The Clinton e-mail scandal: a double standard?

[Commentary] Underpinning the coverage of the Hillary Clinton email scandal is a double standard: She is being pilloried for email practices that are widely used throughout government from local school districts up to the federal level, from junior up to senior administrators and from many past as well as current officials.

Compared to my local Maryland public school system, which only retains email for 30 days, these other email retention policies may be paragons of openness. Because Maryland's Public Information Act allows up to 30 days to fulfill an information request, the school system's 30-day retention policy means emails with potentially embarrassing information are effectively exempt from disclosure. No practical penalties appear to exist for deleting emails in response to a Public Information Act request, either. So let's stop pretending that Clinton's email practices are uniquely bad. Public email record keeping laws are riddled with loopholes, which public officials routinely exploit. Then, because hiding information implies having acted adverse to the public interest, they have a strong incentive to deny and otherwise cover up such practices.

A new paradigm for government email public policy is needed. Public officials should be banned from using private email for public business. Period. Doing otherwise should be meaningfully penalized, including with firing. If personal and public emails are commingled, any privacy right over personal emails should be forfeited. And a mechanism should be created for one trusted independent party to archive email records while another verifies claims about the existence and contents of those records.

[Snider is the president of iSolon.org]