The average person may not understand what wiping a server means. But Hillary Clinton is running for President of the United States. For several years now she has been hounded about this email server fiasco, and the controversy is heating up, and the situation is getting worse. I would have thought that by now she would be fully briefed by her lawyers and her information technology staff about the problems with her server, and about all the various intricacies involved in email. There is no excuse. Hillary Clinton should know what “wiping a server” means.
Either she didn’t know, and I would blame her for being out of touch and negligent. Or she knew, and she was purposely playing stupid, thinking the electorate is stupid, too. Either of those scenarios makes me nervous when they involve a potential future President of the United States.
So let’s talk for a minute about emails.
Emails ARE NOT SECURE. Did you read this?
Emails. Are. Not. Secure.
I teach my entire company staff about this, and we have refresher meetings at least once a year. Whatever you write in an email today could be on the cover on the New York Times tomorrow. If somebody were to target you, they could easily pick off your email and do anything they want with it. So, if you are not comfortable with what you just drafted in the email, before you send it, do yourself a favor and perform the New York Times check. Would it be okay if what you just wrote were on the cover of the New York Times tomorrow with your name under it? If yes, go hit “Send.” Otherwise, delete the email.
I teach my staff never to send confidential information via email. Do not send documents that have personal information, like social security numbers or IDs or passwords. Never send usernames and passwords via email. It’s all out in the open during transit. And this does not even involve the security of the email server itself. It’s just any email.
The media makes a lot of fuss about whether Hillary Clinton’s 30,000 emails contained any classified information. While that’s a legitimate question and possibly a reason why there may be crimes committed – and I’ll leave that to the lawyers – I am much less concerned about this particular question. Classified information has been published before, by spies, by Snowden, by many others.
However, the fact that Hillary Clinton thought and still thinks that it’s ok to have her government email hosted on a server in her house, classified information or not, shows me how completely out of touch she is with today’s world. I’d be worried if my email server sat at my house, and my email traffic is pretty benign. If I were the Secretary of State of the United States, I’d have to believe that everything I communicate would be the target of thugs, foreign governments, terrorists and political opponents. I would be making sure that server is SECURE. I’d get the NSA goobers to lock that thing down.
Clinton didn’t do that.
Clinton still does not seem to think that’s a problem.
Sorry, Hillary Clinton is not fit to be President of the United States.