BleachBit "stifles investigation" of Hillary Clinton

The IT team for presidential candidate Hillary Clinton used the open source cleaning software BleachBit to wipe systems "so even God couldn’t read them," according to South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy on Fox News. His comments on the "drastic cyber-measure" were in response to the question of whether her emails were simply about "yoga and wedding plans."

BleachBit is mentioned at about three minutes into this video that aired live on the Fox News television station (August 25, 2016). Rep. Gowdy told Fox News:

She and her lawyers had those emails deleted. And they didn’t just push the delete button; they had them deleted where even God can’t read them. They were using something called BleachBit. You don’t use BleachBit for yoga emails or bridemaids emails. When you’re using BleachBit, it is something you really do not want the world to see.

Palancar concluded, "Bleachbit stifles investigation" of Hilary Clinton.

Perhaps Clinton's team used an open source application because, unlike proprietary applications, it can be audited, like for backdoors. In response to the Edward Snowden leaks in 2013, privacy expert Bruce Schneier advised, "Closed-source software is easier for the NSA to backdoor than open-source software," in an article in which he stated he also uses BleachBit. Ironically, Schneier was writing to a non-governmental audience.

Last year when Clinton was asked about wiping her email server, she joked, "Like with a cloth or something?" It turns out now that BleachBit was that cloth, according to remarks by Rep. Gowdy.

@ThreatcoreNews compared the situation to the 18 minutes of audio erased from tapes from President Richard Nixon's Oval Office.

Jonathan Zdziarski quoted on CNN.com argued, "Someone trying to cover their tracks would likely pay for and use a much more expensive, specialized data destruction tool," but commercial tools leave a money trail.

As of the time of writing BleachBit has not been served a warrant or subpoena in relation to the investigation. BleachBit is free of charge to use in any environment whether it is personal, commercial, educational, governmental, Republican, or Democrat. The cleaning process is not reversible.

Immediately when the story broke the morning of August 25, traffic to the BleachBit web site and download servers spiked. As the story went viral on Twitter, a second, larger wave of traffic came to the site. The new servers are fully handling the loads.

See also the article: How to Delete Secret Emails from Microsoft Exchange Server .

Members of the press: please see the press center.

Comments

I appreciate your excellent coding but but it is sad that it is being used for this coverup.

How is using this software as a coverup any different than tossing the drive in a river? Or smashing it with a hammer? The software is designed to wipe data for privacy such as selling a PC.

To Karen, very well said..

Selectively deleting leaves something else you want found behind.
Obviously the deleted files were the ones Clinton didn't want found i.e. the fire from the smoking gun.
Her lawyers made the decisions.

Because Karen, putting a hard drive in water would not wipe any data (a hard drive is just like your musical CD disks, just stacks of them within). Short of taking out those disks and smashing them with a hammer, destroying a hard drive (the casing for all the CDs within) would have little effect on the contents for a data retrieval expert. The only safe way is to replace the existing data with nonsense data.

Blaming this software for the cover up is like blaming guns for murder or violence. BleachBit didn't force her to use their program, Clinton had to make the decision that she was going to be deceptive. I always find it humorous when things like this program or guns or a knife or any other inanimate item is incorrectly deemed "bad". It seems we find it easier to ban an item than to accept ownership for our actions. No matter how eager we are to blame the system cleaning program or the gun or the knife fault will ALWAYS rest at the feet of the piece of shit that installed and ran the program or pulled the trigger.

No one is blaming the software any more than a gun should be blamed for a death. It's when something is used for an illegal purpose as in this case to hide illegal activity and break Federal espionage laws.

Chris1122

Ray: Yes, like other tools, anyone can use BleachBit for any purpose.

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Andrew, lead developer

If you made it here to this page, thank threatcore news

Andrew and Ray, How does your argument stand when comparing this to DBAN? Physical destruction?

DBAN and physical destruction are more thorough methods to erase data, while BleachBit specializes in a surgical approach which has benefits such as not having to install an operating system. Perhaps you could elaborate on your question.

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Andrew, lead developer

ROCKNROLLKID's picture

"You don't use BleachBit for yoga emails"

Why can't you? If one wants to delete these to make them unrecoverable, then why shouldn't they be able to? Privacy is privacy, no matter what is relates to. Before I got my SSD, I use to wipe free space with BleachBit on my old HDD, even when it was unnecessary.

____________________
Also known as Alex.

Moderator for BleachBit and a maintainer for Winapp2.

Check out my open-source group on Steam: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/opencommunity

Windows 10 x64 (switching to ReactOS in the future).

Just a little exprobation here, but the guy was being facetious. I don't wanna' get into a political debate, but if you've seen the "What, like with a cloth?" comment, (which I consider a joke, but not very funny, considering the context), and the possible (but not absolute) seriousness of someone of fairly well-known (possible, but not absolute), intelligence, with full knowledge of the possible, but not absolute, import of the question, appearing to 'brush it off' as 'beneath her dignity' to address, fully and forthrightly, then the guy should be able to say "You don't ..." It's politics. Grown folks doing everything they can to avoid committing to a position that's nothing if not total moral relativism... Oops, there I go again, taking myself too seriously... I don't know why I write these things, I think it's just because I like to write, although I do basically believe I'm speaking what I think to be true, considering the hour, and the lack of sleep that's got me wasting my time 'soap boxing' when I could be trying out this new product I just downloaded. Gotta' run and fall asleep now...

When my mother was growing up in occupied France, the term was collaborator, and the didn't advertise the fact with pride.

Evil Ninja's picture

Congratz on your achievement., my IT company will never use it, ever!

This is just my opinion, but the title of this article seems awfully biased.
As though you got one over on the FBI and DOJ, thereby obstructing an investigation.

But seriously, I will definitely keep you in mind the next time I want to 'wipe' wedding planner and Yoga e-mails.
You know, 'wipe' like with a cloth or something.

ROCKNROLLKID's picture

@Everyone. Please stop with the political comments. I have already deleted a few that went too extreme. We get it, you have your own opinion, but your not going to change anyone else. That is not what this is about. Any political comments will be deleted and if kept up, will result in a ban off the forums.

____________________
Also known as Alex.

Moderator for BleachBit and a maintainer for Winapp2.

Check out my open-source group on Steam: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/opencommunity

Windows 10 x64 (switching to ReactOS in the future).

Don't you think that once you've "opened the door" by using political content in the promotion of your product (as it is your right to do so), then other political discourse is to be expected? I have always thought it is a citizen's responsibility (because of our free speech rights) to conduct themselves politely in open free discussion's, political or otherwise in ANY forum, but especially in the context I mentioned above. I would respectfully request that you reconsider your post. Thank you.

Kjzele: regarding "reconsider your post" do you mean the main article our one of the comments in reply? "Reconsider" in what way?

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Andrew, lead developer

What are backups for, if not for the recovery or restoration of inaccessible data. There should actually be several off-site backups of all of Hillary's servers contents.

I'm hoping the next release of documents contains her complete calendar of events.

In this modern day, it's almost guaranteed that what you have said or done has been recorded somewhere.

Hi Andrew, I just wanted to say I've been using Bleach-bit for yrs, I think since its inception, not sure though it was sooo long ago...

But yes, a very good program... Thank you, Thank you.. I use it once a month helps keep from having to reboot all the time because of the junk that happens to stay on the computer because of deleted files..

Some on the news channels such as Fox News' James Rosen have questioned that if Bleachbit is so good, how come the Clinton emails were recovered. This short video of FBI Director James Comey's Congressional testimony ( http://www.c-span.org/video/?c4609909/comey-explains-emails-erased ) explains what happened.

Apparently when they got the server disks from Mrs. Clinton, her lawyers copied the emails from those disks to several laptops so that the lawyers could search them in parallel. Beachbit was then used on the server disks. But either the lawyers forget to use Beachbit on the hard drives in their own laptops to erase rather than delete the emails or else they were using SSD drives and the FBI took them apart to get at the raw data in the flash chips.

Either way, Mrs. Clinton should get a refund on her lawyer fees. It was pure incompetence.

most retail hard drives came with a disk with utilities and most of them had some form zero-fill which over wrote the hard drive with zeroes .this was usually a lengthy process as the entire drive was filled rendering all recovery screwed.I used this in my teenage years of dumpster diving to get parts when drives were more expensive than my 65 fairlane was.I was by no means a bad guy but I used this method .but that being said she knowingly wiped a drive that was in use and under investigation and she knew it.Up until her this was reason enough to arrest anybody with at least three felonies.

Thank you for giving props back to the people that pointed me here.
Posting the video and information on your website is a step in the right direction.
99% of media doesnt allow people to see the exchange between FBI and congress.
Wish you would also put up the video of hillary acting like a dumbass and making a 'wiping' motion when she was denying scrubbing her server.
Anyway, evidently your software runs great.

Wikileaks is now Americas only hope. Our own media and state department is against the American people.

~Robert Bass MD

herojig's picture

Great App, and thx for all of the the political entertainment as well. Question: does Bleachbit leave a signature showing the app was used to delete files? Or does it delete references to itself in system log files?

Herojig Cartooning and Ballooning of Timi Nepal

herojig: When BleachBit is installed it can leave a minimal footprint, though smaller than many other Windows applications. This is just the nature of how applications are installed.

To leave no trace it is best to run BleachBit from portable media as explained in the guide How to Delete Secret Emails from Microsoft Exchange Server .

BleachBit has a unique feature to shred its own configuration (available in the file menu). The use case is when BleachBit is installed, the feature erases which settings were used. It looks as if it were not used, though of course it is still installed. For users who wish it, this is a compromise between privacy and convenience.

There are different options for different users.

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Andrew, lead developer

Honeychilds' ... You're in deep shyte right now and it ain't over till the fat lady sings. See you back on the Hill, real soon.