Homeland Security Leaders Bent Rules on Private E-Mail

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Bloomberg:

Jeh Johnson, the secretary of homeland security, and 28 of his senior staffers have been using private Web-based e-mail from their work computers for over a year, a practice criticized by cybersecurity experts and advocates of government transparency.

 

The department banned such private e-mail on DHS computers in April 2014. Top DHS officials were granted informal waivers, according to a top DHS official who said that he saw the practice as a national security risk. The official said the exempt staffers included Deputy Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Chief of Staff Christian Marrone and General Counsel Stevan Bunnell.

 

Asked about the exceptions on Monday, the DHS press secretary, Marsha Catron, confirmed that some officials had been exempted. "Going forward," she said, "all access to personal webmail accounts has been suspended."

 

Future exceptions are to be granted only by the chief of staff. Catron said that a "recent internal review" had found the chief of staff and some others were unaware that they had had access to webmail.

 

The DHS rule, articulated last year after hackers first breached the Office of Personnel Management, states: "The use of Internet Webmail (Gmail, Yahoo, AOL) or other personal email accounts is not authorized over DHS furnished equipment or network connections." Johnson and the 28 other senior officials sought and received informal waivers at different times over the past year, the official said. Catron said exceptions were decided on a case-by-case basis by the chief information officer, Luke McCormack. DHS employees are permitted to use their government e-mail accounts for limited personal use.

 

Erica Paulson, a spokeswoman for the DHS Office of the Inspector General, said that the office does not confirm or deny the existence of any open investigations.

 

It remains unclear whether Johnson and the other officials conducted DHS business on their private webmail accounts. (The DHS spokeswoman said "the use of personal e-mail for official purposes is strictly prohibited.") If even one work-related e-mail was sent or received, they could be in violation of regulations and laws governing the preservation of federal records, said Jason R. Baron, a former director of litigation at the National Archives and Records Administration.

 

"I suppose it is remotely conceivable that in seeking a waiver, 20 or more government officials could all be wishing to talk to each other through a Web-based e-mail service about such matters as baseball games or retirement luncheons they might be attending," he said. "But it is simply not reasonable to assume that in seeking a waiver that the officials involved were only contemplating using a commercial network for personal (that is, non-official) communications."

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The Hillary model of security.