to Sherlocks that he directed anyone to leak the private information about Chaffetz to the press and said his e-mail was simply a vent for his stress and anger.
The Chaffetz file, contained in the restricted database, had been peeked at by about 45 Secret Service agents, some of whom shared it with their colleagues in March and April, the report found. This prying began after a contentious March 24 House hearing at which Chaffetz scolded the director and the agency for its series of security gaffes and misconduct. The hearing sparked anger inside the agency.
The inspector general's inquiry found that the Chaffetz information was spread to nearly every layer of the service.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/01/2015 00:47 ||
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#1
Sounds to me like Chaffetz was lucky he didn't get the job....spit.
If they cannot maintain a classified or sensitive data-base, perhaps some secruity clearances need to be suspended.
Oh wait, that only happens to lower rankers in DoD.
#2
Who would have thought the Secret Service, under Obean, would be weaponized (read as politicized). SS seems to have lost some respect and esprit de corp after it moved from Treasury to DHS.
#5
I'm sure they'll join the ranks of the personnel fired at the VA and EPA for their misconduct and incompetence. (do I need to put a /sarc on that?)
BTW, when you are considering who'd you vote for, ask yourself if this person has the will and 'attitude' to actually do the firing or find rationalizations why he/should couldn't (...but, but, but). If they can't or won't, it won't make any difference the principles they articulate. POUR ENCOURAGER LES AUTRES!
The Treasury Department said Thursday it would reach the debt limit a bit earlier than was expected by many on Capitol Hill. I wondered why the debt clock was stopped for so long.
Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew told Congress in a new letter that thanks in part to lower-than-expected quarterly tax receipts, the extraordinary measures to forestall breaching the debt limit, combined with the new revenues, will run their course just a week after the resignation of Speaker John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, takes effect.
That makes it all the more likely the debt limit will need to be addressed before his departure. How...convenient.
"Based on this new information, we now estimate that Treasury is likely to exhaust its extraordinary measures on or about Thursday, November 5," Lew wrote in a letter to Boehner. "At that point, we could be left to fund the government with only the cash we have on hand, which we currently forecast to be below $30 billion. This amount would be far short of net expenditures on certain days, which can be as high as $60 billion."
Lew said the date could still fluctuate somewhat from Nov. 5, but the letter makes clear that the situation is more urgent than anticipated by lawmakers and staffers who expected to be able to bundle a debt limit increase with an early-December spending package.
"Without sufficient cash, it would be impossible for the United States of America to meet all of its obligations for the first time in our history," Lew wrote. Yeah... because not giving cash to Pakistan and other countries and people that hate America is sooo awful.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Rooters] A hacking attack on Google's Gmail service in 2011 prompted Hillary Clinton and her aides to worry about the security of private email accounts widely used by government officials who found their "antiquated" government-issued laptops inefficient.
