Subject: FBI Said to Examine Whether Hillary Clinton E-Mail Was Backed Up - Bloomberg Politics
From: "Eric Schwerin" <[email-masked]>
To: "Hunter Biden" <[email-masked]>, "Alexander S. Mackler" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 16 Aug 2015 22:26:55 -0400

FBI Said to Examine Whether Hillary Clinton E-Mail Was Backed Up -
Bloomberg Politics

http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/

The Index

The FBI is seeking to determine whether data from Democratic presidential
candidate Hillary Clinton's private e-mail server may still exist
elsewhere, a U.S. official said.

After acquiring the server on Wednesday, agents are attempting to determine
whether e-mails may have been backed up on another machine, said the
official, who asked for anonymity. The official said it's one of the next
logical steps in the agency's investigation into whether the former
secretary of state's private e-mail account handled classified information.

Barbara Wells, an attorney for Platte River Networks, a Denver-based
company that has managed Clinton's private e-mail since 2013, said in a
phone interview Thursday that the server turned over to the Federal Bureau
of Investigation “is blank and does not contain any useful data.” But Wells
added that the data on Clinton's server was migrated to another server that
still exists. She ended the interview when questioned further, declining to
say whether the data still exists on that other server and who has
possession of it.

“Most people don’t understand really what it takes to actually delete
things from a computer permanently.”

Peter Toren

Subsequent calls and e-mails to Wells and the Clinton campaign went
unanswered.

Justice Department spokesman Patrick Rodenbush declined in an e-mail to
comment on whether it is aware of the other server and is trying to access
it.

“The data on the old server is not now available on any server or device
that is under Platte River’s control,” Wells said during the interview.

The suggestion that some of the data Clinton said she erased from her
private e-mail server might still exist came as the Democrat turned over
her server to government officials, who are investigating whether
classified material might have been improperly exposed. Clinton and some of
her closest aides used private e-mail accounts while she was the nation's
top diplomat.

Clinton’s server was held in a secure data center operated by “a
third-party” in New Jersey when it was handed over to the FBI on Wednesday,
said Wells. She declined to identify the third party.
What the Server Might Reveal

The FBI’s examination of the private e-mail server used by Clinton could
yield useful information, such as private communications thought to be
deleted and evidence as to whether the device was hacked.

Or it could turn up nothing.

Michael Kortan, a spokesman for the FBI, declined to comment.

The outcome of the FBI’s forensic analysis of the server will depend on
what steps were taken to delete and overwrite data on it, according to
former law enforcement investigators and cybersecurity specialists.

“Most people don’t understand really what it takes to actually delete
things from a computer permanently,” said Peter Toren, a former computer
crimes prosecutor for the Justice Department. “The FBI has had a great deal
of training and they’re very good about recovering data from computers that
people think have been erased or deleted.”

The FBI took possession of the server on Wednesday after the intelligence
community’s inspector general determined that the personal e-mail account
used by Clinton when she was secretary of state contained some information
that should have been classified and secured.

Clinton is not accused of any wrongdoing and has said she’s confident that
material in her e-mails wasn't marked as being classified at the time it
was sent and received through her server. Republican lawmakers have
questioned why she used a private e-mail system and whether it jeopardized
the security of sensitive data.
What the FBI Got

An e-mail server is a computer used to send, store, and manage electronic
communications. Clinton, who was secretary of state from 2009 until
February 2013, kept the server in her home in Chappaqua, New York.

Clinton said she turned over paper copies of 30,490 e-mails relating to
government business from her tenure. She said another 31,830 personal
messages—including yoga routines and condolence messages—were deleted.
Clinton's critics have questioned whether she should have been the one to
make the call about what to turn over to the government and what to hold
back.

FBI investigators likely will first look to see if the deleted e-mails can
be recovered, said Toren, a partner with the law firm Weisbrod Matteis &
Copley Pllc.

However, the e-mails and any other data on the server could have been
permanently deleted if the operating disk was overwritten—a process known
as wiping, said Philip Lieberman, president of Lieberman Software Corp., a
cybersecurity company based in Los Angeles.

“If the disk itself at the lowest level was wiped, it’s probably not
recoverable,” Lieberman said.

“If only files were wiped, it’s probably recoverable.”
Not Just About E-mails

Investigators also will look at how often files were erased or the disk was
wiped. If Clinton regularly had the system wiped, that indicates a common
security practice. If the system was only wiped once, it could indicate an
effort to hide evidence, Lieberman said.

If the server is barren, investigators could pursue other avenues to try to
recover data, Lieberman said. For example, they could check if e-mails were
sent to people using a service that keeps logs, such as Google Inc.’s
Gmail. They could also ask if the Internet service provider used by Clinton
kept logs.

It’s also not clear if Clinton’s data still exists on a backup server.

The FBI’s inspection of Clinton’s server could also yield valuable
information into how secure the server was and whether it was ever hacked,
said Elad Yoran, executive chairman of Koolspan Inc., a communications
security company based in Bethesda, Maryland.

“They may be able to tell whether it was hacked and thatopens up a whole
other set of questions,” Yoran said.

Toren, Lieberman, and Yoran all said they considered Clinton’s use of a
private e-mail system and server to be extraordinary and weren’t aware of
any other government officials doing the same.

“This wasn’t done because it was convenient for her,” Yoran said. “There’s
a ton of email services that are available that are actually quite secure,
easy to use, and you can use them on every device.”

Eric D. Schwerin
[email-masked]

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