VP Candidate Sarah Palin's E-Mail Hacked, Contents Leaked
In what is being called a "a shocking invasion of the Governor's privacy," Scientology-hating hacker group Anonymous managed to break in to Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin's personal e-mail inbox, posting much of its contents online for the world to see. Palin apparently used an account with Yahoo! Mail for much of her personal correspondence, and apparently drafted some work-related missives there as well. She was actually chided for this practice in the past, as is the case with many folks in the Bush administration who are accused of using private accounts to dodge laws regarding public records, and now may be paying the price.
Reaction around the 'Net is unsurprisingly varied. Online forums everywhere are having fun putting tasteless captions on some of the pictures found in Palin's account (WARNING: Images will be offensive to most). Others are labeling the hackers as "left wing" and making claims that Anonymous is just doing Obama's dirty work for him. Salon's Glenn Greenwald is seeing this as a deliciously ironic twist on the Bush administration's constant invasions into our privacy. Hacking Palin's e-mail is being called a Federal crime, but warrantless wire taps have been deemed to have been illegal as well and yet nobody's gone to jail for those yet.
For better or worse, the e-mails that were exposed are relatively benign, like one from Palin-appointee Amy McCorkell asking for some good wishes, and the account has now been locked down again so prying eyes won't get to do any further digging. However, if you're curious and want to see what all the fuss was about, controversial whistle-blower site Wikileaks has images of the contents of her inbox -- or so we're told. It's currently offline, surely swamped from all this publicity. [From: Wired, Political Machine, and Salon]
_thumbnail.jpg "Vintage Keyboards")
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
desides said 7:06AM on 9-19-2008
@Ian, if you think that's funny, you haven't been keeping up very well. Nothing delcogw said is incorrect or inaccurate.
Reply
Desides said 7:10AM on 9-19-2008
Tim, at the bottom of the 3rd paragraph, did you really mean to insinuate that hacking a public official's private email account is in any way equivalent to intercepting outbound communications between terrorists?
Also, I fail to see why the group Anonymous' political leanings are described in quote marks. They ARE left wing. It's very doubtful a conservative would hack Palin's email account.
Further proof that Obama and his supporters are running scared of Sarah Palin, because in one fell swoop she destroys the stereotypes liberalism has spent 40 years constructing.
Reply