Current Affairs for dummies, slash people who actually have lives and don’t have time to read the news
Hillary Clinton and her emails. So there’s been a lot of talk about Clinton using a personal email address when she was Secretary of State (basically the American version of Foreign minister).
She foolishly broke protocol (and potentially the law) and used a personal account to send emails ranging from the mundane to the embarrassing. Some embarrassing for personal reasons, for example in one case about her feeling left out of White House meetings. Others embarrassing because she potentially accidentally revealed state secrets in them.
Now if we’ve learned anything from the Edward Snowden Wikileaks fiasco it’s that anything emailed to anyone ever is being read by about 5 different governments. Clinton choosing to not use a more secure official State Department server was very stupid. Although potentially even worse than that, is the way she’s handled it.
The number one rule of crisis PR is just come out and admit everything all at once, take the hit then move on. She has withheld information, ‘forgotten stuff’ and lied. All of this has massively harmed her Presidential Candidate campaign. The FBI has now been called in to evaluate the emails she sent (including some she said she had ‘forgotten’ were deleted).
Clinton needs to take ownership of this mess and come out with everything all at once, only this will stop the continuous slow damage being done to her reputation. It’s been shown that Russian hackers most likely managed to access these emails and if she in fact did disclose classified information, she really could be in a lot of trouble.
Financial Implications: Further emphasis on cyber security and government snooping has helped pusher cyber defence companies up. If the Russians did get a hold of classified information this could result in a stepping up in cyber attacks.
Side note, keep an eye on the legal battle between the U.S. and European (specifically Ireland) based tech companies. The U.S. wants them to hand over the social media/electronic communication of suspected criminals (rather than just terrorists). Could be beef.
