But, Her Emails…

Via ars Technica: DOGE accused of copying entire Social Security database to insecure cloud system.

A Social Security Administration (SSA) official alleged in a whistleblower disclosure that DOGE officials created “a live copy of the country’s Social Security information in a cloud environment that circumvents oversight.”

Chuck Borges, the SSA’s Chief Data Officer (CDO), “has become aware through reports to him of serious data security lapses, evidently orchestrated by DOGE officials, currently employed as SSA employees, that risk the security of over 300 million Americans’ Social Security data,” the Government Accountability Project said in a letter sent today to members of Congress and the US Office of Special Counsel. The nonprofit Government Accountability Project is representing Borges.

Note: not just any random employee is the whistleblower. He’s the Chief Data Officer.

Let us remember that a major line of attack on Hillary Clinton in 2016 was about the handling of data. The BBC explained the whole thing back in 2016: Hillary Clinton emails – what’s it all about?

Shortly before she was sworn in as secretary of state in 2009, Hillary Clinton set up an email server at her home in Chappaqua, New York. She then relied on this server, home to the email address hd***@**********il.com, for all her electronic correspondence – both work-related and personal – during her four years in office.

She also reportedly set up email addresses on the server for her long-time aide, Huma Abedin, and State Department Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills.

She did not use, or even activate, a state.gov email account, which would have been hosted on servers owned and managed by the US government.

Mrs Clinton’s email system became a national story the first week of March 2015, when the New York Times ran a front-page article, external on the subject. The article said that the system “may have violated federal requirements” and was “alarming” to current and former government archive officials.

This sparked two FBI investigations.

In July, an FBI investigation concluded no “reasonable prosecutor” would bring a criminal case against Mrs Clinton, but that she and her aides were “extremely careless” in their handling of classified information.

Then the FBI surprised everyone, 11 days before the election, by announcing it was examining newly discovered emails sent or received by Hillary Clinton.

Two days before voting booths opened across the nation, FBI Director James Comey announced he was standing by his original assessment – that Mrs Clinton should not face criminal charges.

All of this seems almost quaint given what we are witnessing, whether it is ongoing concerns about various DOGE access to sensitive data or things like the National Security Advisor accidentally adding a journalist to a Signal chat (or the fact that high-level US officials are using Signal chats).

But instead of seeming quaint, it all puts a bit of a knot in my stomach. Not only is it not unreasonable to think that the email investigation at the eleventh hour could have been decisive in a very close election (you know, the one where Trump won the Electoral Vote even as he lost the popular vote by 2.9 million votes), but the sins of which she was accussed are peanuts compared to what we are watching before our eyes.

Moreover, the overly serious and meticulous approach by the FBI in 2016, as perhaps over the top and consequential as it was, was at least an attempt to take their jobs seriously and to be above politics. Comey failed that test, but compare him to Kash Patel, and there is no contest.

And I won’t even get into boxes and boxes of potentially serious government files piled on a ballroom stage and in a bathroom.