Tuesday, July 5, 2016
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FBI: Clinton email server “extremely careless,” but not criminal
When she was Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton and her staff were “extremely careless” in their handling of private emails that contained classified information, but they weren't criminal.
That's according to FBI Director James Comey, who said today that the carelessness did not rise to the level of intentional misconduct, and for that reason he will not recommend that the Justice Department bring charges against the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.
The announcement drew an immediate reaction from presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who called the system “rigged” in Clinton's favor. “General Petraeus got in trouble for far less. Very very unfair! As usual, bad judgment,” he tweeted.
Comey explained in a morning press conference that the investigation is related to Clinton's use of several private email servers, one located in Colorado.
The investigation focused on whether classified information was improperly stored or transmitted on the private email system. Comey explained that it is a felony to mishandle classified information “either intentionally or in a grossly negligent way,” and a misdemeanor to “knowingly remove classified information from appropriate systems or storage facilities.”
Comey explained that Clinton used several different servers as well as mobile devices to view and send email through those servers, including during travels outside the United States.
The FBI reviewed 30,000 emails in its investigation. The investigation found 110 emails in 52 “chains” - multiple emails on a single subject - that were determined to contain classified information at the time sent or received. Eight of the chains contained information that was “Top Secret” at the time they were sent. Another 36 had “Secret” information, and eight had “Confidential” information, the lowest level of classification. Another 2,000 emails were “Classified”, meaning at the time they were sent the information was not classified but was made confidential later on.
“Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information,” Comey said.
Comey pointed to seven email chains classified as Top Secret that “a reasonable person” in Clinton's position should have known not to send, knowing that an unclassified system “was no place for that conversations.” The presence of these emails on an unclassified system was concerning because those systems were not supported by full-time security staff, like those found at agencies of the federal government, Comey said.
But Comey also pointed out that only “a very small number” of the emails bore markings that indicated they contained classified information.
Comey also reported that the State Department's security culture was “generally lacking in the kind of care for classified information” found elsewhere in the federal government.
The investigation also looked at whether hackers had access to the personal email server.
Comey said the FBI found no direct evidence of hacking, but the FBI also believes they would be unlikely to see such direct evidence. The agency does believe hackers gained access to the private email accounts of people with whom Clinton was in contact from her personal account. And a large number of people knew about her use of a personal email domain, Comey said. Clinton also used the personal account extensively while traveling outside the United States, and the FBI believes it was possible that hackers gained access at that time to her account.
Comey said the FBI will not recommend the Justice Department pursue criminal charges against Clinton.
“No reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case,” Comey said. The FBI reviewed previous investigations into mishandling of classified information, and those previous cases involved willful mishandling or classified information or vast quantities of materials, for example. “We do not see these things here,” Comey said.
Comey is a former deputy attorney general in the George W. Bush administration and was appointed head of the FBI by President Obama in 2013.
Clinton was not immediately available for comment; she is in North Carolina today with President Obama at a campaign stop.
Photo credit: J M, Creative Commons, Flickr
Legal settlement ends Colorado's practice of denying inmates fresh air
Although fresh air and sunlight come free in Colorado, they have long been denied to hundreds of state prisoners, some of whom have gone years – and even a decade or more – without access to the outdoors.
That policy will soon end under a class-action settlement reached last week.
“It took six years in court, but we got everything we wanted from this lawsuit,” says Denver attorney Amy Robertson who, along with students from University of Denver's Sturm College of Law, has pursued two federal cases to give state prisoners the right to outdoor exercise.
Colorado has long forced its highest security prisoners to spend 23 hours a day alone in their cells, with the 24th hour reserved for either a shower or exercise in an indoor exercise room. That room is roughly the same size as their regular, cement block cells, but with a pull-up bar and an open, but heavily barred window. The state long asserted that the narrow glint of fresh air and view are ample substitutes for actually being outside.
Nonsense, countered the team of civil rights lawyers, who argued that denying open air violates 8th Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment.
An expert witness for the plaintiffs argued that no other state – not even the federal government at its ADX Supermax prison in Florence – has deprived prisoners outdoor exposure as much as Colorado. One inmate named in the case marveled at the absurdity of describing a room with an open, but barred window as “outdoors.”
The federal government requires more stringent regulations for providing fresh air, sunlight and outdoor exercise to livestock and test animals than Colorado has given human beings in its prisons.
“It amounts to its own kind of torture,” says Robertson of the Denver-based Civil Rights Education and Enforcement Center (CREEC).
The legal battle started in 2010 when inmate Troy Anderson sued the state over mental health care at Colorado State Penitentiary (CSP), the state's 23-year-old supermax prison in Cañon City. Among other complaints, Anderson said it was a breach of his civil rights to have been housed there for 12 years virtually without open air.
In 2012, the federal judge presiding over the lawsuit granted Anderson the right to “outdoor exercise in an area that is fully outside” including “sunlight, rain, snow and wind” three days a week unless weather or disciplinary measures precluded it.
But rather than give Anderson an outdoor exercise area at CSP, state corrections officials instead transferred him to the Sterling Correctional Facility 60 days after the judge's ruling.
Anderson has told The Independent he had mixed feelings about his legal victories because prisoners at CSP still had no outdoor access.
“I didn't set out to do this just for myself,” he wrote.
So the team of lawyers who had represented Anderson filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf the CSP prisoners who still weren't allowed outside.
As the case meandered through federal court, the Corrections Department was making changes to reduce the number of inmates it houses in “administrative segregation” - its term for solitary confinement. The state replaced its practice of housing most CSP inmates alone in their cells 23 hours a day (with the 24th in the exercise room) with a tiered system in which most inmates are given four hours outside their cell in a group of eight. The groups are designed to help them grow accustomed to human interaction.
To accommodate those groups, the Corrections Department in 2014 asked the legislature for $4.7 million to build new outdoor exercise yards at CSP where inmates will have room to run, play basketball, walk or just sit on a bench.
The approximately 171 inmates still living under tighter, 24-hours-a-day solitary confinement conditions have been moved to Sterling, where they can exercise in newly built, individually sized outdoor cages called “modules.” Under the DOC's new policies, those prisoners will be limited to solitary confinement conditions for 12 months, at the most – not stuck for years on end, as Anderson was.
A few months before the case was scheduled for trial last November, the state asked for mediation. It struck a deal with the plaintiffs, requiring CSP's new outdoor exercise areas to be complete by the end of this year and ensuring that high-security inmates at both CSP and Sterling would have access to outdoor exercise. The assurance of open air applies not just to current inmates, but also those in the future. The settlement provides a way for enforce the agreement if the state goes back on its word. And it gives $410,000 in attorney's fees to the lawyers who filed the lawsuit.
U.S. Judge William Martinez finalized the agreement Wednesday.
Said DOC spokeswoman Laurie Kilpatrick: “The Department of Corrections worked hard to develop, purpose and implement a solid settlement agreement that addresses the issues of outdoor recreation for both our offenders who are now housed within Extended Restrictive Housing, as well as for the close custody offender population now at CSP.”
Robertson agrees with Kilpatrick, but has a decidedly more touchy-feely response to the agreement.
“Because of this settlement, inmates will get to feel the sun and wind on their faces. … They'll be able to experience things like rain and snow,” she said. “After all, as one of the plaintiffs told the judge, who doesn't want to be outside?”
Monday, July 4, 2016
District bills parent $438 to see her son's school records, $129 for copies
This story originally appeared on the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition website.
Connie Sack was stunned when she received two invoices from the Keenesburg school district after asking to inspect records regarding her 16-year-old son, Logan.
The fee for research and retrieval: $438. The fee for copies: $129. Total charges: $567.
“Four hundred dollars is basically the budget we have for his school clothes and supplies every year,” Sack said. “To pay that just to view his education records seems ridiculous.”
Logan Sack
Sack made the request under the Family Rights Education and Privacy Act (FERPA). The federal law protects the privacy of students' education records but also affords parents and students the right to access those records.
Under the law, schools must let parents and students inspect education records within 45 days of a request and “may not charge for search and retrieval of information from education records,” according to a statement provided by Dorie Turner Nolt, press secretary for the U.S. Department of Education.
A school is not obliged to provide copies unless “circumstances effectively prevent a parent from exercising his or her right to inspect and review education records,” such as if a parent lived far away from the school. But if copies are provided, the fee must not be “prohibitive.”
The invoices from Weld County School District Re-3J in Keenesburg break down like this: The first hour of research and retrieval was free but another 14.6 hours were billed at $30 per hour. The district charged 25 cents per page for 516 copies.
The charges are in line with those authorized in the Colorado Open Records Act (CORA). But Sack made the request under FERPA, not CORA.
CORA's research-and-retrieval charges don't apply because a parent's entitlement to inspect the records arises under the federal statute, not the state statute, said Frank LoMonte, executive director of the Student Press Law Center in Washington, D.C.
“They definitely don't get to do that,” he said. “…I would absolutely push back on that one.”
Meleia Monsey, executive area administrative specialist for the Keenesburg school district, acknowledged that FERPA allows parents to view their students' education records at no charge. But she makes a distinction between records kept in a student's cumulative file – such as report cards, transcripts, test scores and Individualized Education Programs – and other records such as emails that concern a student.
She said a parent is welcome anytime to view his or her child's cumulative file at a school, but records such as emails must be reviewed and redacted to protect the privacy of other students who are named. “Those are not considered part of the student's educational record,” Monsey said, and therefore are subject to research-and-retrieval charges outlined in a school district policy.
LoMonte disputes that interpretation. “Neither the FERPA statute nor regulation contemplates any fee for search, retrieval or redaction, and charging for those 'services' goes against the intent of FERPA to make those records freely available,” he wrote in an email to the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition.
The U.S. Department of Education defines “education records” to mean records “directly related to a student” which are maintained by or for a school. What that means exactly never has been conclusively determined, according to LoMonte, but “it has generally been the position of schools that 'directly related' includes any record in which a student is named or identifiable.”
A class attendance sheet, for example, is not a record of any particular student and will not appear in any particular student's file in the school office. “Nonetheless,” LoMonte wrote, “the school undoubtedly would take the position that an attendance sheet is a FERPA record if a requester sought access to it.
“Once something is a FERPA record for privacy, it must necessarily be a FERPA record for disclosure.”
Sack said she used a nonprofit's template to make a broad request under FERPA for Logan's records, and the school district never gave her the opportunity to narrow the request to make it less expensive. “But now that I know there are 516 pages on my son, I need to see what's in that file.”
Sack originally asked to inspect the records for several reasons, she said, which include helping Logan challenge a school committee's decision to reject his application for National Honor Society admission. Logan, who recently finished his sophomore year at Weld Central High School, runs his own technology company and umpires baseball games.
“One thing he wants to do is send part of his educational records to the national level of NHS,” Sack said.
The CFOIC asked spokespersons for the Jefferson County, Denver and Cherry Creek school districts if they had charged parents to research, retrieve and redact student records. Each said they had not done so.