When talking heads discussed the Hillary Clinton email scandal on Sunday, longtime Clinton confidant James Carville defended her practice of setting up her own email server instead of the secure one provided by the State Department.
"I suspect she didn’t want Louie Gohmert rifling through her emails," Carville said, referring to the Republican congressman from Texas who has been one of the former secretary of state's sharpest critics.
Carville's flippant defense of Clinton set off a firestorm of negative commentary on Twitter,
notes the Bizpacreview website.
Bloomberg Politics' Mark Halperin, noted that "Carville on @ThisWeekABC says he 'suspects' @HillaryClinton used private email b/c she didn't want Hill oversight. Quite an admission."
The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday posted a video explaining the pluses and minuses of using a private email server like Mrs. Clinton's instead of a secure one maintained by the State Department.
From a security perspective, it appears that the latter method would make it much less likely that a hacker or hostile group would be able to breach the security firewalls of a secure server overseen by a government IT team.
But it seems clear from
the Journal's analysis that using a private email server would make it easier for someone to evade congressional oversight and conceal correspondence from the public.
Using a service provider like Yahoo or GoDaddy, it is possible to set up such a system, according to the Journal. A user can choose their own domain name and manage their account using the Cloud.
A person looking to set up such a server would purchase a computer most likely running on Microsoft Windows or a Linux operating system. One could set it up at home and be connected with the Internet. Such a system would be completely confidential.
"It's not so easy" to maintain a secure server, the Journal said, adding that it would need to be monitored constantly and that in Mrs. Clinton's case, those responsible for monitoring her computer security would need to be vigilant about moving quickly to install updates and "patch" any security vulnerabilities that were found.
But "Hillary Clinton was able to maintain her privacy as many wonder just exactly what she had to hide," the Journal concluded.