Panic time: Second data company backed up Hillary's e-mails to cloud without telling Team Clinton

Poor Datto Inc. Apparently, when they were hired to provide backup for Hillary's homebrew e-mail server, they thought they were supposed to play it straight and actually provide backup so the data could be recovered in the event of the server being compromised in some unforeseen way. That's what companies like Datto are typically expected to do. I guess it didn't occur to them that, when dealing with the Clintons, the expectation might be something entirely different. If you're an ordinary company and you need records of your correspondences for the smooth running of your business, then heck yeah, back it up to the cloud. That's where your data is safest in the event of a server meltdown. But if you're Hillary Clinton and you don't want anyone to know how you abused your position as Secretary of State to peddle influence in exchange for payola and political backing, then the last thing you want is for anyone to be able to recover those e-mails.

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Oh, gosh, sorry, I'd love to release them but apparently the server's been wiped. Oh well! Er, no it hasn't, Hillary. Much to your horror, Datto was actually doing its job, although ClintonWorld is now trying to make it look like Datto went rogue:

Datto, based in Norwalk, Conn., became the second data storage firm to become entangled in the inquiry into Clinton’s unusual email arrangement, which has sparked a furor that has dogged her campaign. In August, Clinton and Colorado-based Platte River Networks, which had managed her primary server since June 2013, agreed to surrender it for examination by the FBI. Datto and Platte River seemed at odds, however, over how Clinton’s emails wound up on Datto’s cloud storage, which may have resulted from a misunderstanding. Platte River spokesman Andy Boian said the firm bought a device from Datto that constantly snaps images of a server’s contents and connected it to the Clinton server at a New Jersey data storage facility. Platte River never asked Datto to beam the images to an off-site cloud storage node and never was billed for that service, he said. Company officials were bewildered when they learned of the cloud storage, he said. “We said, ‘You have a cloud? You were told not to have a cloud.’ We never received an invoice for any cloud for the Clintons.’” The source familiar with Datto’s account, however, said Platte River was billed for “private cloud” storage, which requires a cloud storage node. Because Platte River lacks one, the source said, the data bounced to Datto’s off-site cloud storage. The source said that senior Platte River officials may not have realized it, but company technicians “were managing the off-site storage throughout.” Datto did not know it was backing up Clintons’ email server until mid August, the source said. As to whether the FBI might recover Clinton’s personal emails from Datto’s storage, the source said: “People don’t Datto’s service for getting rid of data.”

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There seems to be a word or phrase missing in the last quote, probably "use" or "pay for" or something like that. At any rate, this is really reaching the level of comedy gold. Backing up data to the cloud is the sort of thing companies like Datto do, and it's the sort of thing honest clients want them to do. Only people with something to hide get upset when they find out their data's been backed up and is recoverable. And in typical Clinton fashion, they're trying to turn Datto into the bad guys by making an issue over the service being rendered, whether there was an invoice for it and so forth. That quote from Andy Boian in the excerpt above sounds like the lawyer Jackie Chiles in an episode of Seinfeld: You put the balm on? Who told you to put the balm on? My first thought when I read the story was that this could turn out to be Hillary's equivalent of the blue dress - the incontrovertible physical evidence that left Bill with no choice but to admit his affair with Monica after months of lying about it. If the e-mails are really recoverable from the cloud and they prove all the nefarious activity we think they will prove, does Hillary finally find herself with no choice but to cop to everything? And if it gets to that point, does she nevertheless keep right on running for president on the premise that she's still entitled to it regardless? Then again, there is this horrific thought: What if it really does consist of nothing but recipes, yoga routines and stuff about Chelsea's wedding? That's almost to terrible to think about. Then again, if Team Clinton has gone to this much trouble to keep us from seeing that, they're insane on a whole new level.

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