SecretaryOfState
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Rex Tillerson gets his bad news just like we do: on Twitter
Donald Trump tweeted today that Rex Tillerson will no longer be serving as Secretary of State and will be replaced by CIA Director Mike Pompeo. However, according to State Department Under Secretary Steve Goldstein, Tillerson didn't find out about his removal from the president and it appears that he may have heard the news through Trump's tweet. "The Secretary did not speak to the President and is unaware of the reason, but he is grateful for the opportunity to serve, and still believes strongly that public service is a noble calling," Goldstein said in a statement. Tillerson just returned from a week-long trip in Africa and the New York Times reports that there had been no sign that Tillerson was set to be fired while he was on that trip. This isn't the first time a Trump-appointed official has found out about their removal through an announcement rather than a conversation with the president. Ex-FBI Director James Comey reportedly thought he was being pranked when he learned about his firing through the news last year.
Georgia election server reportedly wiped in wake of lawsuit
There's something going on in Georgia. First, the state rejected help from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to inspect its voting equipment for potential hacker inroads. Strangely, the man responsible for this and a massive private data leak, Georgia's Secretary of State Brian Kemp, was placed on a DHS election cybersecurity panel. Now the Associated Press reports that a computer server important to a lawsuit against Georgia election officials has been wiped clean right after the suit was filed.
The DHS plans to monitor immigrants’ social media accounts
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently posted a new rule in the Federal Register set to go into effect next month. The update is largely to note that certain government electronic documents are also part of immigrants' official records as the DHS "moves to conducting more immigrant actions in an electronic environment." However, the DHS is also adding new categories to official records including "social media handles, aliases, associated identifiable information, and search results." And the collection of social media information isn't limited to new immigrants but will apply to all immigrants including permanent residents and naturalized citizens.
FBI finds 14,900 more files from Hillary Clinton's email server
Just because the US Attorney General isn't bringing charges over Hillary Clinton's private email server doesn't mean that it's all over -- far from it. FBI investigators have unearthed 14,900 more files (email and documents) on the server, or almost 50 percent more than Clinton's lawyers originally turned over to the State Department. Just what's in those documents isn't clear, although they come from a disc the FBI obtained that includes email and attachments sent directly to or from the former Secretary of State. Clinton's attorneys had initially turned over 'just' 30,000 messages that they considered work-related, although the FBI didn't find signs that she or her staff had deleted anything in a bid to hide it.
State Dept. releases some of Hillary Clinton's emails
Worried that your own inbox isn't keeping you busy enough? Following a judge's request to release emails from Hillary Clinton's private account on a rolling basis, the State Department posted some 296 of them to its Freedom of Information Act website. The emails are from Clinton's time as Secretary of State between 2009 and 2013, and have come under scrutiny because she used a private email server for correspondence instead of her official email address. An investigation into attacks in Benhazi, Libya and Clinton's run for President in 2016 have made the emails (and her decision to selectively turn over archives to the State Department before wiping the email server) an issue. You can read through them here, or enjoy a long holiday weekend -- we wonder if that's a coincidence? [Image credit: Bloomberg via Getty Images]
Hillary Clinton's emails won't be released until January 2016 (update)
The emails that Hillary Clinton sent as Secretary of State from a private account will eventually be released to the public, but not as quickly as some had hoped. Government lawyers reportedly revealed in new court papers, filed in relation to a Vice News Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, that the correspondence won't be published until January 15th, 2016. That's a long wait, especially as Clinton has already launched her 2016 presidential campaign in the US. Her privately-controlled email address, first revealed by the New York Times, is an issue because she used it for all of her work-related correspondence. Under federal law, emails sent and received by officials are supposed to be archived so that oversight committees, historians and the press can examine them. Update: Another update from Vice notes that a judge has ordered the State Department to release emails on a rolling basis.
Hillary Clinton confirms she wiped her email server
Members of the US House of Representatives hoping to get a look at Hillary Clinton's personal email server just got a big disappointment. Clinton's attorney has confirmed to a House committee on Benghazi that, after handing over work-related email to the State Department, the politician both "chose not to keep" personal messages and set a 60-day limit on what the server retains. In short, she effectively wiped it clean. There's no going back to mail from her Secretary of State days beyond the 30,490 messages on the record, or roughly half of what the server held during the period.
Hillary Clinton: 'I think I went above and beyond' email requirements
The most contentious work-related email debate of this month (at least) continued today, as likely presidential candidate Hillary Clinton held a press conference (video) at the UN headquarters. The topic? Her use of a self-hosted email address during her time as Secretary of State. She gave a statement, then answered a few questions from the press, claiming that her choice to use a personal address was done for convenience. Last month the former First Lady told Re/code that she uses both an iPhone and a Blackberry, and said today that "looking back, think that it might have been smarter to have those two devices from the very beginning."
Hillary Clinton: 'I want the public to see my email'
Hillary Clinton's exclusive use of a self-hosted email address has been at the center of controversy over the last few days, and now the former Secretary of State tweets that she wants those emails -- or at least the 55,000 pages she has shared with the State Department -- released to the public. Her tweets came after a congressional committee investigating the 2012 terrorist attack on a US compound in Benghazi, Libya, issued a subpoena "for all communications of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton related to Libya and to the State Department." A New York Times article closely accompanying the tweet (it actually went up several minutes before, but somehow quoted the tweet) fills in some of the holes of the story about how her account worked, referring to it as a "mark of status within the family's inner circle." [Image credit: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images]
Hillary Clinton ran her own email server while in office
Just because Hillary Clinton wasn't using work email as Secretary of State doesn't mean she was throwing caution to the wind -- if anything, she may have been shrewder than most. The Associated Press has learned that Clinton conducted official business using an email server registered to her home. It's not clear exactly where the server was or who ran it until 2013 (probably not internet 'inventor' Al Gore), but the move gave the politician a lot of control. Since the email was strictly hers, she could decide if and when she turned over messages to the government or lawyers. It may have also let her toughen up security versus off-the-shelf services. If the server was in her house, she would have even had the Secret Service offering physical protection.
Hillary Clinton hates using work email just as much as you do
There are plenty of things that unite us as a species: our need to visit the bathroom, our dislike of Bieber and our seething hatred of corporate e-mail systems. It's the third on that list that's landed Hillary Clinton in hot water since it appears that, in her four years at the state department, she avoided using official email altogether. The former Secretary of State is believed to have conducted all of her business via a personal email account, breaching federal requirements to maintain an automatic record of all communication.
