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I shouldn't have to tell you this but most people—including major public figures—have some expectation of privacy when it comes to their private lives, even if it isn't anything that most people would find embarrassing or inappropriate. Once when I was younger a cop who wanted to search my car gave me the classic line about "why do you have a problem with it if you have nothing to hide", to which I shot back that when we were done maybe we'd go to his house so I could go through his stuff since after all, he presumably has nothing to hide either. On a more down to earth note, I serve on the board of directors of a small nonprofit and we deal regularly with state government officials, outside contractors, and other interested parties, and we often speak candidly about them, or express our frustration with them, or talk about how to strategically deal with them. You don't think that Hillary Clinton speaking candidly about a high-level official or venting frustration to a friend might not be something she wants bandied about the public square, especially if it deals more with a personal relationship than official business? You can, of course, make the argument that as a Secretary of State and presidential candidate she should be subject to greater scrutiny than your average Joe, but that doesn't mean that the desire for privacy isn't there, and it's a pretty slippery slope if we decide that certain government officials effectively have no privacy at all. It's the same thing with Trump's tax returns; every left-wing pundit thought that Trump was hiding something, but no one considered that the real reason he didn't release them was because he thinks it's none of our damn business.
None of this applies to emails sent from a State Department address.
If she had been using a State Department address there wouldn't have been any controversy and her IT guy wouldn't have been able to delete anything. The whole scandal was based on the fact that she was using a clintonemail.com address and server for official State Department business, which was intermingled with her personal email.
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Because State Dept officials never speak candidly and critically about high ranking officials in official communications? Obviously you are forgetting the documents released by Chelsea Manning. And, no one ever speaks negatively of colleagues in work emails?
I would consider it ill-advised and I behave accordingly in my own work emails.
In any case, the whole point is that there is no legitimate basis to hide and delete those work emails - the whole setup was an obvious attempt to workaround the norms and legal requirements for State Department emails. If the only things they were trying to hide were candid discussions, so be it, but that's still not a legitimate practice.
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