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From my inside perspective, government IT is dumb. Not that that excuses her going off and using her own. The NSA should probably evaluate if the end result of
by rrmm 11y ago
From my inside perspective, government IT is dumb.
Not that that excuses her going off and using her own. The NSA should probably evaluate if the end result of their refusal was more security or less.
- barney54 11y agoBut why would the NSA believe that she would set up her own server? Other Secretaries of State hadn't done anything like that.
- Someone1234 11y agoThe article kind of dropped that line randomly in. Her email server and this issue (Blackberry or Black Phone in the state's SCIF) are completely unconnected. I don't know how or why they're trying to connect the two. I find this issue interesting in its own right, but see it as nothing to do with her email server (which is already interesting but different).
- culturestate 11y agoI took that to mean that she couldn't hook a civilian Blackberry to her official .gov account, so the personal email server was set up to service her personal Blackberry.
- rrmm 11y agoPrevious SoSs didn't make extensive use of it, or like Rice, got exceptions. If the security apparatus doesn't allow people to get their job done, people will find ways to solve their own problems. For example, you could certainly ban all internet use. It would render moot a huge amount of security problems, but people wouldn't abide it. So you have to find the trade off that the user and the security people find acceptable.
- rrmm 11y agoI would like to point out that it doesn't excuse her action: You have to abide by the rules even when they are dumb. But it's a tension between rules and human nature that comes up often. It's like telling teenagers the only safe sex is no sex, and then not teaching them anything else about sex, because they shouldn't be having sex. You're going to have a bad time trying to make that work.
- bbatha 11y ago> Other Secretaries of State hadn't done anything like that. They actually have, the FBI is auditing the last 4 Secretaries of State and has found similar use of private email servers [1]. Outside of the state department the Bush administration was rife with the use of private, RNC managed email servers [2]. 1. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/05/us/politics/state-dept-classified-data-found-ex-secretaries-personal-email-john-kerry-condeleezza-rice-colin-powell.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/05/us/politics/state-dept-cla... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_White_House_email_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_White_House_email_controv...
- barney54 11y agoNone of these guys used their private email exclusively for government business. That is the key. They all had State Department email. Clinton did not. ALL of her email was on her private server.
- Someone1234 11y ago> The NSA should probably evaluate if the end result of their refusal was more security or less. They could but they'd conclude it was MORE secure. Her leaving the SCIF to use an insecure device is infinitely more secure than allowing insecure devices into the SCIF or giving out highly sensitive devices like candy (in particular as she wanted to use it for non-top secret email). Cellphones can be attacked and turned into bugs (e.g. baseband hacking). A bug in the SCIF is unacceptable, and having any wireless devices at all makes it much harder to detect bugging from other avenues. Additionally giving out the president's "Black Phone" to more people makes it easier to attack since they'd have more opportunities and potential mistakes. Plus what if the black phone was compromised? Now you've exposed the SCIF in state.
- krapp 11y agoEvery one of your justifications for denying a secure Blackberry to the Secretary of State work just as well to justify denying one to the President.
- Someone1234 11y agoExcept: > Additionally giving out the president's "Black Phone" to more people makes it easier to attack since they'd have more opportunities and potential mistakes. It is worth knowing that the US President himself has two phones. A black phone and a regular smartphone for everything else.
- krapp 11y agoGiving one to the Secretary of State (which was, at one point, apparently acceptable) isn't really in the same class of risk as giving it to an intern. It's a risk, but why is it no longer an acceptable risk?