David Ignatius talked with “a half-dozen knowledgeable lawyers” and concluded that the Hillary Clinton email affair has been overblown. No big surprise there. Click the link if you want more.
But here’s the curious part. Part of Clinton’s trouble stems from the fact that sensitive information was sent to her via email, which isn’t meant for confidential communications. However, as Ignatius points out, this is a nothingburger. Everyone does this, and has for a long time. But why?
“It’s common knowledge that the classified communications system is impossible and isn’t used,” said one former high-level Justice Department official. Several former prosecutors said flatly that such sloppy, unauthorized practices, although technically violations of law, wouldn’t normally lead to criminal cases.
Why is the classified system so cumbersome? Highly secure encryption is easy to implement on off-the-shelf PCs, and surely some kind of software that plugs into email and restricts the flow of messages wouldn’t be too hard to implement. So why not build more security into email and ditch the old system? What’s the hold-up?
