Gov. Palin is under the protection of the Secret Service, and it is a crime committed in the context of disrupting a U.S. election, so the full investigative power of the federal government will be brought to bear. Plus I suspect Yahoo will be very cooperative.
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
#32I'm no fan of Palin, but I think it's pretty low of Gawker to gain page views by posting the contents of her personal emails, as well as the personal photos. Apparently privacy rights don't matter anymore.
Agreed.
There's not even an attempt at a "Well usually we wouldn't publish someone's personal email but in this particular case we think it's justified because [insert justification here]"
I guess I may be expecting too much of a site called "gawker" though. Still, here's hoping that someone (not me!) hacks Barack Obama's personal email soon so we can check whether they treat it the same way.
Re: Anonymous hacks one of Gov. Sarah Palin's yahoo email accounts
#33I'm no fan of Palin, but I think it's pretty low of Gawker to gain page views by posting the contents of her personal emails, as well as the personal photos. Apparently privacy rights don't matter anymore.
Agreed. There's not even an attempt at a "Well usually we wouldn't publish someone's personal email but in this particular case we think it's justified because [insert justification here]" I guess I may be expecting too much of a site called "gawker" though. Still, here's hoping that someone (not me!) hacks Barack Obama's personal email soon so we can check whether they treat it the same way.
McCain-Palin 2008 Campaign Manager Rick Davis: 'This is a shocking invasion of the Governor's privacy and a violation of law. The matter has been turned over to the appropriate authorities and we hope that anyone in possession of these emails will destroy them. We will have no further comment.'
Re: Anonymous hacks one of Gov. Sarah Palin's yahoo email accounts
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 Pa…
Startup idea: ultra-secure webmail (accessed via one of those little physical key-generating token thingies).
None of this "I've forgotten my password but here's my mother's maiden name" crap.
Re: Anonymous hacks one of Gov. Sarah Palin's yahoo email accounts
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ah, I'd just looked at the screenshots, not the text "log". Interesting that they'd screenshot all of the subjects that are totally personal/innocuous but the text log has all of the potentially damning subjects... Hrm. Why wouldn't you just scroll down and take a few screenies to prove the evil? I've worked on the technology side of a few candidates and politicians-- they are almost without fail moronic about techno…
(a) Because the people who pulled off the attack are stupid. (b) Because the people who pulled off the attack somehow lost access after getting the account but before archiving all the mail, and so made up the good stuff. (c) Because the people who pulled off the attack are very smart, and are going to slow-drip this out to the media over the next month. I know where my bet's at now.
If the people who pulled off this attack are very smart, then they'll be shutting up about it.
The US Secret Service has a lot of resources and a pretty limited mission statement. It's not a good idea to attract their attention.
Re: Anonymous hacks one of Gov. Sarah Palin's yahoo email accounts
#36At least she has e-mail. John McCain's messages are delivered by horse.
Re: Anonymous hacks one of Gov. Sarah Palin's yahoo email accounts
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ah, I'd just looked at the screenshots, not the text "log". Interesting that they'd screenshot all of the subjects that are totally personal/innocuous but the text log has all of the potentially damning subjects... Hrm. Why wouldn't you just scroll down and take a few screenies to prove the evil? I've worked on the technology side of a few candidates and politicians-- they are almost without fail moronic about techno…
(a) Because the people who pulled off the attack are stupid. (b) Because the people who pulled off the attack somehow lost access after getting the account but before archiving all the mail, and so made up the good stuff. (c) Because the people who pulled off the attack are very smart, and are going to slow-drip this out to the media over the next month. I know where my bet's at now.
I'd go with a combination of (a) and (b)
Seems like it was 4chan/Anonymous, unless it started in a super elite IRC channel and was slowly leaked to 4chan.
Re: Anonymous hacks one of Gov. Sarah Palin's yahoo email accounts
#38The thing that struck me in this is that being a Republican politician generally means you're going to have more people who know how to do this stuff against you than for you.
I'm not saying this is ok or making a political statement - just an observation.
Re: Anonymous hacks one of Gov. Sarah Palin's yahoo email accounts
#39I got a lot of mixed feelings about this one.
First -- it's a crime, plain and simple. Somebody should go to jail. Sites trafficking in stolen goods should be charged.
Second -- glad it happened in September. Can you imagine something like this happening, only in the last week of the election? Heck, you could put any kind of flamebait stuff you wanted in the screen shots. It doesn't even have to be real. It could easily throw the election and you're left with a mess and nobody to blame for it.
Third -- How was the system breached?
This is definitely hacker news. As an example, I had an idea last year for a site/app to keep track of breaking election-year news. As the emotional juices roil in the 40% of die-hards on each side, there's this incredible thirst for up-to-the-date, cutting-edge news and insights. It doesn't get much more up-to-date and insightful than reading the candidate's email. (Note earlier comment about legality, though)
Where there's a great thirst, somebody is going to be selling trips to the water fountain. Not only is there lots of money in this right now, elections are predictable, repeatable events and piggybacking on people's emotional investment in them is only going to get more and more profitable.
Re: Anonymous hacks one of Gov. Sarah Palin's yahoo email accounts
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 Pa…
Startup idea: ultra-secure webmail (accessed via one of those little physical key-generating token thingies). None of this "I've forgotten my password but here's my mother's maiden name" crap.
A startup that does no-frills, genuinely secure mail on hardened servers might in fact do pretty well. I've wanted one a lot lately. It's not an easy problem though; you're going to deliberately sacrifice features for security, a tradeoff most customers won't get.
It won't solve this problem though; funnelling mail through Yahoo comes with plausible deniability. Funneling it through the email security vault, not so much.