[philwelch]

Hillary stored classified information on a privately owned email server. Snowden collected a cache of classified documents and gave them to foreign journalists. There's really no comparison between the two. One is an instance of careless information security by someone who found the official systems inconvenient to use and the other is deliberately disclosing classified information.

[nostromo]

I find Hillary's actions to be worse, personally.

Hillary's actions very likely gave secret information to America's enemies. Snowden's actions gave secret information to the public.

Hillary's intentions were to circumvent FOIA rules and break the law. Snowden's intentions were to be end unconstitutional spying and uphold the law.

[snowwrestler]

When I think about Hillary's email server, which could have been hacked, I think of the State Department's email system, which we know was hacked, thoroughly, by the Russians.

If incompetence in operating unclassfied email systems on behalf of the State Department was a crime, it seems like some State IT folks would be going to jail too.

> Hillary's intentions were to circumvent FOIA rules and break the law.

One of the major findings of the FBI investigation was that she did not have criminal intent. In fact this was a major reason they recommended against prosecution.

[theandrewbailey]

> One of the major findings of the FBI investigation was that she did not have criminal intent. In fact this was a major reason they recommended against prosecution.

Snowden didn't have criminal intentions either, but many people want to prosecute him to the fullest anyway. But I also believe that Hillary's lack of charges is absolutely politically motivated. Some people are more equal than others.

[snowwrestler]

Snowden himself has stated that he knowingly and intentionally violated the law.

What he wants is an opportunity to present a whistleblower or "public interest" defense. These are affirmative defenses--you admit you committed the crime, but that you had a really good reason for doing so, which should excuse you from punishment. "Self-defense" is a well-known affirmative defense against prosecution for a violent crime.

[tootie]

You're confusing the colloquial and legal definitions. Snowden knowingly and proactively committed an illegal act. Even if he thought he was morally justified, his action was deliberate and intentional. Hillary committed an act of negligence. From a legal standpoint, she had no criminal intent and Snowden absolutely did.

[DSMan195276]

Snowden's leaks covered far more then just spying on Americans, and did give secret information about legitimate NSA programs. Saying they didn't is just not understanding the full extent of what he leaked.

[sintaxi]

I agree but I will correct you in that Snowden made it clear many times his intentions were for the public to know and have a conversation about the mass surveillance not that it should necessarily stop.

[geofft]

And what were Clinton's intentions? We can all imagine what we'd do if we had a job that required us to have reliable, working e-mail and our employer's IT systems sucked - we'd just use an outside email account. If we knew our job required higher security standards than Gmail would really be appropriate for, we'd self-host. I've thrown infrastructure for a former employer onto a personal server because it needed to work and our IT department was overworked and unfamiliar with how to run it. I'm sure all of us have used personal laptops, or Dropbox, or SSH tunnels, or AWS, or not-really-freeware, or something that violates IT policy in order to get the job done, and we had a clear conscience about it.

Now imagine that your job isn't merely writing some app but literally about making or breaking world peace, and that your IT department isn't just some tired Windows admins down the hall but the entire disaster that is the same federal government that tried to launch healthcare.gov. And that at no point in your job did anyone even set you up with an official email account in the first place. What would you do?

Both of them broke the law; both of them had very good reasons for doing so. There are arguments that they made Americans less safe by their actions, but there are definitely arguments in both cases that they made Americans more safe by their actions.

[josho]

Ok. What if you were a high level employee that could force change and you still circumvented the systems in place to protect information systems. And while you went around the secure systems you left your server unpatched and open to compromise from competitors.

[geofft]

It's pretty hard for a high-level employee to force change in a bureaucracy the size of the federal government. Remember healthcare.gov - if the CEO launches the project that will define his legacy, and the infrastructure melts down on the first day, you think some other executive can get the email systems fixed?

And in any case, fixing the email systems for an organization this big is a messy project. There are countless employees who have the existing system set up and have workflows depending on it. There's special handling of classified information, records-keeping, and so forth. All of this will break, somehow, when you try to migrate it. I'm sure Hillary could have chosen to be the meddling exec who demands an IT overhaul to suit her needs if she really wanted to prioritize that, but it does not actually seem like that would have been better for America. (Or for her public perception, for that matter.)

[ztratar]

Nice propaganda.

Hillary's intentions were in no way to break the law. That was very clearly declared false by the FBI.

[weaksauce]

In the evidence they found, they couldn't find sufficient intent that she intended to violate the law to suggest persecution to the DA. That's quite different than what you stated and what you posit the FBI stated. Basically the FBI wasn't a mind reader and there wasn't an email that said "hey we should do this to circumvent the foia"

[AckSyn]

> they couldn't find sufficient intent that she intended to violate the law

This is the problem. It's not their job to find intent but that a crime had been committed and she should have been prosecuted. There are literally THOUSANDS of examples where someone hadn't intended to commit a crime and were punished regardless of that citing the often quoted "ignorance of the law is no excuse".

Hillary knew the law. She should have known better being in her position but she chose to circumvent the rules (for a number of reasons) and as a result the law was broken.

Her escape from prosecution is nothing more than a blatant public travesty of justice.

[chrisbennet]

"should have known better"? C'mon, it's not like she's a lawyer or anything...oh wait.

[argonaut]

Breaking the law requires intent or gross negligence, and the FBI said there was no evidence of either (gross negligence being a higher standard than "extreme carelessness").

[snowwrestler]

So what is the evidence that she did have criminal intent?

[weaksauce]

That's actually fairly hard to prove, and it's not really the FBI's job to make that accusation. Both the Clintons are lawyers so they know what line to not cross apparently. I don't care for her and I don't care for trump either so this election is unfortunate.

[stonogo]

This is what intent to break the law looks like:

http://i.imgur.com/NneHu1w.jpg

I don't know what the right answer is here, but I am certain that I don't find incompetence a better excuse than malfeasance.

[joering2]

> This is what intent to break the law looks like:

No it is not. "nonpaper" means scrap off all sensitive data and send it nonsecure. Comey explained what she meant in this email; long version would be: "okay, remove all the sensitive information from this note so that you can lawfully send it via non-secure line; then go ahead and do it".

No intent here.

[geofft]

This is correct, and I'm confused that HN seems to find it downvote-worthy.

[stonogo]

When I worked for the State Department, that phrase meant 'digitize it'. When did the meaning change?

[snowwrestler]

1) Talking points don't contain classified information--that's why they are "talking" points.

2) Other evidence showed that this particular set of talking points ended up being sent by secure fax anyway.

[stonogo]

1) This is not true.

2) That's why I said this is what intent looks like -- I'm not making any claims about whether she did in fact break any laws. I have no way of knowing that.

[morganvachon]

> I don't know what the right answer is here, but I am certain that I don't find incompetence a better excuse than malfeasance.

In the United States there are laws regarding criminal negligence, and hypothetically speaking, if someone died as a result of her criminal negligence, it would be considered criminally negligent homicide in most states and could result in prosecution and a real prison sentence.

Would she ever be tried or found guilty of it? Based on the outcome so far, I doubt it; the powerful and connected rarely fall. But the standard does exist.

[mark_l_watson]

I would argue that her circumvently the freedom of information laws has illegal intent. Government documents must be oreserved, and she weaseled around that.

Politions' actions should be transparent, at least in a better world.

[rrggrr]

Anyone who believes Hillary had no self serving design in the email scandal is not paying attention.

[NotSammyHagar]

You are completely wrong about the findings about Hillary. She was not trying to break the law. She made a stupid decision, she should suffer criminal penalties for it, but she was just an idiot. Let's compare that to something that was found to have occurred with criminal intent:when the Bush administration outed the cia agent, Valerie Plame, that was a clearly intentional illegal action.

[pessimizer]

The FBI was very clear: it "found no evidence that any of the additional work-related e-mails were intentionally deleted in an effort to conceal them."

That's not at all what you're saying. The FBI isn't full of psychics, and has no ability to detect intention or read emails that have been permanently deleted.

[comex]

The "additional work-related emails" referred to in that statement are the "thousands" the FBI did, in fact, recover; that's how they knew they were work-related.

[DoofusOfDeath]

Agreed - two very different things.

HRC risked giving away the identities of clandestine agents.

Snowden proved that some of them committed war crimes, and that the NSA and CIA routinely betray our trust.

[pastProlog]

> classified documents and gave them to foreign journalists

What the "classified documents" said were that the government is secretly violating the constitutional "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures". Innocent citizens are routinely having their e-mails and phone calls watched, and recorded in archives permanently.

The "classified information" you keep referring to is that the government is violating its own constitution.

[Pinckney]

The more apt comparison, IMHO, is John Deutch, who did virtually the same thing, but was pardoned by Bill Clinton before his plea deal could be filed.

[dlitz]

Foreign journalists? Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras are both American.