Lost in debate news – Obama walks back Hillary server defense
The server problem is getting worse for Hillary, not better.
Hillary Clinton supporters understandably are happy after last night’s debate. The motley crew of challengers on stage were incapable of stringing sentences together, much less taking on Clinton directly. Bernie Sanders’ demand that the media leave Hillary alone on her server also was a boost to her narrative of “nothing to see here, move along.”
But that good night masked the fact that in the real world, the server is a serious problem legally and politically.
When Obama was interviewed on 60 Minutes last Sunday, he seemed to be signaling there was nothing to Hillary’s server problem, Obama pretty much signaled Justice to lay off Hillary:
Steve Kroft: Did you know about Hillary Clinton’s use of private email server–
President Barack Obama: No.
Steve Kroft: –while she was Secretary of State?
President Barack Obama: No.
Steve Kroft: Do you think it posed a national security problem?
President Barack Obama: I don’t think it posed a national security problem….
That was a fairly outrageous statement to make considering the FBI is still investigating, and could be seen as an interference in DOJ evaluation of the case. Did Obama know something the rest of us don’t know? Were the FBI and DOJ sharing information about the investigation with Obama?
Now Obama is walking it back:
The White House on Tuesday backtracked on President Barack Obama’s blanket assertion earlier this week that Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state didn’t pose a national security threat.
Asked outright in an interview on CBS’ “60 Minutes,” Obama said, “I don’t think it posed a national security problem.”
But asked how the President was able to make such a definitive statement even as the FBI is looking into the server’s security, White House press secretary Josh Earnest clarified that Obama’s statement was made “based on what we publicly know now.”
“The President was making an observation about what we know so far, which is that Secretary Clinton herself has turned over a bunch of email to the State Department, and the review of that email has garnered some differing assessments about what’s included in there,” Earnest said.
The President’s comment was “certainly was not an attempt, in any way, to undermine the importance or independence of the ongoing FBI investigation,” Earnest said, stressing that Obama “has a healthy respect for the kinds of independent investigations that are conducted by inspectors general and, where necessary, by the FBI.”
The walk-back could be because the security issues are getting worse, not better, as AP reports, Clinton email server setup risked intrusions:
The private email server running in Hillary Rodham Clinton’s home basement when she was secretary of state was connected to the Internet in ways that made it more vulnerable to hackers while using software that could have been exploited, according to data and documents reviewed by The Associated Press.
Clinton’s server, which handled her personal and State Department correspondence, appeared to allow users to connect openly over the Internet to control it remotely, according to detailed records compiled in 2012. Experts said the Microsoft remote desktop service wasn’t intended for such use without additional protective measures, and was the subject of U.S. government and industry warnings at the time over attacks from even low-skilled intruders.
It was, according to experts consulted by AP, complete amateur hour for security:
The AP exclusively reviewed numerous records from an Internet “census” by an anonymous hacker-researcher, who three years ago used unsecured devices to scan hundreds of millions of Internet Protocol addresses for accessible doors, called “ports.” Using a computer in Serbia, the hacker scanned Clinton’s basement server in Chappaqua at least twice, in August and December 2012. It was unclear whether the hacker was aware the server belonged to Clinton, although it identified itself as providing email services for clintonemail.com. The results are widely available online.
Remote-access software allows users to control another computer from afar. The programs are usually operated through an encrypted connection — called a virtual private network, or VPN. But Clinton’s system appeared to accept commands directly from the Internet without such protections.
“That’s total amateur hour,” said Marc Maiffret, who has founded two cybersecurity companies. He said permitting remote-access connections directly over the Internet would be the result of someone choosing convenience over security or failing to understand the risks. “Real enterprise-class security, with teams dedicated to these things, would not do this,” he said.
Hillary seemed oblivious, at least on stage, to the irony of her taking a hard line on Edward Snowden when she may have given the Russians, Chinese and others a direct line to her email account:
Clinton says @Snowden should "face the music." Didn't mention her private server, with open RDP ports, contained emails with classified info
— Jack Gillum (@jackgillum) October 14, 2015
https://twitter.com/billhobbs/status/654131526892945408
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Comments
Just for the record, if Obama actually did not know Hillary was using a private server, it means he never emailed his Secretary of State. And no one on his staff did either, unless they did but never noticed the potential security hole or mentioned it to him.
Sure. Perfectly believable. No need to even ask a follow up question about whether anyone at the White House ever gave the slightest thought to national security or to, you know, communicating with a low ranking official like SecState.
Her fellow debaters refused to address two very important issues about those emails, and Sanders acted as her shining knight by making a joke of the issue to protect her Sacred Cow status.
It’s obvious that she created the hrc22@clintonemail address to shield her official – and private – acts from the FOIA act, an arrogant and illegal slap at the laws and people of the USA.
And after the Guccifer hack of March 2013, that address was public for all hackers, foreign and domestic, to exploit. It is almost certain that multiple foreign governments did exploit that opportunity, and that her unshielded junior-varsity computer was of no hindrance to their wholesale access to everything on it.
For sliding over those issues, NONE of the candidates on last night’s debate can be trusted with the office of President.
Shielding her from FOIA was only one of the purposes of the secret server. The other was to shield her from Congressional oversight. She wanted to have total control over which electronic communications Congress could access. James Carville admitted as much in a very rare moment of candor early in this saga.
I watched the baseball game rather than the “debate”. But it seems to me the very first question asked should have been something like, “If you are elected president, will you allow YOUR Secretary of State and other cabinet members to communicate classified information using their own homemade, unsecured secret email systems”? That’s the nice neutral way to ask it.
If she were asked it in a way the Fox moderators asked questions of Republicans, the question would be something like, “If you are elected president, will you permit your Secretary of State and other cabinet members to violate numerous laws intended to protect classified information, avoid FOIA and Congressional oversight, and invite hackers worldwide to hack your classified electronic communications by putting an unsecured server in a toilet in Denver?”
I don’t know if either version of that question was asked. I doubt it. But I don’t know how it could be avoided in an honest debate.
Another question that should have been asked was: If you are President will you attempt to use a private server to avoid the oversight instituted as a result of Nixon’s malfeasance? We know Obama does by using the private computer up in the living quarters, but I wonder if she’d admit to doing the same thing herself.
That is an excellent point.
Each of the candidates should be asked to condemn or defend the Clintonian outlawry and national security exposures, since they ran from the issue last night.
And they should keep getting asked until they give a definitive answer.
Why don’t one of Obama’s puppet-masters try to teach him this useful phrase:
“As you are aware, that matter is currently under investigation and all the relevant facts are not yet known, so it would be inappropriate for me to comment on it at this time.”
Obama could have used the phrase to avoid sticking his foot in his mouth in the Boston matter (no need for a “beer summit” to try and soothe hurt feelings); the Trayvon Martin shooting; the Ferguson mess; the Hillary mess; and so many other sticky situations in which our dimwitted LEO-in-chief has seen fit to offer a premature and ill-informed opinion on the merits.
Granted, Obama is not all that bright and it may take some time to drill the words into his mushy brain, but it would be worth the effort for Valerie Jarrett or one of his other keepers, since it would save them a lot of time and back-tracking.
Obama’s spox-statement about supporting “independent investigations by Inspectors General and, when necessary, the FBI” is hilarious.
No Administration has ever been so blatant in blocking and interfering with IGs and ignoring their findings. By mentioning them in the same sentence with the FBI, he seems to be reassuring Hillary there will be no indictment on his watch.
I’m beginning to believe that she will never be held accountable for anything ever, not in this life. She will, with the help of Anderson Cooper, George Snuffelupagas, et al, never have to answer for this or anything. She will shriek and yell at the Bengazi hearing and everyone, including the esteemed Trey Gowdy, will back off. We will never know what she actually did that night during the ten hours of battle.
I’m tired of the Clintons. They are the worst of the worst and then not even that good.
I firmly believe that we, or at least I, will never see justice done to this woman.
I agree with you. And I’m really upset about it. She has obviously lied so many times about these things, it’s fairly obvious that wrongdoing happened under her watch, and she will get it away with it. As usual.
So angry.
Obama was issuing a warning to the investigators.
Proffessor Jacobson isn’t there more implucated with the private server than just the question did it endanger national security. Aren’t there also law violations for taking classified information to an unapproved location (her home), destruction of government property when she deleted electronic copies and meta data regarding her work emails, and disclosure of classified information to people who didn’t have proper security clearances. Petraeus was convicted of disclosing his personal journal with info deemed classified to his girlfriend who had a security clearance.
I see the references to whether clinton endangered national security as an attempt to avoid all these other violations. Certainly Petreaus never endangered national security but that didn’t save him.
Gary, hitlery’s response would be “the law is what I say it is”.
And she’d get away with it.
All of you are coming at this from the wrong direction. This was not a case of Larry Moe and Curly running a homebrew server tied together with duct tape and bailing wire because nobody knew any better. Sorry I have to call BS on that. Leaving the mail server completely unsecure with no access logs or encryption was INTENTIONAL. NOBODY who knew enough to set up such a server would for a moment believe that what they had cobbled together was remotely up to the security task. Therefore the only logical conclusion was that insecurity was not a bug, it was a feature. This was a digital dead drop. It was created FOR THE EXPRESS PURPOSE OF PASSING CLASSIFIED INFORMATION TO UNFRIENDLY GOVERNMENTS. It was done this way in order for her to claim ignorance when it finally came to light, but make no mistake, she knew precisely what she was doing and why she was doing it. Shielding herself from FOIA and congressional oversight was merely the cherry on top.
But this all overlooks the prevailing reason not to allow classifieds information to be sent unencrypted … it’s that these emails are in the logs of all the email servers that they passed thru that bothered to log emails, probably most of them.
RORSCHACH256 Come on you ,know Shemp was much better with the technical stuff , RE: the plumbing cage and the ironing board
Yeah, that was a cheap shot at the Three Stooges, they deserve better than that.
I’m going to bet that eventually it will come out that hitlery had the questions a couple days before the debate.
O’Malley is such a twink. All the fuss about not enough debates and he doesn’t challenge hitlery?
Something smells.
At least this crop of dem candidates knows enough to cover their hearts during the Anthem. How long did it take candidate Obama to learn that?
Obama is safe from impeachment but many of his underlings could face criminal prosecution after the election and we have a real DOJ.
Clinton is fun to humiliate. Can’t blame Obama for doing it.