CJ, She was working within the rules. It isn't like she was the first Secretary of State who had their own email server. Same old excuse that was rebuffed by various media outlets, including the Washington Post.
By the time Hillary became Secretary of State, the standards for work-related e-mails were clearer than they were when Colin Powell was in that position. The rules at the time didn't explicitly prevent Hillary from setting up her own server, but the fact that she did violated the spirit of information security. (Besides, why should the rules have to list out every single way imaginable someone might break them? That's why both the letter and the spirit of the law matter.)
Furthermore, Hillary used that e-mail server exclusively for her work. Records of her e-mails to @state.gov addresses would have been preserved by the State Department, but not her e-mails to other government agencies or to non-government destinations. Although the other government agencies would have preserved those e-mails, the fact that those records would be spread across different agencies would have made recovery an incredibly difficult task.
"Using a personal email account exclusively is a potent prescription for flouting the Federal Records Act and circumventing the Freedom of Information Act," Metcalfe said. "And there can be little doubt that Clinton knew this full well." politifact.com
To me, however, the issue I care about the most is how her personal e-mail server represented a security vulnerability. IT departments like to keep control over which hardware and software is being used for good reason. They need to meet standards of security, and it's easier to do so when the hardware and software is more uniform across their organization. The minute you allow people to download their own software, use their own hardware, or set up their own e-mail servers, you are introducing potential vulnerabilities in information security. These vulnerabilities can be subtle, like a simple text-parsing routine that runs a nanosecond longer for different password lengths, but hackers can and will exploit them.
That concern about introducing security vulnerabilities might motivate a "Ready for Hillary" supporter to say, "OK, I get your point. She made a mistake. No different than leaving your house unlocked. Can we move on now?" But this was more than sheer negligence. She obviously put considerable effort in setting up a private e-mail server. Hence she knew the risks involved, but decided that her own needs were more important than the needs of the State Department IT.
And in a way, this is just another example of a politician deciding that the rules don't apply to them.
Tenchusatsu |
