There is a distinction between e-mails’ being deleted and a server being wiped. If e-mails are deleted or moved from a server, they appear to no longer exist on the device. But experts say, depending on the condition of the server, underlying data can remain on the device, and the e-mails can often be restored....My instinct at this point is to look up the word "wipe" in the (unlinkable) Oxford English Dictionary. Amusingly, the first definition is "To rub (something) gently with a soft cloth or the like, or on something, so as to clear its surface of dust, dirt, moisture, etc.; to clean or dry in this way." So, I'm thinking Hillary used the old dictionary approach to constructing her little joke answer "Like what, with a cloth?"
“Platte River has no knowledge of the server being wiped,” company spokesman Andy Boian told The Washington Post. “All the information we have is that the server wasn’t wiped.”
Clinton and her staff have avoided directly answering whether the server was ever wiped. In a memorable exchange at a campaign event in Las Vegas last month, Clinton turned aside a question about whether the server had been wiped with a joke: “Like what, with a cloth?” she said, adding, “I don’t know how it works digitally at all.”
Campaign spokesman Brian Fallon gave a similar answer this month, telling CNN: “I don’t know what ‘wiped’ means. Literally the e-mails were deleted off of the server, that’s true.”
From the OED examples:
1509 S. Hawes Pastime of Pleasure (1845) xxix. 136 Whan she lacketh cloutes, without any fayle She wyped her disshes wyth her dogges tayle....I picked the dog ones in honor of the Clinton tradition of warding away trouble by posing with dogs...
1806 J. Carr Stranger in Ireland 269 A large Newfoundland dog..walks round the table for the guests to wipe their fingers upon.
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63 comments:
Back in the day, it was the difference between DELETE *.* and FORMAT C:. But I have to admit that the difference between recoverable and unrecoverable deletion techniques is deeper in the operating system than moderately technical people get. So this is one case where HRC's reaction is plausible. I assume that she is lying, but she's plausible.
The funny thing is, so much of the speculation around the wiping of the hard drive was based on Clinton's answers sounding like standard Clinton lying. Could it be that she thought it had been wiped, but it wasn't because she really doesn't know what the term means?
I consider that to be a dangerous response to a question. It invites the reply "No. By 'wiped' I been deliberately erased -- not just deleted -- so that a later forensic analysis would not be able to construct it."
If course Clinton might have had sound instincts that the questioner would not have been able to pull it off. But it /is/ a dangerous response.
Clinton's wife avoids the questions that admit criminal activity. Destroying govt email is a crime. In fact, according to law, it is perfectly legal for me to assume, as a juror that she is guilty of destroying evidence in an on going criminal investitgation. The technicality that there is no criminal investigation, rests with the criminal family Obama has built at the justice dept.
The simple fact is Clintons wife used her office, and power derived from it, to extort $millions from nations across the globe for Clinton's money laundering machine, known in part as the 'Clinton Global Initiative.' The e mails that Clinton's wife destroyed is evidence of that.
Funny, that everyone knows it, but no one can say it aloud.
Platte River only said that if it was "wiped," they did not do it and have no knowledge of who did.
The story is poorly written and the logic presnted is flawed:
1. The server that Clinton used as secretary of state was stored at her home
2. the e-mails from Clinton’s tenure at the State Department were on the server when the device was taken over in June 2013 by Platte River
3. A company attorney has said that all of Clinton’s e-mails were then migrated to a new server.
4. The e-mails were removed from the second server in 2014, with Clinton’s attorneys storing those they deemed work-related on a thumb drive and discarding those that they determined were entirely personal.
Copied? or Copied and deleted? If I were the vendor, I would not delete until the customer had accepted the material and directed me to delete. Did Clinton tell them to "delete" aka "wipe'?
5. The original server remained under Platte River’s control in a secure data center in New Jersey until the company turned it over to the FBI last month. A company attorney has said that the device was “blank” when it was given to investigators but had not specifically said it had been wiped.
Who gives a shit about the original server that only contained at best the early Clinton emails. It was the Platte River server that had the latest and greatest..Was it seized? Was it wiped?
The FBI could easily get Hillary into a perjury trap:
Sec. Clinton, did the lawyers who were tasked with choosing which emails to delete have security clearances?
If yes, then she must have known that there was classified information in some emails, otherwise why go to the trouble of having your lawyers get clearances?
If no, all they have to do is find one classified email and she has mishandled the information by allowing access to non-cleared individuals. Of course, the presence of such information on a private device is also a crime.
If Clinton and her aids are really so clueless that they thought deleting emails, physically removed the data, then they are screwed: All the FBI has to do is find one work related email that was tagged as deleted and they can charge her with obstruction of justice and maybe perjury if they have her under oath saying that all work related emails were preserved.
The FBI is not going to charge Hillary! with anything until the White House tells them to do it.
Hagar said...
The FBI is not going to charge Hillary! with anything until the White House tells them to do it.
The FBI doesn't charge.
DOJ charges. They won't and it may cause a riot at the FBI who has no sense of humor and hates being lied to or looking bad...
Drill Sgt
I think 4 is wrong. I think all the emails were copied to a thumb drive band given to her lawyer. The lawyer and his staff reviewed the emails and printed out the "work related" ones and passed the printouts to the State Department.
All depends on what the meaning of wiped is.
Reset buttons are red. Everybody knows that. And a reset reality has multiple layers of reset realty given governmental sounding names with their own three initials incapable to signify an approved reality.
We all need approval from authority....well maybe not Donald the Trump.
From the article:
"All the e-mails from Clinton’s tenure at the State Department were on the server when the device was taken over in June 2013 by Platte River Networks, four months after Clinton left office.
A company attorney has said that all of Clinton’s e-mails were then migrated to a new server.
...
The original server remained under Platte River’s control in a secure data center in New Jersey until the company turned it over to the FBI last month. A company attorney has said that the device was “blank” when it was given to investigators but had not specifically said it had been wiped."
If all of this is accurate, how is it that Platte River doesn't know whether or not it was wiped? Were other people allowed access to the server while it was in Platte River's custody? From other reporting, I believe the server was administered by Platte River but that it was physically located in a facility of a third party.
Same thing happened when we didn't the gov't honeybee grant for the community garden.
Rasta Dale brought back a puppy instead, like everything was fine.
Dude....just manage the servers (we're not going Jonestown yet).
A little expansion on Bob R' comment, if anyone cares:
In computer security, "wiping" generally means explicitly taking active measures to make the data unrecoverable (as opposed the just hitting the "Delete" key or reformatting). It can also be called overwriting. Commercial products will sometimes call this "secure delete". Overwriting requires access to every bit on the storage system and rewriting it with new data, preferably from below the level of the normal OS.
Completely successful wiping (even if every bit can be accessed and rewritten with random data) is actually difficult (magnetic bits on the disk have some low level magnetic characteristics measurable with advanced instrumentation after the overwriting). The number of passes for commercial use has commonly been thought to require three separate passes with three different tools/random number generators. Even then the data may be recoverable.
There were DoD standards for "wiping" describing a seven pass protocol. Several years ago, the DoD Standards were changed, for the most sensitive information, and now explicitly state that degaussing or physical shredding are the only acceptable methods.
OK. The FBI will not find anything that the DoJ can charge Hillary with until and unless the White House tells them such evidence is now wanted.
Until then it will be "cannot comment on an ongoing investigation."
The FBI is going to do what they think is good for the FBI, and as of yet I don't see that there is anything in it for them to attack the Democrats.
Incidentally, some Union Pacific hobos have set up camp near our water resource.
After dark, their deep-lung coughs become bawdy, gin-soaked rail-songs and shanties.
-As The Commune Turns
Let's hope Hillarity isn't too white to appear on this list of white collar criminals.
If people would have just given Hillary the Presidency in '08, she wouldn't be doing this, you know.
Between the woman-denying, minority-oppressing Republican smear operations and Obama's techno-hip, big-city acti-voting machine, Hillary's been left all alone at some crummy State Department job she didn't even want.
'Fine' she said, 'from now on I'm doing this my way, a**holes.'
I have a different question about the server. Did they deduct its cost as a business expense on their taxes?
Mary Beth - my guess is yes, since this is the power couple who took charity deductions for donating their used underwear to charities (my understanding, from guys who were some of the biggest in the clothes recycling business before 9/11/01, is that most donated underwear is only useful as rags to the charities and their customers)
FissionChips said...
LOL, storage is cheap, labor is expensive.
degauss then hammer the platters into small pieces :)
None of what commenters wrote above matters, because Hillary is campaigning to be the First Woman President, and those three words will motivate enough voters to vote for her such that she will win the election.
Who are the Republicans putting up against the First Woman President that can overcome her three word advantage? Unless a First Hispanic President becomes possible, we have a well-funded dynastic third Bush, who will be saddled with the weight of every truth and every lie told about his brother GW, a sideshow freak of a bad but expensive combover who is almost as big-government supporting as Hillary, several very boring midwesterners who can't get attention with megaphones, and an amazing neurosurgeon whose muddled message isn't being broadcast by the MSM because of the sideshow freak.
Hillary is our next president. She has the money, the support, the visceral need to win, and is so corrupt nothing will be allowed to stand in her way.
While she may go the way of a Noriega before the end of her first term, she is going to win.
May God have mercy on our souls, for she will have none on our lives.
Mary Beth said...
I have a different question about the server. Did they deduct its cost as a business expense on their taxes?
I'm willing to bet it was bought with "Clinton Foundation" tax free money.
I was about 50% sure that it would turn out that the emails were just put into the Recycle Bin. I think you can always trust Hillary Clinton to do things by halves with the worst possible outcome. She's been publicly dishonest and did not succeed in concealing the emails.
Unrecoverable deleting is a trivial operation. You know have to be aware that you need to do it that way, but there are any number of simple and free tools that do it. I have a bootable CD-ROM that does it.
It's true that stray magnetic fields may linger. But at that point somebody with an atomic force microscope would have to do it and the process of "recovering" files would be insanely difficult. Like the NSA might do it to Vladimir Putin's hard drive if they had months, or an enemy who had a hard drive that had once been full of nuclear secrets or something. I know of no evidence that data has ever been successfully recovered this way.
Nonetheless getting your hard drive out, taking out the platter, and smashing it is about fifteen minutes' work (requires only a star drive bit)--but if Clinton's people had done this it would not have been deniable.
Now Hillary Clinton is a high-enough profile target that someone who had an atomic force microscope might possibly take the trouble to find out was in her email--but with the server being in US government hands, they'd probably just throw up their hands and say nothing is recoverable.
Hagar said...
The FBI is not going to charge Hillary! with anything until the White House tells them to do it.
The FBI doesn't charge.
DOJ charges. They won't and it may cause a riot at the FBI who has no sense of humor and hates being lied to or looking bad...
This is where Republican candidates can attract a ton of attention. Point out at every stop the names of a couple of people convicted and sentenced for mishandling govt email. Then point out the FBI is slow walking the investigation, on orders. And point out the DOJ has just issued a memo to remind employees that things are going to change under new leadership, people that break the law will now be prosecuted. Unwritten is (except for Clinton's wife)
The FBI does not like to be accussed of being in the bag for Politicians.
It occurred to me to leave a comment alluding to wiping one's ass but I'm just going to go ahead and assume that someone has already beaten me to it.
I'm beginning to think that this email story is going to be almost as big as the Benghazi story.
It is starting to look like Hillary! will be more likely to be sleeping in The Big House than in The White House. Perhaps the warden can make a special matrimonial cell available.
----I'm beginning to think that this email story is going to be almost as big as the Benghazi story.
Hahahaha.
Four American heroes dead because of this incompetent traitorous bitch.
"Wiping" a computer's hard drive is a relatively simple operation. Boot from a DVD or CD drive. Write all "1"s on the the drive. Then write all "0"s to the drive. Then write "10101010", and finally, "01010101" everywhere.
There are many commercial programs that will do this, and several freeware programs that will. My favorite is DBAN, "Derek's Boot And Nuke".
If you were REALLY SERIOUS about this, then disassemble the drive and run the platters through a shredder.
Why is nobody talking about the backups that must CERTAINLY exist?
Finally, Platte River never had the server until months AFTER Hillary resigned as SecState. If the server was actually in her house (as insane as that sounds, but then, the Clintons have always been insane) then every person who was EVER in that house needs to be interrogated concerning every contact that they ever had with that server, right down to the plumbers and the janitors.
The entire thing is one enormous plate of FAIL, with some hot spicy TREASON sauce on it.
Looking at the level of sophistication in running e-mail security for most sensitive gov positions, it seems US is well prepared for the hacker war with either China or Russia.
The question, however, that should be asked and hasn't been so far, is: "Hillary, will you run a private e-mail server when you're elected POTUS?"
Most servers have RAID storage. It would be easier to process the backup tapes. I assume they made backups.
A RAID on the other hand is a little more complex to restore, although the FBI can do it. Not everything comes back though. It just depends on how the RAID was shut down.
I haven't seen anyone comment on the fact that Clinton's "joke" trades in sexist stereotypes--"oh, I don't understand technology, I'm just a woman;" isn't that something strong feminists like Clinton are supposed to deplore?
"I'm beginning to think that this email story is going to be almost as big as the Benghazi story."
Yeah, considering we only know about the server because of Gowdys investigation, that's rich.
Checking out those photos, mostly for the dogs. Boy, that HRC is one slave to fashion, eh?
As I understand it, Hillary's defense is that she and her staff are too stupid to know how to wipe an Email server. Stupidity, mendacity, greed, and arrogant lust for power seems to be an adequate excuse at any time for any Democrat.
Unknown said...
Four American heroes dead because of this incompetent traitorous bitch.
Stand down! Stand down!
There is exactly no evidence to support your anger against Clinton on this issue.
There's a saying that's appropriate to Mr. and Mrs. Clinton; "That dog don't hunt."
@ARM, no evidence that would convince you, perhaps, but more than adequate evidence to convince real people.
"There is exactly no evidence to support your anger against Clinton on this issue."
She deleted it.
AReasonableMan said...
Unknown said...
"Four American heroes dead because of this incompetent traitorous bitch.
Stand down! Stand down!
There is exactly no evidence to support your anger against Clinton on this issue."
Bullshit. That is not how we see it.
If you support this woman we will view you as enemy too.
We've already seen emails that show Ambassador Stevens requesting additional security, and the denial in response.
There's every reason in the world to believe that every intelligence agency in the world had access to those emails long before the American public saw them. Whoever orchestrated the attack thus could very well have picked Benghazi as a target precisely because they knew from Clinton's emails that there was no security.
Before this is all over, we will find out that Clinton's criminal negligence toward all things security related led directly, not just indirectly, to Benghazi. We'll be paying the price of all that classified info in our enemies' hands for decades.
"Before this is all over, we will find out that Clinton's criminal negligence toward all things security related led directly, not just indirectly, to Benghazi. We'll be paying the price of all that classified info in our enemies' hands for decades."
Exactly.
A reasonable man requires unreasonable evidence...
Running a government agency using a private email system is simply beyond the pale. There is no justification for that, none whatsoever. For that alone she is disqualified from ever serving in any capacity in government. Hillary isn't the real problem, she is just a grifter seeking power. The real problem is a political party that accepts this conduct as nothing of importance. The Republicans forced Nixon a twice elected president out of office for far less than this. ARM thinks Benghazi is nothing yet when asked I doubt he would be able to come up with a coherent and sensible explanation of why we still had a functioning consulate in Benghazi when every other country had closed their consulates as it was too dangerous and what was our ambassador doing there and why was he there without adequate security and why the obvious and fake excuses initially given for the planned attack on the consulate. I suspect in time it will come out that there was some sort of secret gun running scheme going on to ship weapons from Libya to Syria for the presumed at the time good guys fighting the Assads. Hillary doesn't belong in The White House. She belongs in The Big House.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. To date the only extraordinary thing about Benghazi is the broad bipartisan agreement that there is a complete lack of evidence for wrong-doing on the part of either Clinton or Obama.
It is these kinds of shit sandwiches that Republican politicians pump up and then stuff down the throat of their base that has led to the complete of loss of confidence in the Republican leadership. If they had just been honest about this in the first place they would be in a lot better shape now.
"To date the only extraordinary thing about Benghazi is the broad bipartisan agreement that there is a complete lack of evidence for wrong-doing on the part of either Clinton or Obama."
How many panels exonerated Clinton before anybody noticed there were no Clinton emails of the period?
ARM
The last believer in the vile video explanation.
Without irony.
Unbelievable.
I like the way "AReasonableMan" believes that when the person who controls the information refuses to provides it and then claims to delete it, the burden of proof continues to reside with those who are adverse to that controlling party.
That is neither true logically nor under the law of these United States.
Trey Howdy is the best lawyer in Congress, by far, and his behavior in these matters has been extraordinarily well-suited to discovering the truth. He never claims more than he can prove and denies he's making the obvious logical inferences. He lets the evidence he knows he can introduce beyond doubt speaks for itself.
But liars gonna lie, so cue Clinton and "AReasonableMan".
I remember when Clinton's Lab Buddy ran out into traffic in Chappaqua and was killed. At the time, some people thought he might have committed suicide.
Shrillery's argument that she's presidential material.
A) I'm so stupid, I can't recognize Top Secret documents even when I see them transmitted illegally on my private, unsecured, server.
B) I knew the documents were Top Secret, but if I just lie about breaking the law, over and over, you will believe me.
ARM's response-- Sounds good to me!
I once did some marketing research which included interviewing the owner of a machine shop that produced a part for the F-16. The question was whether the business could use a service that handled end-of-life for his computer hardware. The man said, we handle end-of-life by running our old hardware through an industrial shredder. Next question.
AReasonableMan said...
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. To date the only extraordinary thing about Benghazi is the broad bipartisan agreement that there is a complete lack of evidence for wrong-doing on the part of either Clinton or Obama.
9/13/15, 5:10 PM
As far as Benghazi goes, don't you think that the matter of The State Department announcing that a video was responsible for the attack after they knew that to not be true is wrong-doing? Don't you think the arrest of an American citizen in the US for posting a video on a public forum is wrong-doing?
To date the only extraordinary thing about Benghazi is the broad bipartisan agreement that there is a complete lack of evidence for wrong-doing on the part of either Clinton or Obama.
Watching this with amusement. ARM, why are you being so deliberately dense about this ? Even the usual NYT writers are abandoning this sinking ship. The intelligence community, which tends to lean left, is in a wild rage at her. She has probably betrayed more agents than Aldrich Ames.
If you dispute my characterization of the CIA as "leaning left," try to remember their leaks that Iran had abandoned their nuclear program when Bush was president. They weren't true. However, you don't have to agree. Just open your eyes.
Simply a lot of misdirection to separate the owner and user of the server, from the responsibility.
Are FOIA laws optional?
If for no other reason, America needs to elect Republicans, to get the media and govt agencies to once again do their job and hold politicians accountable
As far as Benghazi goes, don't you think that the matter of The State Department announcing that a video was responsible for the attack after they knew that to not be true is wrong-doing? Don't you think the arrest of an American citizen in the US for posting a video on a public forum is wrong-doing?
In order to be a progressive you must first suspend a natural tendancy to question the narrtarive and at all times support the narrative. In short. To be a progressive you must lie.
"Remember, Jerry. If YOU believe it, it isn't a lie."
ARM, and ritmo and farmer.......etal. Honestly believe they're the smartest people in the room. They've been told they're the smartest people in the room. Therefore you're not the smartest person in the room.
Wry amusement ensues.
When this is all said and done, I wonder what they're going to find. I figure the Clintons have done lots of shady things with their foundation and influence peddling, but I can't imagine even a technophobe like Hillary putting anything truly incriminating in e-mail.
However, she still faces the fact that any way you slice it, there's simply no good reason why she needed the private server, so no explanation she can give (and she's already given several poor ones) will get the stink off of this. She's going into this cycle with a serious trust deficit, and her only hope is to smear and destroy whichever Republican faces her so she can win by default.
That is, assuming she doesn't end up indicted, in which case the GOP nominee is irrelevant because she won't be on the ballot herself.
By focusing on nonsense, in a hysterical fashion, you undermine the Republican party. You are the political equivalent of the Brady-haters and their conspiracy theories. Unable to win on the field, in this case on the basis of policy, you take up hysterical conspiracy theories. It is a losing strategy and the strategy of losers. If Republican policies are so successful shouldn't you be able to win without indulging in all this nonsense?
"All the FBI has to do is find one work related email that was tagged as deleted."
-- They already have those in the emails Blumenthal turned over that showed Clinton had doctored some of the email chains she handed over. It is a known fact that the documents we received were: Incomplete. Altered by Clinton. Not all of the work related emails that should have been handed over.
Only by the grace of Obama's Justice Department is Clinton not being charged.
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