Hillary and respect for IT and her email server

By now, everyone knows about yesterday’s FBI announcement about the Hillary Clinton email server investigation. James Comey’s words, “extremely careless” were widely quoted. As expected, the Trump camp responded with much sound and fury, signifying nothing. And the Hillary camp responded by claiming vindication. Both camps are wrong. What a surprise.

I downloaded and read a copy of the transcript and listened to a recording of the whole announcement today. Read this paragraph from the Comey statement:

“I have so far used the singular term, ’email server,’ in describing the referral that began our investigation. It turns out to have been more complicated than that. Secretary Clinton used several different servers and administrators of those servers during her four years at the State Department, and used numerous mobile devices to view and send email on that personal domain. As new servers and equipment were employed, older servers were taken out of service, stored, and decommissioned in various ways. Piecing all of that back together — to gain as full an understanding as possible of the ways in which personal email was used for government work—has been a painstaking undertaking, requiring thousands of hours of effort.”

I said earlier that if I were in Hillary’s shoes back in 2009, I might have put in my own email server too. I haven’t heard anything to change my mind, especially given what we’ve learned recently about government data breaches.

The email server isn’t the issue. The real issue is respect. Why does somebody use several different servers and administrators over four years? As somebody who delivers server administration services, I can think of only one reason – she was either an unreasonably demanding customer or she hired amatuers willing to work cheap.

Good email administrators are professionals and the former Secretary of State should have respected the professionals she hired for this purpose – not switched them out like changing clothes. I would love to talk to a few of the people she brought in and then got rid of. Were they professionals that she treated badly or were they amatuers who didn’t know what they were doing? Either answer is bad for Hillary.

What about Trump? He continues to make a fool of himself and too many Americans are too willing to follow him off a cliff.

For the first time in my life, I’m faced with two awful choices for President. Maybe a 3rd alternative with a credible chance of winning will come along.