I’m pretty sure I never saw anything about “transition team privacy” before. Is it really a thing?
Joel Cohen and Dale Degenshein comment on the lack of expectation of privacy when using government email accounts for purely personal or what would normally be privileged communications. They write, in part:
Now, for sure, and once again, it doesn’t seem quite right that a special counsel or any prosecutor can basically “break in” to the private emails of persons who happen to be using a government (or corporate) account. A prosecutor cannot listen in on a private telephone conversation merely because the phone being used belongs to the government or a corporation that employs him. Why shouldn’t the same rule apply to emails? The answer to this quandary is simple, sort of, and many government employees do it this way, assuming national security is not an issue. When they communicate about something unrelated to work, they sign on, instead, to their personal Gmail or Yahoo account.
But since government and private employees spend enormous amounts of time in front of our work computers, or on our work phones, one may not always remember to switch to a personal account, or one may simply want the ease of using the email system which is always at their fingertips.
Read more on The Hill.