The AP headline reads State Department was forced to disable security features to receive messages from Clinton email server.

[E]mails, reviewed by The Associated Press, show that State Department technical staff disabled software on their systems intended to block phishing emails that could deliver dangerous viruses. They were trying urgently to resolve delivery problems with emails sent from Clinton’s private server.

These emails, obtained Judicial Watch pursuant to their FOIA request and enforced by court order because State kept trying to ignore that law’s requirements, occurred in 2010.  This also gives the lie to State’s claims that had those worthies known of Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s private and unsecured email server, on which she was conducting government and classified government business, they would have denied her permission to use it.  State knew.

In fact, Ken LaVolpe, Deputy Director for Security, Technical, and User Services Division in State’s Office of Information Resource Management sent this about disabling much of State’s own security software in a December 2010 email to his minions:

This should trump all other activities[.]

Tom Lawrence, Branch Chief for Technical and Security Teams in the OIRM and a subordinate of LaVolpe’s added

We view this [turning of security features] as a Band-Aid and fear it’s not 100 percent fully effective.

The AP’s headline gives the game away: State was not at all forced to disable any of its security features to troubleshoot problems with Clinton’s unprotected email server.  The Band-Aid was not at all necessary.  State could simply—and should have—cut all connections between the government’s classified networks and Clinton’s unprotected server or better, shut her server down altogether.  But this is the Obama administration’s and Clinton’s attitude toward national security and personal privilege.

Elections have consequences.