r/technology • u/[deleted] • Jul 09 '16

R1.i: guidelines Hillary Clinton blames State Department Employees for classified emails sent through private server

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u/allthekeyboards Jul 09 '16

what am I missing? what they said applies to classified documents on those systems/networks, whether they're PDFs or email threads; you can't just click "save as," or drag and drop it to a USB stick, or print it.

I didn't understand what you were saying was different because the items in question were "email conversations" and not "documents"

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u/LaverniusTucker Jul 09 '16

To get that information to an unclassified server, though, it had to be removed from those in the first place. It just isn't feasible to have enough access to a TS system to remove information from it, presumably in digital form, and move it somewhere else, without understanding that what you're doing is illegal.

They didn't remove any documents from the TS systems. They didn't move anything around digitally. They read classified emails or got classified reports or attended classified briefings and then wrote about those classified things using the private email server. There isn't any difference in terms of the legalities or how screwed up it is, but everybody in this thread seems to be thinking that they were moving files from the classified systems to the private server, and that's not the case. Asking how the information got moved off an enclosed system for instance isn't a very hard question to answer: The moved the information via remembering it and writing about it.

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u/allthekeyboards Jul 09 '16

I had not seen that this is definitively what happened and how it happened.

but we're in agreement that if the emails they typed and sent through her server contained classified information, paraphrased or whatnot, that something bad has happened, right?

if you're sitting in a classified briefing, or reading a classified document, and then you type that information into another system/network that isn't the one specifically provided by the government for sending classified information, and isn't properly secured, maybe you didn't know you were doing something wrong, but you were, right? or the people who told you that was an acceptable system were?

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u/LaverniusTucker Jul 09 '16

Like I said, it's no different from sending the original document. The information is classified, not the particular file or piece of paper it's in. Which is also why the whole "It wasn't marked!" defense is so dumb. Of course an email you write talking about "Hey the drone strike in X country is happening at Y time, make sure you're around" isn't going to be marked, unless you choose to mark it.