Top Pennsylvania official uses private email against policy

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Pennsylvania's embattled attorney general has routinely used personal email accounts to conduct official business, transmitting confidential information and the identities of undercover agents, despite an office ban that says doing so risks security.

The attorney general's office released copies of two-thirds of those emails under the state's open records law, but it deemed almost one-third exempt from disclosure, mostly on the grounds they contained sensitive or confidential material.

Among the subjects covered in the 1,144 unreleased emails, Kane's office said: personal medical and mental health; workplace discrimination, sexual harassment and employee discipline; secret grand jury and attorney-client communications; and information that could identify agents "performing an undercover or covert law enforcement activity."

The 2009 policy barring use of personal email is 18 pages long, states that it is critical to transmit confidential information over a secure network and warns that access to such information could cause "severe damage" to the attorney general's office.

The use of personal email accounts has been problematic for other public officials in the U.S. In October, CIA director John Brennan's AOL account was hacked and his private conversations splashed online.

The AP began looking into Kane's email practices when search warrant documents unsealed after her arrest showed she used personal accounts to communicate with senior staff about news coverage.