Percy writes:
quote:
Other former Secretaries of State have also used personal email addresses, but not to the extent of Clinton, and not with as serious lapses.
That is a judgement call (and for precisely the reason you point out next). Powell used AOL for his email services and classified information was shuttled through it. That's a public service over which the government has no control.
This is the entire reason for my current job: Military Units were using Yahoo Groups to have ways to share information among their members. When the Powers That Be (C) found out about this, they thought it was a great idea to have an online method of communication but the use of a public, commercial service was unacceptable: There is no control by the military for the security protocols, no way to retrieve the site should the admins for it go away and become unavailable (save by the graces of Yahoo), the information is stored who knows where and is being data-mined within an inch of its bits, there's advertising to the membership (which is also being data-mined), and if there is any breach in the security, the military has absolutely no control over the response. Yeah, the military could request Yahoo to delete all information, but there's no way to guarantee that.
Thus, they created their own system that they could control that provided the services that Yahoo was providing.
In short, Powell did the *worst* thing he could possibly do: He used a non-secure commercial service. This is a continuing problem. If you go onto Facebook right now, you can find OPSEC information ('OPerational SECurity"...things like troop deployments). Now, that Clinton decided to use email outside of the State Department (at Powell's direct urging that she do so) is a poor decision. But she did it in the right way: She used the secure server that was set up by the Secret Service when Bill retired. As such, it was under her direct control and if there were any trouble, she could manage it directly.
But that, of course, is the entire reason for the State Department's computer system: So that you don't have to roll your own.
Too, Powell deleted all of his emails after he left, turning over nothing. And to go back to Powell's direct suggestion to Clinton regarding the use of a private email, he directly stated that one of the reasons to do so was to avoid public records requirements.
Rrhain
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