Criminal Negligence

Further to the matter of Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s unsecured email server and her State Department’s handling of them.

…revelations from new court-released documents in a lawsuit by conservative watchdog Judicial Watch. They show the State Department temporarily turned off security features in 2010 so that emails from then-Secretary of State Clinton’s personal server would stop going to the department’s spam folders.

That’s not just dumb (or, in the words of Colonel with whom I once worked, the dumbest thing I ever heard), it’s got to be criminally negligent.

It’s too easy—and a very routine thing to do—to fish (as opposed to phish) out of those spam folders Clinton’s emails, both those from her and those to her.  It’s too easy—and another very routine thing to do—to adjust the spam filters to pass acceptable emails.

And: it’s too easy—and yet another very routine thing to do—to block access, any access, from an unsecured server of any purpose to State’s official business network, much less its classified network.

As Bob Gourley, former Chief Technology Officer for DIA, put it,

You’re putting not just the Clinton server at risk but the entire Department of State emails at risk.  When you turn off your defensive mechanisms, and you’re connected to the Internet, you’re almost laying out the welcome mat for anyone to intrude and attack and steal your secrets.

Of course Clinton’s State Department IT staff knew this.

Of course Clinton, who was the ultimate State Department classifying authority for this sort of thing as well as for all matters related to security, knew this.

Elections have consequences.

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