Subhead: Hillary Clinton hasn't driven a car since 1996, and "individually reviewed" emails were deleted from her personal server. Or not.
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AP is getting knocked around for what appears to be an inanely hyped story about "Russia-Linked Hackers" trying to access Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's emails:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Russia-linked hackers tried at least five times to pry into Hillary Rodham Clinton's private email account while she was secretary of state, emails released Wednesday show. It is unclear if she clicked on any attachment and exposed her account.
Clinton received the infected emails, disguised as speeding tickets from New York, over four hours early the morning of Aug. 3, 2011. The emails instructed recipients to print the attached tickets. Opening the attachment would have allowed hackers to take over control of a victim's computer.
Security researchers who analyzed the malicious software in September 2011 said that infected computers would transmit information from victims to at least three server computers overseas, including one in Russia. That doesn't necessarily mean Russian intelligence or citizens were responsible.
As
many people have now pointed out, this was an email scam that
targeted tons of people at the time.
AP makes what appear to be a few valid points:
Practically every Internet user is inundated with spam or virus-riddled messages daily. But these messages show hackers had Clinton's email address, which was not public, and sent her a fake traffic ticket from New York state, where she lives. Most commercial antivirus software at the time would have detected the software and blocked it.
This was
two years before the Guccifer hack revealed Clinton's private email address, just to note. (Others can respond to the filter remark.)
But this misses a different point: Why weren't these emails deleted along with the 31,000 others that were deemed to be not work related? Are we supposed to believe that the process used to choose which emails were and were not work-related was above board - if these emails get through?
Clinton has maintained that the emails were individually reviewed:
How exactly did Hillary Clinton's team decide which of her emails should be saved and which ones should be deleted?
Three days after Time Magazine initially reported on Team Clinton’s review process to determine which of her emails were work-related and which were personal, the former secretary of state's people are now saying the examination did include opening and reading each email.
[...]
The statement continues: "It was not meant to be taken as a list of every approach performed to ensure thoroughness. Those subsequent steps were in addition to reading them all, not in lieu of reading them all.
They individually reviewed and read five emails that said Hillary Clinton -
who doesn't drive - had speeding tickets, and didn't delete them?
Note: You can read these emails yourself by going here and refinding search with "uniform traffic ticket."