How Do You Use a Laptop Long-Distance?
On Tuesday, FBI investigators were continuing to examine the newly discovered emails and trying to discern how they ended up on a computer owned by Weiner. As of Tuesday morning, an official said, investigators had found no sign that the computer contained “new and bigger” evidence about Clinton. But the official said the FBI was deploying “all computers, all hands on deck” to sort through the high volume of emails and that “no one knows” what the emails contain.
— After another release of documents, FBI finds itself caught in a partisan fray, Rosalind S. Helderman, Tom Hamburger and Sari Horwitz, Washington Post, tonight
Yesterday in this post, in (again) pointing out the unlikelihood that Huma Abedin would have put tens of thousands of her personal emails onto her husband’s laptops hard drive, I mentioned that Weiner used that laptop for his own (very) personal things, of the sort that he probably wasn’t hoping his wife would see.
But tonight, after recovering from the shock (literally) of reading in that article that the FBI, too, recognizes the improbability that Abedin would have put tens of thousands of her personal emails onto her husband’s laptop, or that she would have used his laptop regularly for anything, much less for corresponding with Clinton–and that he would have let her use it regularly (all things considered)–something else occurred to me: Abedin was rarely at home during her years as Clinton’s aide at the State Dept. or, for that matter, afterward.
Clinton traveled very extensively as secretary of state, and Abedin was virtually always with her. When not traveling, she was at work at the State Dept. most of the time. Weiner himself was in New York most of the time after (I think) early 2011, when he resigned as a House member.
Which raises the question: How do you use a laptop long-distance?
There are, of course, other questions, too, like: Why would you want to use a laptop long-distance, even if you could? But I think the first question suffices to make the point.
So I’m guessing here that the FBI will start matching up the dates of those emails with Abedin’s schedule. For starters.
Doesn’t sound to me like the Russian cyberhacking corps is likely to have thought about this beforehand. Big mistake.
Probably.
Windows Remote Desktop.
So if Abedin had been posting her 30,000 emails from Weiner’s computer using Windows Remote Desktop, wouldn’t there be some indication on each of those 30,000 emails that Windows Remote Desktop was used in each of those 30,000 transmissions?
Bev – You again blame the Russians for planting emails on Weiner’s computer?
The facts will come out. You will be proven to be the hysterical fool.
It doesn’t raise the question of anything. Huma and Carlos are married , you are suggesting that she has never been near her own husband so it couldn’t have happened. Married people share laptops they share phones these two shared a toilet seat a dinner table a tv set maybe even a pet .
1. Warren: why on earth would you RDP from your laptop to another to do email on that other one? It seems incredibly stupid, clunky and unlikely. Plus there are all sorts of remote clients, LogMeIn and TeamViewer being a couple of the more popular ones.
2. Joel: There would be a record of the remote client being activated and a well-versed technician could figure out if the email had been used during a remote session. But once again, that would be so stupid and weird as to beggar the imagination.
3: BKrasting: Not necessarily. You have heard of hacking, right? There are ways to access remotely and control a computer (see remote clients, above, which are legitimate)
4.Broncos: It is highly unlikely that 2 professionals using laptops for their work share their laptops at home. If she uses her laptop extensively, she isn’t going to leave it at work and work on her husband’s laptop at home, since he most likely would be using it also. It isn’t like a casual user that goes online to play a few games and later the other one goes online to watch porn.Having myself been in the situation where both spouses worked on computers, I can assure you they usually have their very own special computer.
My wife and I have had separate laptops for over a decade. I’ve never had any reason to use hers to send email, and she’s never used mine to send a single email, let alone 30,000 emails.
“[Wouldn’t] there be some indication on each of those 30,000 emails that Windows Remote Desktop was used in each of those 30,000 transmissions?”
No.
Really? Not even on the device she had with her in Ethiopia or wherever that she used to access Weiner’s laptop, 30,000 times? The device she did turn over?
And wouldn’t she have needed Weiner’s password to his computer–the computer he used to download porn, use Twitter on, and store photos on? Cuz I’m not sure he would have given it to her.
Are you?
Yes there would be done indication in the event/system/application logs but it would be inferential due to timing
I agree with Carol, it makes no sense to send 30,000 emails through a remote desktop mechanism when you have your own computer. One or two, maybe, but 30,000?
And HELL, don’t you need a device with you in order to use it to access the remote device?
Maybe they weren’t using it remotely, maybe they were using a single backup system for their entire family, and it was syncing files to it.
Onedrive, Dropbox, Carbonite…
Well, I suppose this is a possibility, and neither Abedin nor Weiner understood this. And if so, the FBI should make quick work of learning this.
But of course if this is what happened, it has nothing at all to do with the fact that Clinton used her own email setup and server. And it’s probably something that a lot of other government employees, including at State and other sensitive departments and agencies, are doing accidentally.
But this sure as hell illustrates the appallingly inappropriate nature of what Comey did last Friday, when he had no information whatsoever about the nature of this.
This guy should be run out of town on a rail.
Or maybe Weiner is a Russian intelligence asset. Or God put the emails there as a test of faith, like dinosaur bones.
Or maybe Weiner is a sleazy guy whose sleaziness extends to downloading a lot of his wife’s material as insurance against he is (in his own mind) left out to dry.
In defense of Weiner, he may have figured out that his sleazy behavior would have consequences. Having evidence against Huma and, more importantly Hilary (whether significant or just an irritant) that he could use as leverage could have made him think he would be protected by the Clinton machine. Having been tossed out into the cold, now it’s just revenge or stuff that turned up in the other investigation.
This is a DEFENSE of Weiner? Yikes.
Of course, if this IS what happened, it should become clear very quickly, based on when these old emails were put onto his laptop. Huma has been separated from his since before the underage-sexting thing became public. And before that, she was traveling an awful lot with Clinton during the primaries.
Weiner is definitely a sleaze if he is sexting 15 year olds. I suppose if there was any overlap of computers then Weiner could have sexted from Huma’s computer phone ipad whatever . People like him have poor impulse control. He may have installed spyware on her device that copiedor forwarded her emails to his , it’s still her fault that they are loose.
In 2011 the Clinton’s didn’t help Weiner out during the first scandal. Maybe he has an ax to grind. He was a good progressive too , he was in favor of single payer as I recall.
Huma has said she just doesn’t delete emails. Maybe she’s lying, but taking it at face value, if she turned over all her other devices before, there’s nothing new to be found here.
I’m surprised that FBI needs all hands on deck to be able to determine that when they could grep diff it.
I suspect the FBI already knows there’s nothing new in these emails. They are playing this out to influence the election.
That’s cuz neither of you worked for Hillary Clinton and therefore had none of her secrets to hide.
You can’t fool Warren with this line, Joel.
“[Taking] it at face value, if she turned over all her other devices….”
Since her emails are on that computer, taking her claims at face value is really not an option. So the presumption is that she copied the emails to a computer she thought would not be subpoenaed in the Clinton email investigation (which was a correct assumption), so that she could delete incriminating emails from the devices she turned over and still have them somewhere.
Two comments:
The first is that given that it was known since 2011 that Weiner had been doing sleazy texting, if not to 15 year olds, I find it hard to believe that Huma would have consciously put any of her emails on his laptop by any method. Some other possibilities have been raised that cannot be determined as of yet.
The other, another data point, is that in my family we are not only both professionals, but work on research projects together. As a result we occasionally will use one or the other’s home laptop in connection with those (and also a few airline reservations), although the sum total of that over all time is certainly less than 50.
While it makes sense to accuse the FBI of placing the documents on this laptop, it was probably something simpler. Most likely someone configured Weiner’s laptop with the same IMAP account as his wife’s. If you assume that whoever did the set up was not particularly swift, they probably just made sure that everyone in the family had the same settings. IMAP is an internet mail protocol which manages the mail on a central server, but keeps a cached copy of all the mail folders on each of the client machines for efficiency and offline access.
It is tempting to argue that someone would have noticed this, but having been working with personal computing since the early 1970s, I have learned that people are impressively oblivious. You’d be surprised at how many people don’t know what the little red oil can on their car dashboard means. It’s even worse with computers. As long as there is some path for them to get their work done, perhaps by dismissing ‘destruction imminent’ banner screens and muting the related sirens, they will do it and leave the damage for the computer guy and, in this case, the FBI as well.
Best theory I have heard is that Rep. Wiener pulled the email for “life insurance” — if he goes down he’s taking his wife and Sec. Clinton down with him. He thought that would give him protection.