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Hilary Clinton's not the first nor only politician guilty of doing this, NY Daily News just put together five other notables: - Sarah Palin - Mitt Romney - K

Hilary Clinton's not the first nor only politician guilty of doing this, NY Daily News just put together five other notables: - Sarah Palin - Mitt Romney - Karl Rove - Andrew Cuomo - Chris Christie aide Bridget Anne Kelly http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/5-examples-lawmakers-email-lawbreakers-article-1.2135674 http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/5-examples-lawmaker... It definitely seems less than ideal for these rules to be abused like this. The problem is, how do you stop it? It's unreasonable to expect all private communications to be on public record, and if you write a note to your babysitter during office hours, why should the wider world have to know about it? It's a difficult balance.

uptown 12y ago
Clinton ran an email server from a home under-guard by the Secret Service.
- escapologybb 12y ago
  That sounds really interesting, have you got a source?
  - uptown 12y ago
    "The computer server that transmitted and received Hillary Rodham Clinton's emails — on a private account she used exclusively for official business when she was secretary of state — traced back to an Internet service registered to her family's home in Chappaqua, New York, according to Internet records reviewed by The Associated Press." [...] "Operating her own server would have afforded Clinton additional legal opportunities to block government or private subpoenas in criminal, administrative or civil cases because her lawyers could object in court before being forced to turn over any emails. And since the Secret Service was guarding Clinton's home, an email server there would have been well protected from theft or a physical hacking." Source: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/b78ba433af3a45209668f745158d994c/clinton-ran-homebrew-computer-system-official-emails http://bigstory.ap.org/article/b78ba433af3a45209668f745158d9...
    - loumf 12y ago
      They are probably talking about the DNS records. If you look up my domain, it will list my home address, but the server is not in my house. The second quote is pure conjecture once they didn't understand what a DNS record is.
      - chimeracoder 12y ago
        > They are probably talking about the DNS records. If you look up my domain, it will list my home address, but the server is not in my house. You mean the WHOIS records? If so, I'm not sure it's so easy to simply dismiss "traced back to an Internet service registered to her family's home in Chappaqua, New York" as referring to the WHOIS record. It sounds like they're looking at the IP address, in which case I guess it's technically possible that the actual mailserver isn't physically located at her home, but for the purposes of the article it'd be reasonable to say that she ran [part of] the service from her home. I agree that it'd be preferable if they could explain what evidence they're actually basing this on, but it doesn't read to me like they're talking about the WHOIS.
        delecti 12y ago
        I disagree. I think that statement makes far more sense if it means the WHOIS records than it does if they mean the physical server. The key words are "registered to", which means nobody was able to trace the actual traffic to the home. Not that that would necessarily be easy, but in absence of that I think it's far more likely that she's not administering running mail servers from her home.
      - uxp 12y ago
        I'm sure they are. A dig on the current domain returns "clintonemail.com.inbound10.mxlogic.net." as one of the mail records, which has 4 A records, each which point to servers registered in Englewood, CO. Note that MXLogic is a managed email service provided by McAfee.
        cmcpgh 12y ago
  - loumf 12y ago
    I don't think we know where it was physically located. They are probably referring to DNS records in this article: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/b78ba433af3a45209668f745158d994c/clinton-ran-homebrew-computer-system-official-emails http://bigstory.ap.org/article/b78ba433af3a45209668f745158d9... This is another case where I wish they would just get some IT expert to look at the evidence and explain it technically (not dumbed down, not for a layperson). Maybe only technical people would understand, but at least the media record would be accurate.
jeremyt 12y ago
Well, the specific law referenced here is a federal law which only applies to high ranking federal officials (e.g. Cabinet secretaries). It would apply to Clinton, but not to most of the people on your list. "The head of each Federal agency shall make and preserve records containing adequate and proper documentation of the organization, functions, policies, decisions, procedures, and essential transactions of the agency and designed to furnish the information necessary to protect the legal and financial rights of the Government and of persons directly affected by the agency’s activities. (44 U.S. Code § 3101)" The only relevant question is, "are emails 'records'?", and according to the State Department, the answer is yes: "All employees must be aware that some of the variety of the messages being exchanged on E-mail are important to the Department and must be preserved; such messages are considered Federal records under the law. (5 FAM [Foreign Affairs Manual] " And I might add that the accusation here is not that she had a personal account in addition to her official one, it's that she didn't have an official one at all.
- eitally 12y ago
  In the corporate world, the generally accepted internal policy is that email is not a system of record, and that when documents (including the email itself) are sent or received via email, those must be exported separately and saved in whatever is the system of record. This, of course, flies contrary to the trends in e-discovery from a prosecutorial point of view, but it does make sense.
  - forgottenpass 12y ago
    In the corporate world, the generally accepted internal policy is that email is not a system of record Saying "email is not a system of record" is lot like saying "RAID is not a backup". Just because you don't use reliable a long term storage medium doesn't mean you don't have and use those records. It doesn't even fly contrary to e-discovery, it's just a difference in multiple contextual definitions of "record."
  - sukilot 12y ago
    That's more like saying "RAM is not durable storage, everything must be saved to disk for durability." It doesn't mean it's OK to run the office solely in RAM, it means the opposite.
joezydeco 12y ago
Cuomo's case seems even more egregious. He's allowing the destruction of government emails while a federal corruption investigation is going on: http://www.ibtimes.com/amid-federal-corruption-probe-andrew-cuomo-administration-purges-state-government-1828824 http://www.ibtimes.com/amid-federal-corruption-probe-andrew-...
- danielweber 12y ago
  Given that's black-letter illegal, I think that article isn't being quite accurate. You can have and create a document-deletion policy, no problem. But -- and I've had this drilled into me at multiple employers, because it's really important -- once you are told by legal that an investigation is under way, you don't delete them, no matter what, until legal tells you otherwise. You take active steps to preserve them if need be. Cuomo's optics suck, but unless you think he's criminally insane, he wouldn't delete emails while investigators wanted emails preserved. There's some part of the story we haven't heard.
  - sukilot 12y ago
    When the penalty for destroying evidence is less than the penalty for what the evidence proves... Did you know that people flush drugs down the toilet when cops knock on the door, in clear violation of the law?
    - danielweber 12y ago
      IANAL but last time I went through compliance training, it was suggested that I could be personally criminally liable if my boss tells me to delete emails that I know have a legal hold on them. I've also only seen this story in IBT, not elsewhere, and they carefully don't say that these records are part of the investigation, just that an investigation is happening and that emails are being deleted -- leaving it to the reader to connect the dots that don't necessarily exist.
  - joezydeco 12y ago
    Why would anyone want to delete emails, period? Anything government-related, HRC's emails included, should be archived ten ways to Sunday and kept forever.
meragrin 12y ago
How many of those were high ranking federal officials with access to confidential material at the time and have ambitions for running for President? None of those even begin to reach the level of Clinton's conduct. She conducted ALL communications through the private email. None of the above used private emails exclusive. Most of them don't even sound like they used the private emails the majority of the time. This is just an attempt at associating a larger issue with a bunch of smaller ones so people will think of it as a minor one.
- sanderjd 12y ago
  Her Presidential ambitions are irrelevant to the question of whether or not the behavior was appropriate. Considering what other officials in similar positions have done is, however relevant. And the answer seems to be that it's mixed: John Kerry uses the official account, Colin Powell reportedly didn't, Condoleezza Rice reportedly did.
  - zimbu668 12y ago
    "Secretary of State Colin Powell also used a personal email account, before the current regulations went into effect." http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/04/us/politics/using-private-email-hillary-clinton-thwarted-record-requests.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/04/us/politics/using-private-...
    - briandear 12y ago
      And he also set up his own mail server using mystery workers as well? He's running for President? He was a part of Obama's "most transparent administration in history?" It isn't a question of personal email or not; it's a question of intent. Why did Hillary go to the trouble? It isn't about the what inasmuch as it's about the why.
    - moioci 12y ago
      Just as Secretary of State Clinton used a personal account, before the current regulations went into effect.
TheCondor 12y ago
Honestly, I don't expect the Secretary of State to be emailing the baby sitter, I expect one of the several assistants/admins they have to do that. I can't think of a lot of reasons of do this other than to attempt to hide things
- atmosx 12y ago
  She could email her relatives asking about family health issues which she doesn't wanna share with anyone. I don't think that a public figure, even in higher ranks, should be exposed to that kind of scrutiny. Privacy is a privilege which everyone should enjoy. Even those who are trying to literally kill it.
JustSomeNobody 12y ago
Wouldn't it be stopped by enforcing the law? Say, bring charges against violators? Let them explain themselves in court. That's what court is for.
- sanderjd 12y ago
  I'm as ignorant about this as I suspect everyone else here is (that is, we've seen reports in our respective favored news sources, but not read any source materials), but my understanding is that these are rules, not laws (thus, not what courts are for), and that it isn't clear the current rules were in place at the time (though I'm not sure why people aren't reporting on that facet more, because it seems important).
  - JustSomeNobody 12y ago
    I admit I'm a bit confused. I've read several articles about this and each have used rules and law almost interchangeable.
    - sanderjd 12y ago
      Yeah, the reporting on it hasn't been great, because the details aren't the story, the story is the name "Hillary Clinton". I'm very curious about the details of how this stuff works for all officials. Are there rules? What are they? Who do they apply to? Are there actual laws? If so, what are they? But "An Investigation Into Government Email Policy" would never be run on its own.
      - mkempe 12y ago
        Why do you think General Petraeus just pleaded guilty in court? because of "rules" or "laws"? did Hillary Clinton send and store classified material with her non-government email account? will the law apply to her the way it has been applied to Petraeus?
        sanderjd 12y ago
parennoob 12y ago
"... if you write a note to your babysitter during office hours, why should the wider world have to know about it? It's a difficult balance." I don't think it is. I do it every day at work. Use your personal email to communicate with your babysitter, and your official work email only for work stuff.
- fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
  >Use your personal email to communicate with your babysitter, and your official work email only for work stuff. One problem with that. I have an official work (.edu) email that is practically useless. Constantly full of spam, both from outside, and from clueless employees. Domain gets blocked from sending to popular domains occasionally for mass spamming. Can't accept attachments (or rarely accepts them). High and unpredictable inbox latency. Goofy, insecure, obsolete pa55woRD! rules. etc. The .gov email addresses I have had from past jobs weren't always much better. So I have an official work email, an unofficial work gmail, and a private email account for personal business. But the larger point is that Clinton should have had some procedure to regularly archive her work-related comms (no matter what the method was).
tvanantwerp 12y ago
Also Lisa Jackson (A.K.A., Richard Windsor), former head of the EPA and now environmental advisor to Apple: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_P._Jackson#EPA_Administrator http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_P._Jackson#EPA_Administrat...
ohjesusthatguy 12y ago
>It's unreasonable to expect all private communications to be on public record, and if you write a note to your babysitter during office hours, why should the wider world have to know about it? >It's a difficult balance. No it's not, and you know it. If you're discussing job-related matters, use your work email, not the system you had set up so that you could evade your workplace data-retention policies. Who knows; maybe Clinton and Blumenthal send all their "re: re: re: funny" cat pictures to each other through this, but I doubt it. Any maybe your parents never taught you, but just because other people break the rules doesn't give you an excuse to break the rules. If only our politicians had any sense of right and wrong...
- freehunter 12y ago
  In any other workplace, this would be called data leakage. This is why many companies use web filtering software to block other email providers.
  - jrs235 12y ago
    Which is why employees should not use corporate resources (equipment, networks, time) to conduct personal business/affairs.
    - freehunter 12y ago
      It's true. Some companies disallow it altogether. Everywhere else, it's just a bad idea (he says, typing this comment on his work laptop). However, the answer is not to bring your personal equipment onto the corporate network. Which sucks because if you need to get something taken care of between 8 and 5, how are you going to manage that? Your options are limited if you don't have a guest network at work.
      - jrs235 12y ago
        Yup. (As I type this on my work computer too). It sucks. The limited options are go someplace over lunch to get it done, take PTO if your employer is inflexible, or find a new employer. Your personal, private, and confidential dealings while using employer provided equipment, networks, and time are anything but those things.
Spooky23 12y ago
I work in a .gov and have had exposure to this issue directly in a few different contexts. The advocates for full disclosure imo are biting their nose to spite their face. Normal people running everything from little leagues to major corporations use email for strategy development, information delivery, deliberative functions and other normal business processes. Known figures in government cannot do that, because the second they do, that information is available to the universe. The consequence is that officials don't use email, and either go through couriers, use some grey area communications mechanism, or do something else that is lost to the public record. It's ridiculous that President Obama or any smart governor cannot have a computer on this desk because of this stuff. I think the current law was designed for paper memos and letters and works counter to its intended goal. Leaders cannot lead if everything they write needs to be staged for this evening's news. There should be a long aging process for this type of material.
- joshuaheard 12y ago
  That's a good argument for changing the law. However, it is not a defense against Clinton breaking the current law. The President and other executive branch members can claim executive privilege which is the actual legal defense you describe. Clinton did not claim executive privilege. She set up a secret email account in order to avoid disclosure laws. This criminal and corrupt action should disqualify her for presidential office.
  - TillE 12y ago
    http://thehill.com/policy/technology/234487-hillarys-emails-not-technically-illegal http://thehill.com/policy/technology/234487-hillarys-emails-...
    - joshuaheard 12y ago
      It's not that she used a personal email account, it's that she set up a secret email server under a phony name in order to conceal her email records, which is a felony. 18 U.S. Code § 2071 - Concealment, removal, or mutilation generally (a) Whoever willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, or destroys, or attempts to do so, or, with intent to do so takes and carries away any record, proceeding, map, book, paper, document, or other thing, filed or deposited with any clerk or officer of any court of the United States, or in any public office, or with any judicial or public officer of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both. (b) Whoever, having the custody of any such record, proceeding, map, book, document, paper, or other thing, willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies, or destroys the same, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both; and shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States. As used in this subsection, the term “office” does not include the office held by any person as a retired officer of the Armed Forces of the United States.
LostInTheWoods2 12y ago
"The problem is, how do you stop it?" You stop it by holding people accountable for their actions. I manage to keep my work e-mail separate from my private e-mail, it's not hard.
- Vula_Design 12y ago
  Yes, but that is self regulation. I think the point here is that, short of having convenient Romanian hackers break into the personal accounts of high ranking officials from time to time to update us, the state and the public have no way of knowing if they are using personal accounts for some of their communication. The only way to get around this would be to actively monitor all web activity by these officials to ensure that the National Archives are fully aware of all pertinent communication through any channel. Obviously this poses serious questions about privacy for public officials, but if they take a position of public office and have been shown to be deliberately subverting the system in place to keep them accountable, then perhaps that is what's necessary?
  - danielweber 12y ago
    Various news reports say that Clinton literally did not have a state.gov address, so everyone she communicated with professionally for 4 years, including people at State, knew that she was communicating with her personal account. Not all of them were reporting to her, either.
    - Vula_Design 12y ago
      Indeed. I would say this makes the issue even more difficult to deal with. As you say, people who weren't even reporting directly to her maintained the code of silence over breaching email account rules. If memebers of the government themselves aren't going to be whistleblowers then how can the use of personal accounts be monitored?
danielweber 12y ago
It's unreasonable to expect all private communications to be on public record, and if you write a note to your babysitter during office hours, why should the wider world have to know about it? You can start by using your work email for all work-related purposes. If someone on Wall Street refused to use work email -- which can be monitored by their employer -- for communicating with clients, it would stink to high heaven.
beams_of_light 12y ago
You forgot nearly the entire Bush Jr. administration.
leesalminen 12y ago
Hillary Clinton's children are full grown. No babysitter situation there.
astazangasta 12y ago
Eh? Everyone has work email and home email. Just use a state email address for government communications, your gmail to talk to your babysitter, problem solved. This isnt "difficult", it is a deliberate evasion.
flnet 12y ago
in extreme cases like Clinton's, would a felony be enough to put an end to it?

uptown 12y ago

Clinton ran an email server from a home under-guard by the Secret Service.

escapologybb 12y ago
That sounds really interesting, have you got a source?
- uptown 12y ago
  "The computer server that transmitted and received Hillary Rodham Clinton's emails — on a private account she used exclusively for official business when she was secretary of state — traced back to an Internet service registered to her family's home in Chappaqua, New York, according to Internet records reviewed by The Associated Press." [...] "Operating her own server would have afforded Clinton additional legal opportunities to block government or private subpoenas in criminal, administrative or civil cases because her lawyers could object in court before being forced to turn over any emails. And since the Secret Service was guarding Clinton's home, an email server there would have been well protected from theft or a physical hacking." Source: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/b78ba433af3a45209668f745158d994c/clinton-ran-homebrew-computer-system-official-emails http://bigstory.ap.org/article/b78ba433af3a45209668f745158d9...
  - loumf 12y ago
    They are probably talking about the DNS records. If you look up my domain, it will list my home address, but the server is not in my house. The second quote is pure conjecture once they didn't understand what a DNS record is.
    - chimeracoder 12y ago
      > They are probably talking about the DNS records. If you look up my domain, it will list my home address, but the server is not in my house. You mean the WHOIS records? If so, I'm not sure it's so easy to simply dismiss "traced back to an Internet service registered to her family's home in Chappaqua, New York" as referring to the WHOIS record. It sounds like they're looking at the IP address, in which case I guess it's technically possible that the actual mailserver isn't physically located at her home, but for the purposes of the article it'd be reasonable to say that she ran [part of] the service from her home. I agree that it'd be preferable if they could explain what evidence they're actually basing this on, but it doesn't read to me like they're talking about the WHOIS.
      - delecti 12y ago
        I disagree. I think that statement makes far more sense if it means the WHOIS records than it does if they mean the physical server. The key words are "registered to", which means nobody was able to trace the actual traffic to the home. Not that that would necessarily be easy, but in absence of that I think it's far more likely that she's not administering running mail servers from her home.
    - uxp 12y ago
      I'm sure they are. A dig on the current domain returns "clintonemail.com.inbound10.mxlogic.net." as one of the mail records, which has 4 A records, each which point to servers registered in Englewood, CO. Note that MXLogic is a managed email service provided by McAfee.
      - cmcpgh 12y ago
- loumf 12y ago
  I don't think we know where it was physically located. They are probably referring to DNS records in this article: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/b78ba433af3a45209668f745158d994c/clinton-ran-homebrew-computer-system-official-emails http://bigstory.ap.org/article/b78ba433af3a45209668f745158d9... This is another case where I wish they would just get some IT expert to look at the evidence and explain it technically (not dumbed down, not for a layperson). Maybe only technical people would understand, but at least the media record would be accurate.

jeremyt 12y ago

Well, the specific law referenced here is a federal law which only applies to high ranking federal officials (e.g. Cabinet secretaries). It would apply to Clinton, but not to most of the people on your list. "The head of each Federal agency shall make and preserve records containing adequate and proper documentation of the organization, functions, policies, decisions, procedures, and essential transactions of the agency and designed to furnish the information necessary to protect the legal and financial rights of the Government and of persons directly affected by the agency’s activities. (44 U.S. Code § 3101)" The only relevant question is, "are emails 'records'?", and according to the State Department, the answer is yes: "All employees must be aware that some of the variety of the messages being exchanged on E-mail are important to the Department and must be preserved; such messages are considered Federal records under the law. (5 FAM [Foreign Affairs Manual] " And I might add that the accusation here is not that she had a personal account in addition to her official one, it's that she didn't have an official one at all.

eitally 12y ago
In the corporate world, the generally accepted internal policy is that email is not a system of record, and that when documents (including the email itself) are sent or received via email, those must be exported separately and saved in whatever is the system of record. This, of course, flies contrary to the trends in e-discovery from a prosecutorial point of view, but it does make sense.
- forgottenpass 12y ago
  In the corporate world, the generally accepted internal policy is that email is not a system of record Saying "email is not a system of record" is lot like saying "RAID is not a backup". Just because you don't use reliable a long term storage medium doesn't mean you don't have and use those records. It doesn't even fly contrary to e-discovery, it's just a difference in multiple contextual definitions of "record."
- sukilot 12y ago
  That's more like saying "RAM is not durable storage, everything must be saved to disk for durability." It doesn't mean it's OK to run the office solely in RAM, it means the opposite.

joezydeco 12y ago

Cuomo's case seems even more egregious. He's allowing the destruction of government emails while a federal corruption investigation is going on: http://www.ibtimes.com/amid-federal-corruption-probe-andrew-cuomo-administration-purges-state-government-1828824 http://www.ibtimes.com/amid-federal-corruption-probe-andrew-...

danielweber 12y ago
Given that's black-letter illegal, I think that article isn't being quite accurate. You can have and create a document-deletion policy, no problem. But -- and I've had this drilled into me at multiple employers, because it's really important -- once you are told by legal that an investigation is under way, you don't delete them, no matter what, until legal tells you otherwise. You take active steps to preserve them if need be. Cuomo's optics suck, but unless you think he's criminally insane, he wouldn't delete emails while investigators wanted emails preserved. There's some part of the story we haven't heard.
- sukilot 12y ago
  When the penalty for destroying evidence is less than the penalty for what the evidence proves... Did you know that people flush drugs down the toilet when cops knock on the door, in clear violation of the law?
  - danielweber 12y ago
    IANAL but last time I went through compliance training, it was suggested that I could be personally criminally liable if my boss tells me to delete emails that I know have a legal hold on them. I've also only seen this story in IBT, not elsewhere, and they carefully don't say that these records are part of the investigation, just that an investigation is happening and that emails are being deleted -- leaving it to the reader to connect the dots that don't necessarily exist.
- joezydeco 12y ago
  Why would anyone want to delete emails, period? Anything government-related, HRC's emails included, should be archived ten ways to Sunday and kept forever.

meragrin 12y ago

How many of those were high ranking federal officials with access to confidential material at the time and have ambitions for running for President? None of those even begin to reach the level of Clinton's conduct. She conducted ALL communications through the private email. None of the above used private emails exclusive. Most of them don't even sound like they used the private emails the majority of the time. This is just an attempt at associating a larger issue with a bunch of smaller ones so people will think of it as a minor one.

sanderjd 12y ago
Her Presidential ambitions are irrelevant to the question of whether or not the behavior was appropriate. Considering what other officials in similar positions have done is, however relevant. And the answer seems to be that it's mixed: John Kerry uses the official account, Colin Powell reportedly didn't, Condoleezza Rice reportedly did.
- zimbu668 12y ago
  "Secretary of State Colin Powell also used a personal email account, before the current regulations went into effect." http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/04/us/politics/using-private-email-hillary-clinton-thwarted-record-requests.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/04/us/politics/using-private-...
  - briandear 12y ago
    And he also set up his own mail server using mystery workers as well? He's running for President? He was a part of Obama's "most transparent administration in history?" It isn't a question of personal email or not; it's a question of intent. Why did Hillary go to the trouble? It isn't about the what inasmuch as it's about the why.
  - moioci 12y ago
    Just as Secretary of State Clinton used a personal account, before the current regulations went into effect.

TheCondor 12y ago

Honestly, I don't expect the Secretary of State to be emailing the baby sitter, I expect one of the several assistants/admins they have to do that. I can't think of a lot of reasons of do this other than to attempt to hide things

atmosx 12y ago
She could email her relatives asking about family health issues which she doesn't wanna share with anyone. I don't think that a public figure, even in higher ranks, should be exposed to that kind of scrutiny. Privacy is a privilege which everyone should enjoy. Even those who are trying to literally kill it.

JustSomeNobody 12y ago

Wouldn't it be stopped by enforcing the law? Say, bring charges against violators? Let them explain themselves in court. That's what court is for.

sanderjd 12y ago
I'm as ignorant about this as I suspect everyone else here is (that is, we've seen reports in our respective favored news sources, but not read any source materials), but my understanding is that these are rules, not laws (thus, not what courts are for), and that it isn't clear the current rules were in place at the time (though I'm not sure why people aren't reporting on that facet more, because it seems important).
- JustSomeNobody 12y ago
  I admit I'm a bit confused. I've read several articles about this and each have used rules and law almost interchangeable.
  - sanderjd 12y ago
    Yeah, the reporting on it hasn't been great, because the details aren't the story, the story is the name "Hillary Clinton". I'm very curious about the details of how this stuff works for all officials. Are there rules? What are they? Who do they apply to? Are there actual laws? If so, what are they? But "An Investigation Into Government Email Policy" would never be run on its own.
    - mkempe 12y ago
      Why do you think General Petraeus just pleaded guilty in court? because of "rules" or "laws"? did Hillary Clinton send and store classified material with her non-government email account? will the law apply to her the way it has been applied to Petraeus?
      - sanderjd 12y ago

parennoob 12y ago

"... if you write a note to your babysitter during office hours, why should the wider world have to know about it? It's a difficult balance." I don't think it is. I do it every day at work. Use your personal email to communicate with your babysitter, and your official work email only for work stuff.

fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
>Use your personal email to communicate with your babysitter, and your official work email only for work stuff. One problem with that. I have an official work (.edu) email that is practically useless. Constantly full of spam, both from outside, and from clueless employees. Domain gets blocked from sending to popular domains occasionally for mass spamming. Can't accept attachments (or rarely accepts them). High and unpredictable inbox latency. Goofy, insecure, obsolete pa55woRD! rules. etc. The .gov email addresses I have had from past jobs weren't always much better. So I have an official work email, an unofficial work gmail, and a private email account for personal business. But the larger point is that Clinton should have had some procedure to regularly archive her work-related comms (no matter what the method was).

tvanantwerp 12y ago

Also Lisa Jackson (A.K.A., Richard Windsor), former head of the EPA and now environmental advisor to Apple: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_P._Jackson#EPA_Administrator http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_P._Jackson#EPA_Administrat...

ohjesusthatguy 12y ago

>It's unreasonable to expect all private communications to be on public record, and if you write a note to your babysitter during office hours, why should the wider world have to know about it? >It's a difficult balance. No it's not, and you know it. If you're discussing job-related matters, use your work email, not the system you had set up so that you could evade your workplace data-retention policies. Who knows; maybe Clinton and Blumenthal send all their "re: re: re: funny" cat pictures to each other through this, but I doubt it. Any maybe your parents never taught you, but just because other people break the rules doesn't give you an excuse to break the rules. If only our politicians had any sense of right and wrong...

freehunter 12y ago
In any other workplace, this would be called data leakage. This is why many companies use web filtering software to block other email providers.
- jrs235 12y ago
  Which is why employees should not use corporate resources (equipment, networks, time) to conduct personal business/affairs.
  - freehunter 12y ago
    It's true. Some companies disallow it altogether. Everywhere else, it's just a bad idea (he says, typing this comment on his work laptop). However, the answer is not to bring your personal equipment onto the corporate network. Which sucks because if you need to get something taken care of between 8 and 5, how are you going to manage that? Your options are limited if you don't have a guest network at work.
    - jrs235 12y ago
      Yup. (As I type this on my work computer too). It sucks. The limited options are go someplace over lunch to get it done, take PTO if your employer is inflexible, or find a new employer. Your personal, private, and confidential dealings while using employer provided equipment, networks, and time are anything but those things.

Spooky23 12y ago

I work in a .gov and have had exposure to this issue directly in a few different contexts. The advocates for full disclosure imo are biting their nose to spite their face. Normal people running everything from little leagues to major corporations use email for strategy development, information delivery, deliberative functions and other normal business processes. Known figures in government cannot do that, because the second they do, that information is available to the universe. The consequence is that officials don't use email, and either go through couriers, use some grey area communications mechanism, or do something else that is lost to the public record. It's ridiculous that President Obama or any smart governor cannot have a computer on this desk because of this stuff. I think the current law was designed for paper memos and letters and works counter to its intended goal. Leaders cannot lead if everything they write needs to be staged for this evening's news. There should be a long aging process for this type of material.

joshuaheard 12y ago
That's a good argument for changing the law. However, it is not a defense against Clinton breaking the current law. The President and other executive branch members can claim executive privilege which is the actual legal defense you describe. Clinton did not claim executive privilege. She set up a secret email account in order to avoid disclosure laws. This criminal and corrupt action should disqualify her for presidential office.
- TillE 12y ago
  http://thehill.com/policy/technology/234487-hillarys-emails-not-technically-illegal http://thehill.com/policy/technology/234487-hillarys-emails-...
  - joshuaheard 12y ago
    It's not that she used a personal email account, it's that she set up a secret email server under a phony name in order to conceal her email records, which is a felony. 18 U.S. Code § 2071 - Concealment, removal, or mutilation generally (a) Whoever willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, or destroys, or attempts to do so, or, with intent to do so takes and carries away any record, proceeding, map, book, paper, document, or other thing, filed or deposited with any clerk or officer of any court of the United States, or in any public office, or with any judicial or public officer of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both. (b) Whoever, having the custody of any such record, proceeding, map, book, document, paper, or other thing, willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies, or destroys the same, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both; and shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States. As used in this subsection, the term “office” does not include the office held by any person as a retired officer of the Armed Forces of the United States.

LostInTheWoods2 12y ago

"The problem is, how do you stop it?" You stop it by holding people accountable for their actions. I manage to keep my work e-mail separate from my private e-mail, it's not hard.

Vula_Design 12y ago
Yes, but that is self regulation. I think the point here is that, short of having convenient Romanian hackers break into the personal accounts of high ranking officials from time to time to update us, the state and the public have no way of knowing if they are using personal accounts for some of their communication. The only way to get around this would be to actively monitor all web activity by these officials to ensure that the National Archives are fully aware of all pertinent communication through any channel. Obviously this poses serious questions about privacy for public officials, but if they take a position of public office and have been shown to be deliberately subverting the system in place to keep them accountable, then perhaps that is what's necessary?
- danielweber 12y ago
  Various news reports say that Clinton literally did not have a state.gov address, so everyone she communicated with professionally for 4 years, including people at State, knew that she was communicating with her personal account. Not all of them were reporting to her, either.
  - Vula_Design 12y ago
    Indeed. I would say this makes the issue even more difficult to deal with. As you say, people who weren't even reporting directly to her maintained the code of silence over breaching email account rules. If memebers of the government themselves aren't going to be whistleblowers then how can the use of personal accounts be monitored?

danielweber 12y ago

It's unreasonable to expect all private communications to be on public record, and if you write a note to your babysitter during office hours, why should the wider world have to know about it? You can start by using your work email for all work-related purposes. If someone on Wall Street refused to use work email -- which can be monitored by their employer -- for communicating with clients, it would stink to high heaven.

beams_of_light 12y ago

You forgot nearly the entire Bush Jr. administration.

leesalminen 12y ago

Hillary Clinton's children are full grown. No babysitter situation there.

astazangasta 12y ago

Eh? Everyone has work email and home email. Just use a state email address for government communications, your gmail to talk to your babysitter, problem solved. This isnt "difficult", it is a deliberate evasion.

flnet 12y ago

in extreme cases like Clinton's, would a felony be enough to put an end to it?