Hillary Clinton Finally Explains Why She Used Her Personal Email

​Hillary Clinton finally faced her critics regarding her use of a private email address during her tenure as Secretary of State during a press conference at the United Nations today.

This is the first time the presumed presidential hopeful has publicly addressed the controversy, aside from a tweet indicating that she has turned her emails over to the State Department and asked them to release them publicly. The State Department will release the emails that Clinton provided them, but it will likely take several months.

I want the public to see my email. I asked State to release them. They said they will review them for release as soon as possible.

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton)March 5, 2015

According to Clinton, she used a personal email address instead of a government one because, well, it was convenient and allowed at the time.

"When I got to work as Secretary of State, I opted for convenience to use my personal email account, which was allowed by the State Department, because I thought it would be easier to carry just one device for my work and for my personal emails instead of two," she said.

"I thought using one device would be simpler, and obviously it hasn't worked out that way," Clinton continued.

Clinton's use of a private email account meant that her emails were not archived on government servers unless she sent them to someone using a government address. If her email was not secured with basic measures like encryption, then any sensitive information she may have communicated could have been intercepted.

While security experts have noted that her email was likely protected from viruses, whether it was encrypted or otherwise relatively safe from hackers or foreign intelligence is unknown at this time.

Clinton also addressed specific details about the private server that was used to host her email, which, up until now, had been a mystery. According to Clinton, the server was secure and well-guarded.

"The system we used was set up for president Clinton's office, and it had numerous safeguards," she said. "It was on property guarded by the Secret Service and there were no security breaches." Moreover, Clinton emphasized that she did not send classified material over email.

In the past two weeks, top Democrats have urged Clinton to speak out on the controversy, and Republicans have closed in—the House Select Committee on the Benghazi incident, in which a US embassy was attacked, claimed that "huge gaps" remained in Clinton's email record related to the event.

Clinton reiterated that she has handed all her work emails over to the State Department—although she withheld her personal emails based on a claim to her privacy. The server will remain private because it contains personal communications, Clinton said. But how can we know that she did not withhold emails that were work-related or merely unflattering?

"You would have to ask that question to every single federal employee," Clinton said. "The way the system works, the federal employee […] make[s] the decision. Even if you have a work-related device with a work-related .gov account, you choose what goes on that. We trust the judgement of thousands, maybe millions of people, to make those decisions."

Whether or not we should have trusted Clinton in this case remains to be seen.