(Bloomberg) -- Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal e-mail account while U.S. Secretary of State may not have broken the law though it exposed her to hacking and ran counter to the Obama administration’s policy of preserving electronic records.
Security specialists say she also failed to take adequate precautions to safeguard the account -- which she used for all her official business.
“It’s not clear to me whether any laws were broken,” said John Wonderlich, policy director of the Sunlight Foundation, a Washington-based nonprofit that advocates for government transparency. “What clearly was violated was our public expectations for how public records work.”
The revelations come as Clinton is preparing to announce a campaign for the Democratic nomination for president as soon as April. Her activities at the State Department and her work with the foundation already are providing fodder for Republican critics who say Clinton hasn’t been fully transparent about her activities at the State Department.
The use of a private e-mail by Clinton, who served as Secretary of State from 2009 until February 2013, was discovered after a congressional committee sought Clinton’s e-mails during its investigation into the terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012. The attack killed four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens.
Deputy Press Secretary Marie Harf said Secretary of State John Kerry is the first in his position to rely primarily on a state.gov e-mail account.
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