The Hillary Clinton email scandal is nothing more than a distraction from addressing the real issues affecting our country.
- Carl Rove was accused of deleting millions of President George W. Bush's email that resided on a private email server.
- By his own admission, Colin Powell had U.S. government emails on a private email server.
- It was alleged that Condoleezza Rice and some staffers had U.S. government email in their personal email accounts.
The Hillary Clinton email scandal is nothing more than a distraction from addressing the real issues affecting our country.
- Carl Rove was accused of deleting millions of President George W. Bush's email that resided on a private email server.
- By his own admission, Colin Powell had U.S. government emails on a private email server.
- It was alleged that Condoleezza Rice and some staffers had U.S. government email in their personal email accounts.
The bigger issue is who is the head of IT security in the State department, and who are the people that are consistently breaking security protocols with the system configuration that subsequently allows U.S. government emails to leave the Government enterprise without being parsed for sensitive data and stored for later analysis.
During the last 20 years I have observed that some organizations are making hiring decisions based on a person's congeniality rather that their ability to perform the duties required of them. Managers seem to want to be able to have an atmosphere at work where no one will challenge their decisions, and the staff must be able to socialize with their counterparts as though the organization is a cruise ship and everyone is on vacation.
I am not in any way a curmudgeon and would certainly like everyone in my organization to be comfortable with each other, but the last thing needed is for everyone to feel the need to be everyone’s friend and not sound the bell of dissent when in their professional opinion there is a need. The primary mission is to succeed at whatever we identify as our goal, not expand holiday card lists.
We seek diversity in organizations based on ethnicity, culture, gender etc. all being important qualities, but for success (and progress), we also need out-of-the-box thinkers, people unafraid to question the status quo, injecting new concepts, new ideas, new efficiencies and processes. The freedom to be non-conforming brings the opportunity to view things from a different perspective, leading to sometimes transformational results. We can’t, indeed shouldn’t, have everyone agreeing on everything all the time.
From past performances at the State Department concerning the mishandling of emails, we can fault the end users for their deliberate or inadvertent handling of U.S. government emails, but in the world of a complex and mature U.S. Government systems there should be no opportunity for sensitive emails to leave the enterprise because of policies, procedures and implemented mechanisms. I therefore place part of the blame of mishandling of U.S. government emails on those who were either coerced into subverting the policies and procedures or unknowingly or deliberately allowing the misconfiguration of the email system. All IT management and administrative personnel should be fully committed to refining, implementing, and monitoring a system that ensures no email can be routed or sent to a private email server and all email traversing the State Department enterprise is stored and available for retrieval by the authorized party.
A note about U.S. government emails: In an organization as complex as the U.S. government the misuse of a simple unclassified email can, if coupled with a few other unclassified emails could provide an adversary with situational awareness of a planned operation or action of the U.S. government. Therefore, government emails, or even private emails about government actions or functions must be treated with the utmost caution.The cumulative effect of information (aggregation of information) can result in unintended consequences that place the lives of our citizens in danger.
