Palin's Email Hacked

[slick4591[$]]

I don't care which side you're on this is low.

FBI, Secret Service Investigate Hacking of Palin’s E-mail - America’s Election HQ

[pippadaisy[$]]

Hi... who wants to move this to the Symposium?

I have a big problem with elected officials using free email accounts (hello, security risk?) and/or personal email accounts to conduct official business in order to get around records and retention laws.

Yahoo mail is NOT THAT SECURE. This wasn't even a hack; it was a simple matter of guessing her password reset clues (What is your zip code? Where did you meet your spouse?) which are on record all over the place.

It happens to celebrities all the time who are dumb enough to use something public and easily accessed, and it doesn't get nearly the amount of press that this has gotten. Illegal? Hell yes. But should she have been using a Yahoo account for official business in the first place? Much less with such easily guessable password clues? OMG, hell to the no.

[mjfrombuffalo[$]]

Gotta agree with Pippa. I was going to write this up for our weekly newsletter to agencies since many use public email systems like AOHell and Yahoo to conduct business. We are already educating agencies on federal electronic discovery rules and when it came out that Palin's staff was discussing the use of non-government email addresses to conduct business in a way that might be hidden from e-discovery, my first thought was "I hope none of the agency folk consider doing this."

[realtraveller]

Except that this wasn't state business. It was chit-chat with friends, sending photos of her kids, etc. I saw some of the e-mails and heard a discussion of them on Greta last night. I think some bloggers are trying to deflect attention away from the crime that may have been perpetrated by the son of a Democratic state representative from Tennessee.

[mjfrombuffalo[$]]

The discussion of business in public emails is one issue, the use of easily-hacked free email services by public figures is a second issue. Even if it's just chit-chat, it's not very savvy to use free email services that can be hacked so easily if you're a very public figure... especially if it's things about your family! Would've been smart of her to kill the account as soon as she was picked for the Veep spot. True, the kid shouldn't have hacked and he'll be facing his own charges, but isn't one hallmark of Republican/Conservative thinking the principle of personal responsibility?

Meanwhile, now that I know how easily Yahoo can be hacked, I'll be downloading and archiving some of MY saved emails, I'll tell you what.

[pippadaisy[$]]

From the actual zip file of the documents sent to Wikileaks:

According to the Guardian, who also looked at the Wikileaks data, among the emails in Palin's account were several from addresses belonging to her aides, including a draft letter to California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a discussion of nominations to the state court of appeals, and several bearing "DPS", the acronym for the Alaska Department of Public Safety.

I'm pretty sure that's not personal email.

[lynnzop[$]]

I don't really care if it was personal or professional - the hacking was wrong, illegal, and needs to be addressed on an individual basis.

The non-story, IMO is that the kid is attached to the Obama campaign. That's such a stretch it should be whacked RIGHT NOW.

[drmomentum[$]]

The crime should be (and is being) handled by law enforcement. I don't know anyone who disagrees. So, not much of a debate there for the Symposium.

I assume the debate lies in the wisdom of using personal email for any state business.

I'm concerned about the prudence (and/or motivation) for doing that business outside of protected official systems. It shows either a lack of understanding of the technology and why security is necessary (quite possible) or a concerted effort to get around access to possibly incriminating information in the case of an investigation.

If you had security clearance and were to leave some national security paperwork out on the street and somebody stole them, the thief would certainly be guilty of a crime. But you'd be culpable as well. I've had a security clearance; I know why there are rules in place and I was informed of the gravity of the consequences of skirting the rules.

-JP

[Prepoia[$]]

So if you are raped and are wearing a short skirt then it's not the rapist's fault but the victim. This should be a non story because the kid that hacked had no right hacking no matter what the system or circumstances and no matter whose emails were hacked.

A crime was committed by the hacker. Bad judgement is not a crime.

Sandy the Uncommitted

[mjfrombuffalo[$]]

Prepoia said

So if you are raped and are wearing a short skirt then it's not the rapist's fault but the victim.

Of course not. But that doesn't mean you should carelessly walk through dark alleys alone late at night either.

[AuntieEmma[$]]

Wearing a short skirt is not a crime, and neither is walking through a dark alley alone at night. (And as someone who walks alone at night because I have neither a car nor a designated escort, don't get me started on this. )

But what Palin did in using that account might be a crime, especially if she did it with the intent of getting around laws that say what she is supposed to do with the records of official government business.

That's not a defense to hacking. So there are, potentially, two crimes that were committed here -- the hacker's and Palin's. (Although now it looks as if the hacker may have a different defense.)

By the way, for those who say the accounts were strictly personal, who names their personal accounts gov.palin@yahoo.com ? Something like MooseMom2Lots2004@whatever.com would seem more like a personal account.

[drmomentum[$]]

Prepoia said

Bad judgement is not a crime.

Can we get Sarah Palin to wear this on a T-Shirt for the rest of the election cycle? Super.

First: I didn't say bad judgment was a crime. But the reverse is certainly true.

Also, sometimes bad judgment puts you afoul of the law even if you didn't intend to commit a crime.

I didn't think that this was what we were arguing about.

If a guy decides to go streaking across the park and happens to get raped, he's the victim of a crime and the perpetrator of a crime. And he's showing bad judgment. These things are not at all mutually exclusive, and some of them have heavy overlap.

[brian_igo]

Wow. Someone reads your e-mail account because they think you might be using it to commit a crime, even though they have no evidence to take to a judge? What is this country coming to???

[mjfrombuffalo[$]]

[theworm[$]]

Palin was the victim of a crime. It was clearly wrong for anyone to hack into her account. It was horrible that it got posted on the web. That information was private, and I hope they find who did it and punish him or her.

Palin did not ask for it, and is not at fault for the crime.

It does, however, make me question the wisdom of her password and security code. I know that when I sign up for accounts, I'm told to pick passwords that are difficult to guess. I'm also told to pick security questions that aren't obvious. When Palin disclosed her e-mail addresses in speeches, it wasn't an invitation to be violated. But when a "hacker" didn't need to know more than the fact that she went to Wasilla High to "hack" in.....
The hacker committed a crime, but I hope Palin uses better judgment in office.

And using the yahoo account for government business..... not good judgement

The hacking of Mrs Palin's private email account is especially significant because Mrs Palin sometimes uses non-government emails to conduct state business.
Previously disclosed emails indicate her administration embraced Yahoo accounts as an alternative to government email, which could possibly be released to the public under Alaska's Open Records Act.

[magenta321]

I wish the court had ordered that her private email was looked into, because the rumors have been out there that she used her private (and obviously unsecure) email to do state business. And I agree this is a crime. I don't think the ends justify the means, but, I have to admit I'm a bit happy that the truth came out

[realtraveller]

Wow! If only those Watergate burglars had made up such creative excuses. Uh, the DNC put really lousy locks on their doors and we were looking for evidence of a crime, so we burglars are the good guys. Geez.

[magenta321]

That logic would work if we didn't already know Palin was using her personal email account for state business. It was already well covered in the media before the hacking occurred.

Plus, I don't think anyone's arguing that the hacker(s) are good.

[drmomentum[$]]

realtraveller said

Wow! If only those Watergate burglars had made up such creative excuses. Uh, the DNC put really lousy locks on their doors and we were looking for evidence of a crime, so we burglars are the good guys. Geez.

Why are you holding back?

If only Hitler had used the same excuses!!!!

[mjfrombuffalo[$]]

I don't think anyone is saying that the guy who hacked is not a criminal. But at the same time, how much sympathy do you have for someone who owns a very valuable item and doesn't take adequate steps to protect it? Common sense tells us to do things like guard our online identies, shred our sensitive mail, lock the car doors in the commuter parking lot, etc. Yes, the hacker needs to be prosecuted, he broke the law. At the same time, using a free email service to conduct business and not securing her online identity when she was named VP shows either foolhardiness or carelessness or a bad lack of understanding of what people can do on Teh Interwebs. Not taking care of this is, to me, is rather like not putting Secret Service protection in place at the time she was named - if she/McCain/Whoever hadn't put SS protection in place for the Palin family, we would all be about that. Overlooking her online protection isn't, of course, as dire but is a bit too important to have neglected and makes her look not very savvy.

[AuntieEmma[$]]

I don't blame her for using an account that wasn't very secure and for not being very computer savvy. If she were applying for a job in tech support, I would hold it against her, but that's not the kind of job that she's after.

What I do blame her for is that she apparently set up the Yahoo account in order to evade the laws about public access to records of government business. That's something she has an obligation to know about, and respect, as a public official. And that's directly relevant to her becoming Veep.

I actually did like her, initially, but this is looking too Bush-esque -- secrecy, disregard for the laws, and attempts to get around them. Maybe the only difference is that her attempt to get around the law was clumsier than most of Bush's have been, and so more easily detected.

[drmomentum[$]]

A better analogy for this incident is Britney Spears not wearing underwear and wearing a short skirt, then having the paparazzi plaster a photo of her nether-regions all over the Intartubes.

Sure, if the paparazzi had any class, they wouldn't take pictures of her crotch. Or wouldn't sell them. And if paparazzi didn't exist, or they just weren't flocking around her all the time, the world would never have been subjected to those stupid photos or that stupid "news" story.

But people who don't want to give the world a show (and have any sense) take prudent precautions.

-JP