Illustration: Peter C.Espina/GT

Hillary Clinton's e-mailgate has been spreading like wildfire. Before anyone realized, it has been developed into maybe one of the worst potholes on her anticipated road to the White House.

Clinton was found to have been exclusively using a private e-mail account when she was US secretary of state from January 2009 to February 2013. Her e-mail correspondence was not available in the official record system until she handed in more than 30,000 e-mails to the Department of State at the end of last year under a Freedom of Information Act request. But the other half of the e-mails, about the same amount, were deleted because they were deemed private.  

With an election year approaching in which Clinton will undoubtedly be a front runner, it won't be a surprise if e-mailgate remains in headlines for even longer. But in this controversy, many people, including both Clinton's critics and supporters, seem to be off focus, deliberately or not. 

Is this about rules being broken? During Clinton's tenure, federal government officials were discouraged from using private e-mail to conduct official business. And when it had to happen, the policy required the correspondence to be retained in the official record system as part of the national archives. But as Clinton said on her defensive press conference on March 10, the rules were not as tight and clear then as they are today. Even if they were, would failing the bookkeeping obligation for the archives be deemed more seriously than jaywalking under normal circumstances?

Is it about potential security risks? After all, Clinton's e-mail account was hacked at least once and her e-conversations with former Bill Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal were leaked. But Clinton said she never sent or received classified material via her e-mail. Also leaks can happen to e-mails or any electronic information in the official encrypted system too. Look at what's on WikiLeaks.

Or is it only an election-related brouhaha as Clinton's supporters claim? Possible, as a few other potential candidates have also been haunted by e-mail-related controversies, which seem to have attracted much more attention than they normally would.

Jeb Bush, who is likely to be Clinton's rival in the general election, was just found to have basically done the same with his e-mails when he was governor of Florida. It took him seven years after he stepped down to file all the e-mails to the public record when he should have done it immediately by law. This revelation came after Bush openly criticized Clinton for her e-mail habits.

And in New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo, a potential Democrat candidate who might fight against Clinton in the primary election, is under fire now for his quiet policy that requires all state government e-mails to be deleted automatically after three months.   

But here comes the real problem.

Let's not pretend we care more about the record-keeping policies than the contents of the e-mails of these current and former officials, especially of the e-mails that have been deleted or been kept out of the public realm for too long. We are most curious about what these people are trying to hide from the public. And such speculations may be more damaging than the e-mails themselves. 

In his acclaimed 2013 novel The Circle, American writer Dave Eggers depicts a Google-like high-tech company that encourages its employees to wear cameras and to broadcast their lives to the public in real time. Complete transparency can make the world a better place, they are told, though the truth turns out to be quite the opposite.

We all have dirty laundry in the backroom, something that is better to be kept private in any circumstance. Even when we demand transparency from elected officials and government agencies, we are all fully aware of this.

But after Edward Snowden, we as ordinary people are also fully aware that our e-mails, which are supposed to be private property, are completely watched by the government.

We don't get the privilege to select which ones to delete or hold back before Big Brother sees them all.

How come elected officials get to do that to us the public?

The author is a New York-based journalist. rong_xiaoqing@hotmail.com