Transparency: Homeland Security used private e-mail accounts

The secretary of Homeland Security (DHS) and many of his staff have been using private e-mail at work for over a year, much to the dismay of security experts and open government advocates. The DHS banned the use of private e-mail in April of 2014, but staffers obtained waivers last year allowing them to check personal e-mail on the internet. (Bloomberg News, July 20, 2015, by Josh Rogin)

DHS secretary Jeh Johnson said he stopped the practice of checking his personal e-mail at work for security reasons. He said he did not conduct department business on his personal e-mail. (Reuters, July 21, 2015, by Doina Chiacu)

During a congressional in investigation of the Benghazi attacks in March, it surfaced that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had used a private account for e-mails. She coughed up 300 of the e-mails on the attacks and argued that under the Federal Records Act, she was allowed to use the private account so long as she sent any government-related e-mails to the government accounts for inclusion in the archives. (The New York Times, March 3, 2015, by Michael S. Schmidt and Amy Chozick)