2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Hillary Clinton's Private Server... Laugh it off. Nothing to see here... move along please! [View all]Sancho
(9,070 posts)First, we know that virtually all the government emails were sent either to a .gov address or from a .gov address. We know that the government accounts have been hacked and compromised. Even if a "Hillary" email surfaced, it could just as easily come from a government hack.
Second, I read reports a couple years ago (I've lost the links) that McAffee and Google backed up the server, and some email was encrypted. Chances are that there's a back up copy. The server was actually Bill Clinton's. There may be no way to legally compel the backup to be released, and even then there are cases where "you can have a copy, but not the encryption key". Who knows what's going on under the table over this, but the State Dept. doesn't really seem interested. Regardless, the system had encryption software capability, so only someone on the other end who had been given a key would be able to read it. We don't really know if encryption was used or how often, but it doesn't matter since the State Dept. asked for and got printed copies.
Third, there was a different system (besides email) to send secret and sensitive communications. That's been acknowledged but the government won't describe how that worked (because it's secret!). Email content was usually reviewed by staff, and items marked as secure or secret. I'm sure that sometimes things slipped by in the 50,000 emails (several hundred a day), but anything important was never on email if it was secret. Anyone in a public position has to assume that email is eventually going to be hacked or public unless it's encrypted, and even then government agencies (Russia, China, etc.) will try to break the encryption. In other words, only routine stuff ever goes on email, so the security risk was minimal.