Why Hillary Clinton’s E-Mail Server Is Less Odd Than You Think
There are more pragmatic than pernicious reasons why a government official would want to use personal e-mail and their own server
March 11, 2015 |By Wendy M. Grossman
People bypass the careful arrangements made for them by IT departments all the time: They forward corporate e-mail to private addresses on Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo!; they insert untested USB sticks into machines; and they copy files onto their own devices. Usually they do these sorts of things in order to get work done more efficiently. In running a private mail server Hillary Clinton was doing a more complex version of the sort of thing millions of other Americans do.
Calling Clinton's setup "home brew" makes it sound as though she got someone's nephew to knock together some untested code running on a Raspberry Pi computer. The reality is she seems to have used well-known, well-regarded suppliers. Political point-scoring aside, the fact that many are calling her arrangement home brewed shows how much the widespread use of Web mail has changed expectations. As recently as a decade ago it was not uncommon for those with some technical ability to run their own mail servers. Now it's considered kind of weird, even among geeks who deplore the privacy-invasive centralization of such services.
I set my server up in 2003 to do three things: consolidate myriad historical e-mail addresses; reduce spam; and ensure I controlled my most critical communications function. My setup works just as well as Gmail or Hotmail but no one scans my messages to target advertising and no one can get the complete back archive by cutting a secret deal. Clinton's motivations are unlikely to be identical but I'd expect control to be on her list, especially given her political history. Having her own server also frees her from changing her address every time her work status changes. It also keeps her from being at the mercy of mass-market providers that chop and change services for their benefit, not hers.
The two main reasons for the public to be concerned about her decision to use a home-based e-mail server rather than the one officially maintained by the Department of State are transparency and security.
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http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-hillary-clinton-s-e-mail-server-is-less-odd-than-you-think/