musyokiones

Hillary Clinton’s Email Server

Max Langen

Florida International University

CGS 3095 Fall 2016

Abstract

Was Ms. Clinton’s use of a private email server before and during her

tenure as secretary of state ethical? What were her duties to protect

classified and secret information, and did she meet these? Does the

generally inadequate level of security on government servers, and the use

of private email accounts by prior secretaries of state, and other

government departments, change our analysis?

Max Langen

CGS 3095 – Fall 2016

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Title of the Paper

1 INTRODUCTION

This paper investigates Ms. Clinton’s private email server and the data insecurity that she

authorized through its use. We will analyze her actions using the ACM code of ethics, and

conclude that her use of a private email server was unethical. Every other email written by any

colleague in every other department of the US government that dealt with classified information

was also written on a non-classified server. We conclude that the fact that not a single colleague

of Ms. Clinton’s acted ethically reduces but does not eliminate the unethical nature of Ms.

Clinton’s actions.

We will perform this analysis starting with a statement of the facts in section 2, followed

by comparison with specific relevant provisions of the ACM code of ethics in section 3, and

concluding in section 4 that Ms. Clinton’s use of private email servers, while possibly more

secure than government servers, and a 100% unanimous practice of government employees, was

unethical.

Max Langen

CGS 3095 – Fall 2016

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2. Clinton Never Complied with Federal Data Procedures

Ms. Clinton never complied fully with the department of state’s procedures for data

protection. At all times while serving as secretary of state some or all of her emails were routed

through her blackberry and available on a private server1 with less than optimal security.2

Neither her Blackberry, nor her private email server, appear to have been hacked,

possibly because Mr. Trump was not yet at that time a candidate and his friend, Mr. Putin, had

not yet instructed Russian hackers to collect information for Mr/ Trump’s campaign.3

2.1 Government Data Procedures Offer Feeble Security

It is well know that the US government hires with an eye toward backstabbing, indolence,

and ignorance. Although this is an incorrect statement of the facts (public sector procedures

destroy the ability of government employees to deliver good work, but government employees

are not lazy4), the effect is that government servers are insecure. In fact, the CIA director’s

emails, kept following all government procedures, were hacked by a teenager.5

Considering the embarrassing or laughably low level of data protection used by the

federal government,6 Ms. Clinton may have implemented a significant improvement on the

level of security that the official and proper government servers offered. We cannot know this

because the government lies about whether it is hacked, and lies about its level of data security,7

making any comparison impossible.

1 O’Harrow

2 Wikipedia

3 CNBC

4 Frank & Lewis

5 Zetter

6 Henderson

7 Gallagher

Max Langen

CGS 3095 – Fall 2016

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3. Comparison of Actions with ACM Code of Ethics

3.1 Ethical Actor

Our ethical actor is Ms. Hillary Clinton.

3.2 Action being Analyzed

Failure to keep all emails relating to her job as secretary of state for the United States on

the legally mandated government server.

3.3 Ethical Standard

This paper will analyze Ms. Clinton’s actions using the ACM ethical standard8

3.4 Specific Provision(s) of Ethical Standard

I will use the following provisions of the ACM:

1.3 Be honest and trustworthy. Honesty is an essential component of trust. Without trust an organization cannot function effectively. The honest computing professional will not make deliberately false or deceptive claims about a system or system design, but will instead provide full disclosure of all pertinent system limitations and problems. 1.8 Honor confidentiality. The principle of honesty extends to issues of confidentiality of information whenever one has made an explicit promise to honor confidentiality or, implicitly, when private information not directly related to the performance of one's duties becomes available. The ethical concern is to respect all obligations of confidentiality to employers, clients, and users unless discharged from such obligations by requirements of the law or other principles of this Code. 2.3 Know and respect existing laws pertaining to professional work. ACM members must obey existing local, state,province, national, and international laws unless there is a compelling ethical basis not to do so. Policies and procedures of the organizations in which one participates must also be obeyed. But compliance must be balanced with the recognition that sometimes existing laws and rules may be immoral or inappropriate and, therefore, must be challenged. Violation of a law or regulation may be ethical when that law or rule has inadequate moral basis or when it conflicts with another law judged to be more important. If one decides to violate a

8 ACM

Max Langen

CGS 3095 – Fall 2016

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law or rule because it is viewed as unethical, or for any other reason, one must fully accept responsibility for one's actions and for the consequences. 2.6 Honor contracts, agreements, and assigned responsibilities. Honoring one's commitments is a matter of integrity and honesty. For the computer professional this includes ensuring that system elements perform as intended. Also, when one contracts for work with another party, one has an obligation to keep that party properly informed about progress toward completing that work.

3.5 Comparison of Actions with Specific Provisions: Ethical

Does our analysis change given that

The FBI found that all classified emails on Clinton’s server were drafted on “unclassified systems,” meaning that they were stored and sent from unclassified servers, violating the same policies as those on Clinton’s personal server.

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We have to answer two questions First, if everyone else is doing it, does that make it

OK? This is not a sufficient excuse for unethical action. We might ask a second question,

however, which is if a law is not often or not ever complied with, is the law intended to be

followed, or has society established a custom of non-compliance, and in effect set the standard

lower?

Using this second form of the question, in which no classified email on Ms. Clinton’s

server was sent from a classified server (0% compliance with the law), we find that the custom of

confidentiality that Ms. Clinton is measured by is not the law, and under the custom a non-

classified server is acceptable. Under this analysis, Ms. Clinton’s use of a private server is

ethical.

Alternatively we may claim that Ms. Clinton’s use of a private server actually reduced

the chance of her emails being hacked. Under rule 1.8 she improves the confidentiality of her

emails by storing them on a more secure private server, and under 2.6 she serves the American

public by increasing the security of her emails.

9 Wikipedia

Max Langen

CGS 3095 – Fall 2016

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We cannot correctly estimate whether her actions are ethical under this analysis, because,

while we know that her private server had inadequate security, but that no emails were taken

from it, we do not know anything about the security of the department of state servers, or

whether they were hacked during the same period. Assuming that the security of those servers

matches the generally low levels of government servers, we would find Ms. Clinton’s actions

ethical.

3.6 Comparison of Actions with Specific Provisions: Unethical

While we may be amused by the idea of a successful politician being either honest or

trustworthy, we nonetheless require, under 1.3, for Ms. Clinton’s actions to be honest and

trustworthy. In true Clinton style she has never given a direct or straight answer to any question

on this subject. This action fails a requirement of honesty and trustworthiness.

As secretary of state she was legally required to treat her emails as confidential

information to be kept under the unknown but presumed low data security of the department of

state. She made minimal attempts to comply with this law while serving as secretary of state,

and fails the ethical test of 2.3, to respect existing laws pertaining to her professional work as

secretary of state.

Max Langen

CGS 3095 – Fall 2016

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4. CONCLUSIONS

An argument is made that Ms. Clinton complied with the custom of 100% of her

colleagues in keeping classified emails on non-classified servers, and increased data security of

her emails by storing them on a private server rather than the possibly insecure department of

state servers, and that for these two reasons her actions are ethical.

We are more persuaded by her failure to deal with the issue in an honest and trustworthy

way, and her failure to respect laws pertaining to her position as secretary of state, and find that

her actions are, on balance, unethical.

.

Max Langen

CGS 3095 – Fall 2016

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REFERENCES

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Clinton_email_controversy

[2] http://globalnews.ca/news/3035703/hillary-clinton-email-scandal-timeline/

[3] https://www.acm.org/about-acm/acm-code-of-ethics-and-professional-conduct

[4] https://courses.washington.edu/pbaf527m/govt%20employees%20final%20examp.pdf

[5] https://www.wired.com/2015/10/hacker-who-broke-into-cia-director-john-brennan-email-

tells-how-he-did-it/

[6] http://www.networkworld.com/article/3055446/security/us-government-data-security-is-

an-embarrassment.html

[7] https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/how-clintons-email-scandal-took-

root/2016/03/27/ee301168-e162-11e5-846c-10191d1fc4ec_story.html

[8] http://www.cnbc.com/2016/09/27/dnc-breach-was-likely-russia-not-400-pound-hacker-

law-enforcement-says.html

[9] http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/07/fdic-was-hacked-by-china-and-cio-covered-it-up/