So user On The Cusp asked for my riff as an IT pro and Hillary's servers. I started to answer, and suddenly had nearly a thousand words of comment before I realized "Oh hell, this is another entry, isn't it?"

For those so interested, here it is:

The startup I mentioned working for was a very strange concept where we would become a matchmaker for startups looking for angel investors. "garage.com: We startup startups". Yes, that really was the tagline.

And if that seems insanely meta, it's possible you didn't live through the late nineties. I both envy and pity those people, as it was one hell of a wild ride, but DAMN, that hangover sucked dirt.

I was the server guy. I built everything virtually from scratch, from converting iMacs (a long story itself) into 1U rack servers (basically really thin servers you can stick in black metal frames), network switches, dealing with getting the bandwidth; Basically, if it involved communication phone or online, it was my job to make it work.

Since we dealt with investment stuff we fell under the strangely specific gaze of the SEC. This placed some specific reporting requirements on how information came and left the company. For example, because the whole internet thing was still insanely new (this was 1998) the SEC still required paper records for every e-mail received or sent.

Yes, ALL of it.

I was the one who came up with a way to capture all e-mails sent, have them printed out automatically, and handed each box off to admin for storage filing.

Fortunately the following year the SEC began to realize that, not only was it was killing whole forests of trees for documentation that would have little to no bearing on any future audits or investigations >99% of the time, but that FINDING anything in said documentation would be neigh on impossible. They also seemed to discover that it was possible to put that same information on ad only DVD's that would solve both issues, not to mention the very real possibility that those damn boxes would put my back out.

The point is, the garage.com e-mail server was a fairly secure server, in a fairly secure environment, monitored by people who were fully non-disclosed. While being exposed to private/privileged information was a common occurrence, as the IT guy with complete access to everything (it's the only way we can back everything up, know that there isn't a problem with corrupted data, and so on...), I could literally just ignore it. Mind you, since I have a kind of freakish memory for things, I likely absorbed it more than I was consciously aware, but I know I was never the source of a single leak.

However, under no circumstances would I consider that system suitable for classified information. I didn't matter that the servers were secured in a windowless room behind a dead-bolted door, or that you would still need specific accounts and passwords to directly access the information. Even the harddrives were locked in their assorted enclosures, which in turn were in locked cabinets that limited access to any of the actual ports or cables.

The problem is that there is always a risk of a digital break in or point to point interception (oftimes referred to as a "Man in the Middle" attack) of the data being stored there. It's not a matter of how good a job I did as an administrator; Witness even today the stream of "Oops!" stories about server security, even at organizations at the top of the food chain, usually due to zero day bugs (that crack in your security that you didn't know was there, until someone finds it... and they weren't doing it as a "white hat" hacker, sadly) that allowed them to See What They Weren't Supposed To.

So yes, the requirements for properly handling and securing classified communications appear to be insane, but they're designed to prevent, however inadvertently, leaking of sensitive information. Regardless of how it was set up, by it's very nature Hillary's server did not meet those criteria. And it was completely unnecessary; save for Hillary's clear desire to prevent non-classified documentation from falling into the FOIA bucket.

Note that I don't believe Hillary was actually hiding anything all that terrible, any more than she is by not releasing the transcripts; She's just developed that same unfortunate political paranoia that has done in politicians better or worse than she is about the mass of data they leave lying about, and the monsters that might be pieced together from it. Hillary's even said as much about the transcripts, about not wanting to give her opponents the ammo that could be lurking in those documents.

The millisecond classified documentation went from a secured to unsecured server, crimes were committed. The nature of that crime makes it insanely difficult to assign guilt; Some would argue that using the server was the crime, others that she didn't intend to violate laws. Of course the old saw that "ignorance of the crime is no excuse" is easy to bandy about, but there are levels of arcana involved in the endless regulations that surround us like a hazy cloud of venn diagrams, overlapping departments and categories that can completely contradict each other's guidance.

So no, I don't think anyone could create a scenario that would really bring down Hillary, or anyone close enough to matter. But by my own admission at the start of this piece, I Am Not A Lawyer, nor Machiavellian enough to see a way to tie Richelieu's noose around her neck; Other's with greater imagination than mine could.

So, possible, but very improbable, considering the current state of the right wing.