Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s press conference yesterday was an attempt to defuse criticism about her private email use during her State Department tenure. Clinton’s basic message is that the email situation is no big deal. She says she “opted out” of using official email for convenience–she didn’t want to carry two devices. “I wanted to use just one device for both personal and work emails instead of two,” she said. (Leaving alone that a single device can handle multiple email accounts.)
There are many complex issues here, which will be endlessly examined as Clinton considers a presidential run. But the argument for convenience–and the difficulty of carrying “two devices”–seems to be contradicted by this interview Clinton did in Silicon Valley just a few weeks ago. Here Clinton reports that, like many busy executives, she carries both an iPhone and a Blackberry.