When Hillary Clinton’s Presidential Campaign started to hit its stride a controversy was brought to the attention of voters across the country. As Secretary of State of the United States, Hillary Clinton had her own personal email server set up in her New York home in order to be able to send and receive emails on her personal account which was more convenient than using her government issued email address. Using a private email server made it so much easier for terrorists or hackers to get into the system and gather classified information not only on the United States but other governments across the world as well. Fortunately, as far as we know, no one hacked into the system, however, does that mean that Mrs. Clinton should get a pass?

Regardless of use, government officials should only be allowed to use government issued and secure devices of communication. This should be upheld to the fullest extent of law to protect the safety of the United States and its allies.

So, why is this such a big issue? Let me answer that question for you.

My favorite word to describe this controversy is: carelessness. As Secretary of State, you are the country’s top diplomat dealing with foreign policy. You are dealing with so much classified information from all over the world that terrorist groups and hackers are drooling at the idea of being able to access the emails of a Secretary of State. What did it all come down to for Hillary Clinton?

Convenience.

Hillary Clinton and her staff’s new office, when she was appointed Secretary of State, was a SCIF which stands for Secure Compartment Information Facility which is used to handle classified information, according to The Observer. Due to the importance of the information being handled in a SCIF, it is required that all phones must be kept out of the facility for security purposes. Clinton and her staff hated that because they wanted to be able to have their personal Blackberry’s with them at all times in order to be able to send and receive emails.

Mrs. Clinton and her staff DID NOT want to use two phones, she said “I opted for convenience to use my personal email account, which was allowed by the State Department, because I thought it would be easier to carry just one device for my work and for my personal emails instead of two.”

This resulted in Hillary Clinton putting in a request to the NSA to build a Blackberry which would allow her to use it in the SCIF instead of having to use a computer terminal (yes, she couldn’t use a regular computer either for some reason). There was only one other person in the country with a special custom-made Blackberry and that was President Barack Obama because not only was the task very expensive but it also required a lot of time and energy to create. As a result, “the NSA was not inclined to provide Secretary Clinton with one of her own simply for her convenience: there had to be clearly demonstrated need,” according to the The Observer. After her request for “convenience” was denied, Hillary Clinton decided to have her own private server created.

When news broke out about Hillary using a private server during her term as Secretary of State, the State Department requested that she turn her email’s over and the private server, under the Freedom of Information Act, to see if any government information was released that could put the government and country at risk. Hillary Clinton has consistently maintained her position that she did not do anything wrong by using this email server and that she did not send or receive classified information at the time. And she did in fact turn over “most” of her emails…more than 5 months after they were requested. Clinton’s lawyers ended up turning over around 55,000 emails all of which contained 1,340 emails which were ruled as classified and 22 emails that were given the highest classification level of Top Secret by the FBI.

Many people who support Hillary Clinton argue that the only reason that this is such a big issue is because she is the Democratic favorite to win the nominee and because she is poised to make a strong run for the White House. While others believe that she is just being used as an example while other government officials have also used their own personal email accounts.

As a matter of fact, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter did use his own personal email account for work and when he was asked to turn over all of his emails (which he did right away), not one email contained any sort of classified information, according to the New York Post.

The biggest difference between other government officials who use their own email and Hillary Clinton is how they handled it. It only added to the controversy when Hillary Clinton took so long to release her emails. 5 months! The longer she waited the more questions were being asked especially since she was the only one with access to those emails and there is a strong possibility that emails could have been deleted.

According to The Observer, this caused one former NSA official to ask, “What did she not want put on a government system, where security people might see it?”

Like mentioned previously, the most dubious part of this controversy is the way classified information was handled. It is a criminal law to send and receive classified information improperly, or in this case, on a private server where information can leak and people who should not have certain information end up gaining access to it. One particular email on Hillary’s server has raised some questions because of the information included and who had access to that information. This is also an example of how classified information can get into the wrong hands.

The email was sent on June 8, 2011 to Hillary Clinton by a close Clinton adviser named Sidney Blumenthal. The email which he sent was an “amazingly detailed assessment of events in Sudan, specifically a coup being plotted by top generals in that war-torn country,” according to the Observer.

In addition, “Mr. Blumenthal’s information came from a top-ranking source with direct access to Sudan’s top military and intelligence officials, and recounted a high-level meeting that had taken place only 24 hours before.”

How did Mr. Blumenthal, a man who has not worked for the government in over a decade, have information that  came from a top ranking source “with direct access to Sudan’s top military and intelligence officials?” The email was also very much written like an NSA report and NSA officials have even come out and said that should be investigated as well.

“To get this this secret information, place it in a decently written assessment with proper espionage verbiage, and pass it all back to Washington, D.C., inside 24 hours. That would be a feat even for the CIA, which has stations and officers all over Africa,” writes John Schindler.

I mentioned that Mr. Blumenthal was a Clinton advisor, he did not work in her department nor did he hold any position whatsoever in the U.S. government at the time the email was sent.  More ironically, the last time Sid Blumenthal was working for the U.S. government was more than 15 years ago when he worked under President Bill Clinton. So, how did he get his hands on this type of information and then place it on Hillary Clinton’s server?

Well, because it was a private email server, we won’t know until the FBI has concluded its criminal investigation.

And with the ability to delete any information from the private server, there could be so much more that we do not know about.

One of the reasons Hillary Clinton should be held accountable is because this put the country at greater risk. This is not a time in the world where we can be careless about classified information for convenience sake. ISIS, and other threats, is growing stronger and stronger and attacks are happening everyday. This type of carelessness and misjudgment can possibly lead to headlines that read:

 

Terrorists, hackers and even other countries (cough cough North Korea, Russia and China) are out for us. They would love any secret information that they can get. We never want to see any headlines like that, especially if something could have been prevented.

The United States of America is constantly on the top of someone’s list so for the top United States diplomat, that constantly deals with foreign affairs, to have work related emails containing classified information on a private server…in a regular basement…is completely mind boggling to me. Hillary has come out and said that she did not send or receive any classified information when she clearly has, according to the FBI.

Yes, no one was able to access the information, but this type of set up clearly made it easier for anyone to access it. This is a criminal investigation by the FBI and it should be treated as such because all government officials have the responsibility and duty to protect the citizens of the United States of America and what Hillary Clinton did, had the potential to put this country at risk.

All for convenience?

Politicians should not be focused more about their convenience, but they should rather focus on protecting the welfare of society as a whole because they hold power and that is their duty.

The whole Clinton campaign has changed the way they discuss this controversy. In the beginning of her campaign, Clinton would joke about it at rallies and even the first few debates but as things have gotten more serious and more attention, the whole campaign has changed their tone to a lot more serious and they don’t speak about it as much publicly. Some of Hillary’s closest aides are also now being questioned as part of the investigation, including the man who built the server who was granted immunity.

As this controversy has gained traction, more and more polls are showing that, increasingly, more voters are saying that they do not trust Hillary.

This whole controversy just flat out bothers me. When I find out more and more information about what is really going on and what really happened, not only do I find myself angry and mad, I also find myself dumbfounded. Like, what were you thinking? What kind of thought process was used to make the decision to not use a government issued communication device? All for convenience?

Well Mrs. Clinton, was it worth it?