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Anonymous hacks one of Gov. Sarah Palin's yahoo email accounts

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Re: Anonymous hacks one of Gov. Sarah Palin's yahoo email accounts

#13

Post by tptacek »

Goronmon wrote: post #12
kul wrote: post #6

why isn't this bigger news?

I'm curious...why should it be bigger news?

Because it's alleged that she funneled government email through private email accounts deliberately to avoid transparency laws --- in other words, to prevent citizens from learning about her on-the-job correspondance --- only to have the raw contents of those mail spools dumped to the entire Internet.

It touches on a political controversy (running the State of Alaska through Yahoo may be illegal) and involves a seperate crime commited for publicity and political purposes. It implicates the security of hosted email providers in general, and begs the question of how confidential government emails could have been so insecure in the first place.

I'm betraying opinions that I'd like to keep close, because this hasn't been authenticated. If it is, I'd say it's huge news. What a fuckup.

Re: Anonymous hacks one of Gov. Sarah Palin's yahoo email accounts

#15

Post by vaksel »

mileszs wrote: post #7
cortfr wrote: post #3

The url in the pictures is cfunnel.com.

ctunnel.com is a proxy. Not that it couldn't be a hoax, but that is not evidence of it being a hoax. Simple attempt to protect his/her identity.

smart person, considering Palin is known for being very vindictive.

"Hello anonymous? Good news! The IRS is going to audit you for the past 20 years"

Re: Anonymous hacks one of Gov. Sarah Palin's yahoo email accounts

#19

Post by webwright »

tptacek wrote: post #13
Goronmon wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious...why should it be bigger news?

Because it's alleged that she funneled government email through private email accounts deliberately to avoid transparency laws --- in other words, to prevent citizens from learning about her on-the-job correspondance --- only to have the raw contents of those mail spools dumped to the entire Internet. It touches on a political controversy (running the State of Alaska through Yahoo may be illegal) and involves a seper…

Looking at the screenshots, there is no evidence of government business there. She's bitching a bit about Dan Fagan (a repub. commentator in AK) in the one email, but everything looks pretty personal.

I have a work and personal account... 99% of the time I manage to keep my personal account personal-- occasionally I don't. I'd be stunned if there weren't occasional transgressions on this front in any governor's office. I'd expect that security tightens up a bit in the Executive branch.

(disclaimers: I lived in Alaska until 2 years ago and know how utterly wrong the national media is about what goes on up there. I am not a republican, but don't really consider myself a democrat, either.)

Re: Anonymous hacks one of Gov. Sarah Palin's yahoo email accounts

#20

Post by tptacek »

webwright wrote: post #19
tptacek wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's alleged that she funneled government email through private email accounts deliberately to avoid transparency laws --- in other words, to prevent citizens from learning about her on-the-job correspondance --- only to have the raw contents of those mail spools dumped to the entire Internet. It touches on a political controversy (running the State of Alaska through Yahoo may be illegal) and involves a seper…

Looking at the screenshots, there is no evidence of government business there. She's bitching a bit about Dan Fagan (a repub. commentator in AK) in the one email, but everything looks pretty personal. I have a work and personal account... 99% of the time I manage to keep my personal account personal-- occasionally I don't. I'd be stunned if there weren't occasional transgressions on this front in any governor's offic…

I'm not going to repost stuff from Wikilinks here, but it looks like you're not correct: there's a transcript of the screenshots that includes things like, "CONFIDENTIAL ETHICS INVESTIGATION" and "REQUEST FOR DOCUMENTS".

In addition to being a fuckup of spectacular proportions, it also corroborates an earlier news report of leaked emails that included specific instructions not to send sensitive government mails to Palin's work account.

Of course, none of this has been authenticated. It looks credible, but there's plenty of incentive to make something look credible in this political and news climate.

The interesting story here is the trend story. It applies to companies as well as government officials. People will attempt to use personal email accounts to avoid subpoenas. But nobody knows enough to keep those accounts secure, and the growing insecurity of the web guarantees most hosted mail accounts will eventually get popped. Meanwhile, it's hard for executives and officials to find "secure" mail providers without tacitly confirming that they're conducting business in secret. It's an interesting problem.

[Late edit: Time: it's probably real.]

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