‘In theory but not in practice’

Those are two keys words in federal open records law, as Hillary Clinton was apparently using a personal email server while conducting the nation’s business as secretary of state. According to this story from the Associated Press, Clinton retains ownership of the emails that are on her personal account, even though they should be subject to the Freedom of Information Act:

In theory but not in practice, Clinton’s official emails would be accessible to anyone who requested copies under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act. Under the law, citizens and foreigners can compel the government to turn over copies of federal records for zero or little cost. Since Clinton effectively retained control over emails in her private account even after she resigned in 2013, the government would have to negotiate with Clinton to turn over messages it can’t already retrieve from the inboxes of federal employees she emailed.

The AP has waited more than a year under the open records law for the State Department to turn over some emails covering Clinton’s tenure as the nation’s top diplomat, although the agency has never suggested that it didn’t possess all her emails.

As the AP report also mentions, President Barack Obama signed a bill into law last year that prohibited government officials from using private email accounts to conduct business “unless they retain copies of messages in their official account or forward copies to their government accounts within 20 days.” Although the measure didn’t actually become law until after Clinton left office, this seems to beg the question: Why were government officials allowed to use private email accounts for work in the first place? It shouldn’t matter if a government official claims to be forwarding all business emails to a public account from a private email address. This provides too many opportunities for abuse. Federal employees and officials should have been conducting public business with government email accounts the whole time. The Internet is not exactly a new thing. Where was this legislation 20 years ago?