2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Forbes: OIG email report vindicates Clinton [View all]Sivart
(325 posts)For some reason none of the new makers will get an actual IT professional to chime in. Because the notion that the other SOS's did the same thing that Hillary did only flies if you don't look at the details. And those details require a little IT knowledge, which this author is clearly short on.
Private email. That is the key phrase, isn't it? It is applied to what Clinton did, and what Powell did, but there are very significant differences which are completely ignored in this piece.
Using a cloud based main stream non government email account (AOL, hotmail, gmail, etc.) is one thing, and this appears to be what other SOS's did. If this included classified information, then I think it should be an issue.
What the Clintons did is have their own private email system built. It appears that the domain used for this email system is the same domain used for the Clinton Foundation email, which would certainly be a conflict of interest. A big one. In addition, it appears that they did not employ the appropriate security steps to ensure that their private system was secure, which is markedly different than what the other SOS's used, because the encryption with AOL mail, hotmail, gmail, etc. works.
And lastly, and probably most significant, the fact that the Clinton email system was owned by them means that the Clintons themselves would be the ones providing any information from that server to comply with FOIA requests, subpenas, etc. The other SOS's would not have had this authority over the non government emails they were using. This is the wrinkle that would have allowed the Clintons to be the ones to decide what gets handed over and what doesn't.
The Clintons were acting as their own email provider. None of the other SOS's did this.