Nothing Like Public Email

  In Email 101 every college student is taught that what you say to a person on email may not be interpreted quite the way you thought it would be, or it might be exposed by someone with a political agenda.  Office politics is sometimes just as vicious as what we see at the national level.

What we are seeing in the exposure of the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign is a stream of statesments that do not fit the narrative being told by the candidate.  That is because the candidate did not say the same thing to different groups, which is apparently a sin of some sort, and may have set out to undermine the opposition by a series what some call  "dirty tricks" and others call "politics as usual".  Neither of these are at the root of the problem. We have had those since the 1800s. What we have not had was theft of the internal communications of political organizations on this scale.

I wonder what would have happened if the email and data stored in the DNC and campaign had been secure.  Secure means nobody can read it unless they are on the distribution for it.  They can copy and send it to someone else, but it will retain the original source.   That would have been good for them and for all of us who have to listen to the endless nonsense being spewed out by every major network.  But, email is not very secure when they choose to not secure it, use devices that can easily be hacked, and get their political buddies to do computer services for themselves.  They get what they deserve.

However, the other aspect of this is the writing side.  Email should be written for the public, and I do mean the public at large, not just posterity.  If it cannot be secured, it must be written as if for the public, because it will be sooner than later.  Some of the things being said in those emails are clearly not written for anyone outside the inner circle in the campaign.  These are things that only friends say in the quiet of their own home, and they better be good friends too;  cocktail friends are not close enough.

There used to be a rule about Top Secret information that made a lot of sense.  If you have something really, really sensitive to talk about, make that an in-person talk, briefing, or exchange.  Don't write it down unless you have to, and then only when that is recorded and tracked by who had access to what.  It is burdensome and difficult to do this, but it will keep secrets secret.  People find it too hard to do basic security of their secrets, and for that they also get what they deserve.

So, while others consider the meaning of those emails, I find it has more meaning than the content.  It means we have forgotten how to keep secrets secret.  It is too hard, I guess.