Sunday, April 26, 2015

Russians and Chinese read Obama's Email

I guess it should come as no surprise, but in an article in today's New York Times [Michael Schmidt and David Sanger, Russian Hackers Read Obama's Unclassified Emails, Officials Say ] declares that the Russians were involved in the latest email skimming at the White House and the President was included.  As least some of his correspondence, and those of some staff, was being read by the Russians who were also reading the State Department email, including no doubt, the "private" email of Hillary Clinton.  This same article also mentions the old news that the Chinese have been doing the same thing since Obama ran for office the first time.  

The White House needs to know that we have the technology to make secure email.  It will not be very easy to use, but it is secure.  It will be encrypted at rest and on the fly.  It won't be able to use Hillary's email server in the basement of her house, but it will be safe from anyone trying to hack into it.  It can be stored encrypted and made reasonably secure against phishing attacks.  It won't work with GMail or Outlook, but it will communicate just fine with every staff member chosen to use it.  Government communications can be secure or not, as we choose.  Most of the seniors, with the possible exception of George W. Bush, choose not to use secure communications for anything but classified information.  All they have tdo do is think about this for a minute or two.  Do we really want people in foreign governments reading the email that our most important government officials send to one another?  Are we willing to do something about it?  The answer seems to be No.  

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