Friday, August 14, 2015

EXCLUSIVE: Tech company which maintained Hillary's secret server was sued for 'illegally accessing' database and 'stealing White House military advisers' phone numbers' Have you seen the US media do any serious research on Democrats?

EXCLUSIVE: Tech company which maintained Hillary's secret server was sued for 'illegally accessing' database and 'stealing White House military advisers' phone numbers' 

  • Platte River Networks was used by Clinton to maintain 'homebrew' server in her New York State house which held her State Department emails
  • She handed over the server and a thumb drive this week to FBI after emails were found to contain 'above top secret' material
  • Her White House campaign is said to be in 'panic' over the growing scandal which comes out of probe into US diplomats' deaths in Benghazi 
  • Daily Mail Online can reveal Denver, Colorado, based firm was sued for illegally accessing master database of US phone numbers
  • It was also accused of causing chaos to White House military advisers when their numbers stopped working as it took their numbers
  • Case raises questions over how Platte River Networks' ability to secure server which would have been major target for foreign spy hackers 

Daniel Bates For Dailymail.com


The Internet company used by Hillary Clinton to maintain her private server was sued for stealing dozens of phone lines including some which were used by the White House.
Platte River Networks is said to have illegally accessed the master database for all US phone numbers.
It also seized 390 lines in a move that created chaos across the US government.
Among the phone numbers which the company took - which all suddenly stopped working - were lines for White House military support desks, the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy, a lawsuit claims.
Others were the main numbers for major financial institutions, hospitals and the help desk number for T2 Communications, the telecom firm which owned them.
A lawsuit filed on behalf of T2 claims that the mess took 11 days to fix and demands that Platte River pay up $360,000 in compensation.
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TROUBLE IN CHAPPAQUA: Hillary Clinton faces new questions and new levels of outrage as messages on her private email server were found to contain top-secret signal intercepts and information from spy satellites
TROUBLE IN CHAPPAQUA: Hillary Clinton faces new questions and new levels of outrage as messages on her private email server were found to contain top-secret signal intercepts and information from spy satellites
IN THE SPOTLIGHT: Platte River Systems was used by Hillary Clinton to maintain her server. Its website boasts that the Denver, Colorado firm, offers to 'build better networks'.
IN THE SPOTLIGHT: Platte River Systems was used by Hillary Clinton to maintain her server. Its website boasts that the Denver, Colorado firm, offers to 'build better networks'.
BOAST: The firm's website describes it as having 'connections in all the right places'.
BOAST: The firm's website describes it as having 'connections in all the right places'.
National Intelligence Community Inspector General Charles McCullough told members of Congress in writing that two of Clinton's emails were so sensitive that it would have been illegal to show them to any foreigner
National Intelligence Community Inspector General Charles McCullough told members of Congress in writing that two of Clinton's emails were so sensitive that it would have been illegal to show them to any foreigner
The claims raise questions about the competence of Platte River, which is based in Denver, Colorado, to handle Mrs Clinton's highly sensitive personal information while she was Secretary of State.
The Secretary of State's emails would have been potentially a target for foreign espionage. 
Mrs Clinton installed the system at her home in Chappaqua, upstate New York, and did not even have an official email address until the year she left office.
Earlier this week it emerged that she has handed over the server to the FBI which is investigating her and a number of her top aides.
Mrs Clinton acted after the Inspector General for the intelligence community said that he had found four emails that were stored on it were classified and two of those were Top Secret, the highest level of classification.
DOCUMENTED: The claim made against Platte River Networks and its co-contractors
DOCUMENTED: The claim made against Platte River Networks and its co-contractors
KEY SECTION: The passage in the claim which makes clear that the White House's military support desks and the Department of Defense had their phone numbers allegedly taken
KEY SECTION: The passage in the claim which makes clear that the White House's military support desks and the Department of Defense had their phone numbers allegedly taken
Until now Mrs Clinton has insisted that none of the emails were classified at the time she sent or received them.
The lawsuit was filed by T2 in November last year and relates to a deal that went through in June.
By that time Mrs Clinton has left her post as Secretary of State; she was in office between 2009 and 2013.
T2 alleges that it had provided 16 phone lines to an insurance broker called Cambridge until they decided to switch providers and signed up with Windstream Communications, who worked with McLeod USA, a local exchange carrier owned by Windstream, and Platte River.
But instead of taking over the 16 lines, T2 claims that the companies asked for 390 more lines in what they called 'intentional misappropriation'.
T2 alleges that they did this by illegally accessing the database for the Number Portability Administration Centre, the master agency which manages all US phone numbers.

The lawsuit states: 'Under NPAC regulations, telecommunications providers are only allowed to access the NPAC data base for the exclusive purpose of routing, rating of calls, billing of calls, or performing maintenance in connection with the provision of telecommunications services.
'Contrary to these NPAC regulations, Defendants accessed the NPAC database to find T2s 390 telephone lines as well as to obtain T2 and its customers' proprietary network information for use in marketing T2's lines to their existing and prospective customers.'
The lawsuit describes at length the chaos that resulted when the 390 numbers used by T2 customers suddenly stopped working.
SAFE FOR NOW? Clinton signed a statement under penalty of perjury, but there's no indication when or whether her top staffers will follow suit
SAFE FOR NOW? Clinton signed a statement under penalty of perjury, but there's no indication when or whether her top staffers will follow suit
EYE IN THE SKY: The classification acronym 'TK' stands for 'Talent Keyhole,' a kind of taskable satellite that delivers high-resolution imagery like this from 200 miles or more above the earth
EYE IN THE SKY: The classification acronym 'TK' stands for 'Talent Keyhole,' a kind of taskable satellite that delivers high-resolution imagery like this from 200 miles or more above the earth
Among the lines which went dead was that for T2's main number and its help desk, which meant customers were unable to contact the company at a time when they needed it the most.
THE AGENCY: The CIA's headquarters campus in Langley, Virginia (shown) is likely buzzing over the former secretary of state's apparent casual management of sensitive information
THE AGENCY: The CIA's headquarters campus in Langley, Virginia (shown) is likely buzzing over the former secretary of state's apparent casual management of sensitive information

THE CLINTON DEFENSE 

Hillary's campaign issued a 4,000-word defense of her on Wednesday, including two separate claims that she never used her private email account to handle classified information. The complete sections are reproduced here, including bolded text in the original:
------------------------
'Clinton said she did not use her email to send or receive classified information, but the State Department and two Inspectors General said some of these emails do contain classified information. Was her statement inaccurate?
'Clinton only used her account for unclassified email. No information in Clinton's emails was marked classified at the time she sent or received them.
'When information is reviewed for public release, it is common for information previously unclassified to be upgraded to classified if the State Department or another agency believes its public release could cause potential harm to national security, law enforcement or diplomatic relations.
'After reviewing a sampling of the 55,000 pages of emails, the Inspectors General have proffered that a small number of emails, which did not contain any classified markings and/or dissemination controls, should have been classified at the time they were sent. The State Department has said it disagrees with this assessment.
'Clinton hopes the State Department and the agencies involved in the review process will sort out as quickly as possible which of the 55,000 pages of emails are appropriate to share with the public.
'How did Clinton receive and consume classified information?
'The Secretary's office was located in a secure area. Classified information was viewed in hard copy by Clinton while in the office. While on travel, the State Department had rigorous protocols for her and traveling staff to receive and transmit information of all types.
'A separate, closed email system was used by the State Department for the purpose of handling classified communications, which was designed to prevent such information from being transmitted anywhere other than within that system.'
T2 employees' numbers also stopped working as did lines for: 'The Department of Defense, Department of Energy; multiple medical emergency facilities as numbers used for general, pre- and post-surgical contact, and obstetric or gynecological emergencies; Federal Contract Support Desks; White House Military Operations support desks, several financial institution's main telephone numbers, multiple Denver-based Charter schools' main and backdoor phone numbers, a US-Based telephone number for IBM China, multiple other information technology companies and their support and internal telephone numbers, as well as T2's main telephone numbers'.
The lawsuit states that the lines were dead for at least 21 hours and that it took the company at least 10 days to 'unwind' the mess and get the numbers back.
Among the legal documents filed in the case is a third party complaint filed by Thomas W. Snyder, a lawyer, on behalf of Windstream and McLeod.
It goes into more detail about Platte River's role in the deal and claims that the company worked as the sales agent for Windstream in connection with the Cambridge account.
It says that Platte River was responsible for 'spotting any red flags' and for 'resolving any inaccuracies' with the deal.
The document states: 'Platte River acted negligently and breached this duty by failing to identify that the 390 additional lines were improper.'
The lawsuit adds a new twist to the row about Mrs Clinton's email server that is refusing to go away amid intense pressure from Republicans.
Mrs Clinton has said that she exchanged about 60,000 emails over the four years in office on the system, of which half were personal and were deleted.
Mrs Clinton turned over the other half to the Department of State in December last year and they are being reviewed and slowly released to the public.
She has until now refused to hand over the server - which she has wiped clean - but changed her mind when it emerged that some of the emails were classified.
Mr Snyder declined to comment.
Daily Mail Online has reached out to Barbara Wells, a Denver lawyer who represents Platte River, Mrs Clinton's campaign and T2's lawyers for comment. We have not received any response.

TIMELINE: THE CLINTON EMAIL SAGA 

Hillary Clinton's email troubles began when her private address was exposed by a Romanian hacker. Now the resulting scandal threatens to torpedo her presidential ambitions.
2008 – Hillary Clinton acquires a personal email server for her use in running for president, and has it installed in her Chappaqua, New York home
January 13, 2009 – Internet records show that the domain 'clintonemail.com' was created
January 21, 2009 – Clinton is confirmed by the U.S. Senate as President Obama's secretary of state
February 1, 2013 – Clinton leaves the State Department
March 20, 2013 – Clinton's private email address, hdr22@clintonemail.com, is made public when a Romanian hacker named 'Guccifer' (whose real name is Marcel Lazăr Lehel) hacks into longtime Clinton adviser Sidney Blumenthal's AOL email account and leaks images of his inbox – including emails from Clinton
June 2013 – Hillary's team shifts control of the email domain to an outside IT contractor in Denver called Platte River Networks, and sends the original server hardware to a data center facility in New Jersey, where it is erased
August 11, 2014 – Following a congressional subpoena and more than a year of delays, the State Department hands over a small number of Clinton's private emails, 10 in all, to a House committee investigating the 2012 terror attack on a State Department compound in Benghazi, Libya – including some emails from the hdr22@clintonemail.com address
November 2014 – The Benghazi committee asks the State Department for a larger batch of Clinton's emails and receives about 300 that relate to the Libya saga, amounting to 850 printed pages
December 5, 2014 – Clinton's aides say that in response to a request from the State Department, they have handed over about 55,000 pages of her work-related emails, comprising 30,490 messages
February 13, 2015 – The State Department sends the Benghazi committee another 850 pages of Clinton's emails, including some from two different accounts on the private 'clintonemail.com' server
February 27, 2015 – State Department staffers tell Benghazi committee aides that Clinton had used her private address exclusively during her tenure at the agency, and that they don't have any of her emails other than those she provided voluntarily
March 4, 2015 – The Associated Press reports that it has traced Clinton's private email address back to a private server at her Chappaqua, New York home, and that the server was registered under a fake name
March 10, 2015 – In a contentious press conference following a speech at the United Nations, Clinton admits that she deleted more than 30,000 emails that she says were personal in nature, and says she turned over everything work-related to the State Department, while insisting that 'I did not email any classified material to anyone on my email; there is no classified material'
March 11, 2015 – The Associated Press sues the State Department to force the release of Clinton's emails and other documents that the agency has failed to turn over following a Freedom Of Information Act request
April 12, 2015 – Clinton launches her second presidential campaign with an online video and begins two months of low-key campaigning marked by a lack of interaction with reporters
May 22, 2015 – The first 300 of Clinton's emails are made public by the State Department, revealing a close relationship with Blumenthal in the weeks following the Benghazi terror attack; one of them has been retroactively classified by the FBI as 'secret' but Clinton insists it was 'handled appropriately'
May 27, 2015 – A federal judge orders the State Department to begin releasing all of Clinton's emails in installments every 30 days, setting monthly targets for the agency so the work is completed by January 29, 2016
July 23, 2015 – Charles McCullough, the inspector general for the U.S. intelligence community tells members of Congress in a letter that a random sampling of 40 Clinton emails turned up four that contained material classified as secret
July 24, 2015 – Andrea Williams, spokeswoman for the McCulloush, says that the emails 'were classified when they were sent and are classified now.'
July 25, 2015 – During a campaign appearance in Iowa, Clinton modifies her position and tells reporters in Iowa that 'I am confident that I never sent nor received any information that was classifiedat the time it was sent and received' 
July 31, 2015 – The second State Department release of Clinton's emails, more than 1,300 in all, includes 41 that were marked 'classified' before they were made public
August 4, 2015 – Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill says in a statement that the candidate 'did not send nor receive any emails that were marked classified at the time'
August 11, 2015 – McCullough revises his statement to Congress, saying that two of the four emails in question should have been classified 'top secret' – but were not marked that way – and contained information from signal intercepts and keyhole satellite data; he adds that the other two emails are still being evaluated
August 11, 2015 – The FBI takes possession of Clinton's server hardware and three thumb drives in her lawyer's possession, which are said to contain copies of everything she turned over to the State Department

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