Colin Powell advised Hillary Clinton on how to skirt e-mail security as US secretary of state

One of the more notable aspects of 2016’s US presidential race is the sheer amount of attention given to Hillary Clinton’s use of e-mail while she served as secretary of state from 2009, with Republicans questioning whether she used proper security procedures. But what about the email habits of her predecessors in that role?

Democratic Congressman Elijah Cummings has made public an exchange between Clinton and Republican Colin Powell, who served as secretary of state during the first term of president George W. Bush. In it, Powell answers two questions from Clinton as she prepares for her new role in January 2009: “What were the restrictions on your use of your blackberry?” and “Did you use it in your personal office?” Notably in the exchange, Powell says, "I didn’t have a BlackBerry. What I did do was have a personal computer that was hooked up to a private phone line (sounds ancient.) So I could communicate with a wide range of friends directly without going through the State Department servers. I even used it to do business with some foreign leaders and some of the senior folks in the Department on their personal email accounts. I did the same thing on the road in hotels."