Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson admitted Tuesday that he banned Homeland Security officials from using personal email on government computers only after a Bloomberg View article exposed that he and 28 other senior officials were using their personal emails at work.
“When I read the story I said, ‘You know whoops this is not a good practice so I should discontinue it’,” Johnson said at a Politico breakfast hosted by Politico’s Mike Allen.
Johnson claims that he was only using his Gmail at work for personal use, and that he used his government email for all homeland security purposes. Personal email use was already prohibited on DHS computers for security reasons, but some senior officials were given waivers and allowed to use their emails.
While he acknowledges that he took a risk by accessing his private email, he doesn’t think it was a large one.
“[It’s] probably not an appreciable [risk] but one that probably should be eliminated so I’m eliminating it,” Johnson said at the breakfast. He said that now he’ll just read his Gmail on his iPhone. This article first appeared on NBCNews.com.
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