A Denver-based technology firm that has managed Hillary Clinton’s private email network since 2013 said the discovery that Clinton’s emails were backed up on an off-site “cloud” network came as “an enormous surprise.”
Platte River Networks was “explicitly asked by our client to keep all data onsite,” Andy Boian, a spokesman for the company, told the Washington Examiner.
“We told Datto that,” Boian said, referring to the Connecticut firm that evidently backed up Clinton’s email data to an off-site network. “We have been surprised by this cloud situation.”
Boian noted Datto typically sends invoices to customers if it plans to provide cloud backup services, which Platte River specifically asked Datto not to do.
Not only did Datto “defy” that request, he said, the firm never billed Platte River for the backup service. Boian declined to speculate about whether Datto intentionally held on to Clinton’s emails.
Datto did not respond to a request for comment.
Platte River only discovered that Clinton’s emails were being stored in a second location after the FBI requested Clinton’s physical server in August.
Boian said Platte River had purchased a Datto “node” to back up emails on Clinton’s server on a 30-day rolling basis.
“It was servicing the server that we took out of the basement in Chappaqua … the server that we took out of the basement, put in the rack and added the Datto device to,” Boian said.
“The FBI has asked for that equipment, and we are turning it over in full compliance,” he said of the Datto node.
Datto first told Platte River employees that it had stored a collection of Clinton’s emails in the cloud after they approached Datto with the FBI’s request that it turn over the node, Boian explained. His company then alerted the FBI.
Platte River has complied fully with the FBI investigation and a subsequent probe from the Senate Homeland Security Committee, which has requested a mostly different set of materials than the law enforcement agency, he said.
Sen. Ron Johnson, chairman of the committee, first brought the existence of the Datto cloud to light in a letter to its CEO Monday.
Johnson expressed concerns about whether Datto was certified to handle classified information given the hundreds of emails that have been marked classified by the State Department in recent weeks.
The FBI is now reportedly working with Datto directly to recover whatever data still resides in the company’s cloud network.
