There seems to be a lot of confusion of why, even if dating back to Albright, having the business of the Secretary of State of this republic outside the ecology of security and compliance is a big deal.
First, we have to start with one of the least sexy of the United States Codes, Title 44.
That gave us the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).
You probably know them better as archive.org.
Why this is important below ye olde orange squigadoodle.
So, we might as well use we, the people's, archive to look up Title 44, particularly Chapter 31. Chapter 31 is why we are here.
http://www.archives.gov/...
§ 3105. Safeguards
The head of each Federal agency shall establish safeguards against the removal or loss of records the head of such agency determines to be necessary and required by regulations of the Archivist. Safeguards shall include making it known to officials and employees of the agency--
(1) that records in the custody of the agency are not to be alienated or destroyed except in accordance with sections 3301-3314 of this title, and
(2) the penalties provided by law for the unlawful removal or destruction of records.
Unfortunately I have to make a judgment call not knowing the technical and social environment surrounding Hillary Clinton or her subordinates and the servers in question. I always err to laziness and ease over malefice.
I would also like to point out that § 3106 lists the following as violations:
any actual, impending, or threatened unlawful removal, defacing, alteration, corruption, deletion, erasure, or other destruction of records in the custody of the agency
That is not the problem, alienation from the secured ecosystem is.
Basically, the government has long set up safeguards so history gets recorded no matter how flattering it may be in thirty or a hundred years.
Think the Nixon tapes and LBJ tapes.
We are what we are and our history is our record and our record is our worth. That is why the NARA is so important.
Here is what the NARA has to say, by edict of USC and based on rule of law:
http://www.gpo.gov/...
Subpart C—Additional Require- ments for Electronic Records
§1236.20 What are appropriate record- keeping systems for electronic records?
(4) Maintain records security. Prevent the unauthorized access, modification, or deletion of declared records, and ensure that appropriate audit trails are in place to track use of the records.
(6) Preserve records. Ensure that all records in the system are retrievable and usable for as long as needed to con- duct agency business and to meet NARA-approved dispositions. Agencies must develop procedures to enable the migration of records and their associ- ated metadata to new storage media or formats in order to avoid loss due to media decay or technology obsolescence.
We have arrived at the very root of the issue strapped down by layers of bureaucratic tape. And here is where former-Secretary of State Clinton, and possibly back to Albright, have been going off the administrative rail:
§1236.22 What are the additional requirements for managing electronic mail records?
(a) Agencies must issue instructions to staff on the following retention and management requirements for electronic mail records:
(1) The names of sender and all addressee(s) and date the message was sent must be preserved for each electronic mail record in order for the context of the message to be understood. The agency may determine that other metadata is needed to meet agency business needs, e.g., receipt information.
This was obviously never passed down to subordinates. If the server is outside the ecosystem, then how does the agency determine the relevance of the metadata?
The NARA decides that, not any other agency or agency head. USC edified.
§ 1236.23
(5) Draft documents that are cir- culated on electronic mail systems may be records if they meet the cri- teria specified in 36 CFR 1222.10(b) of this subchapter.
(b) Agencies that allow employees to send and receive official electronic mail messages using a system not oper- ated by the agency must ensure that Federal records sent or received on such systems are preserved in the ap- propriate agency recordkeeping sys- tem.
=
1236.26
(d) Except for those electronic mail records within the scope of paragraph (c) of this section:
(1) Agencies must not use an elec- tronic mail system to store the record- keeping copy of electronic mail mes- sages identified as Federal records un- less that system has all of the features specified in § 1236.20(b) of this part.
(2) If the electronic mail system is not designed to be a recordkeeping sys- tem, agencies must instruct staff on how to copy Federal records from the electronic mail system to a record- keeping system.
If you ever wonder what at the end of the day this is all about, its that. That right there.
Probably wondering why I mentioned Albright, that's because the NARA did in their request for more information from the US Department of State.
http://www.archives.gov/...
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is concerned with the events outlined in the March 2, 2015, New York Times article by MichaelS. Schmidt regarding the potential alienation of Federal email records created or received by former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. The article also suggests potential issues with the Federal email records created or received by former Secretaries of State dating back to Secretary Madeleine K. Albright.
Makes sense, Albright was around at the dawn of the modern internet. Probably start then and ease in the office culture let it continue.
Now, why are these emails important?
Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, a lot of her emails were born classified.
Exclusive: Dozens of Clinton emails were classified from the start, U.S. rules suggest
NEW YORK | BY JONATHAN ALLEN
http://www.reuters.com/...
In the small fraction of emails made public so far, Reuters has found at least 30 email threads from 2009, representing scores of individual emails, that include what the State Department's own "Classified" stamps now identify as so-called 'foreign government information.' The U.S. government defines this as any information, written or spoken, provided in confidence to U.S. officials by their foreign counterparts.
This sort of information, which the department says Clinton both sent and received in her emails, is the only kind that must be "presumed" classified, in part to protect national security and the integrity of diplomatic interactions, according to U.S. regulations examined by Reuters.
"It's born classified," said J. William Leonard, a former director of the U.S. government's Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO). Leonard was director of ISOO, part of the White House's National Archives and Records Administration, from 2002 until 2008, and worked for both the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations.
"If a foreign minister just told the secretary of state something in confidence, by U.S. rules that is classified at the moment it's in U.S. channels and U.S. possession," he said in a telephone interview, adding that for the State Department to say otherwise was "blowing smoke."
Fix it. Get back in the ecosystem Kerry, if you have not done so.
Though they are not born yet, future historians demand it.
Plus, those emails and cables are property of We, the People, and never to one single citizen. No matter what party or ambition.