Thursday, September 10, 2015

Technie Question. I'm confused.

Hillary Clinton's recent boo-hoo "apologies" seem ludicrous to me.  For one thing, her eyes are suddenly extra blue.  For another, her voice sounds phony.

Whatever.

Here's my question....

Do email addresses and web servers equate?

I have several email accounts. Here at home, all my web communication transmits via Verizon FIOS, which provides web servers.

When I'm at work or at the public library, I log onto the web and into my email accounts (All of them!) via the servers at those locations.  Logging on at work requires nothing on my part; the logging on just happens.  At the public library, via the "Accept" button that appears on my iPad's screen, I have to grant permission every time to log onto the public library's server.

Hillary is apologizing all over the place for having a personal email account.  Is that the same thing as a private server?

And is the Secretary of State really allowed to have a private server to use for official government business?

I don't personally know anyone who has his own private server sitting in corner. Do you?

6 comments:

Nicoenarg said...

No personal email and personal server are two different things. A Gmail account is for example a personal email. Your emails and other related things are stored on Google's servers (fancy term for computers that host applications like websites, email servers etc).

On the other hand a private server simply a computer that can serve up various applications on a network. One of these applications/services possibly can be email.

PS: I have my own personal "virtual" server. Its basically a computer owned by a company in Canada. I have access to it to (I rent it out) be able to do with it as I please. However, unlike Hillary I don't use it for any nefarious purposes, unfortunately.

Nicoenarg said...

"And is the Secretary of State really allowed to have a private server to use for official government business?"

I don't know. But if it is allowed, it shouldn't be!

The people of the US should have the power to keep politicians in check. It is extremely difficult to keep politicians in check if you have to BEG them to hand over files that need to be checked to make sure they're not doing anything untoward. That is whats happening these days with Hillary. The whole "I have done the little people a favor by handing over what I wanted to hand over." attitude by Hillary is exactly what politicians should not be in a position of having.

Here's how things work normally. When you become a government official, you are assigned an official email address. I am assuming for the state department its something like hillaryiamdeadbrokemillionaireclinton@state.gov, this email address pertains to a server owned by the state department and hence by the people of the United States. Any email communication in and out of this email address is saved on that server which is not under the personal control of the person using the email address.

This adds extra layers of security and checks and balances. Also, THEORETICALLY, there is a dedicated IT team making sure they patch up all the security holes and make sure the server can not be hacked. This is something you don't get with a server in a barn or a basement.

All activity on these accounts is also THEORETICALLY logged, who logged in to which account at what time, who deleted what at what time etc.

Anyway, thats probably more information than what you were looking for but it baffles me that more people aren't concerned about this whole deal with Hillary. This completely undermines the power of the people and gives unchecked powers to government officials.

Epaminondas said...

There are many server operating systems on which EMAIL SERVER software can be installed and thus both personal email and the server become one, and all emails are stored in on place.

One such example today would be Windows Server 2012, and Microsoft Exchange

Always On Watch said...

Nico and Epa,
Thanks.

Is it your judgment that Hillary was up to something untoward with this private server, which, apparently, was off site?

Nicoenarg said...

In my opinion: Yes.

There is no justification for a government official to want to have so much control over their email communication other than 1) they don't trust the government they work for, in this case the US or 2) they have something to hide.

Epaminondas said...

IMHO - yes, she believed it was best to have complete control over the physical media on which the emails resided by having the actual email server owned.

And right now, while there are problems for her candidcacy, IMHO she'd be in MORE legal trouble than Petraus otherwise. Especially since it seems obv that Obama hates her guts