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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

#61

Post by khafra »

tptacek wrote: post #29
webwright wrote: post #28

Earlier 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.

The narrative of the compromise is pretty convoluted, but from what I understand, it was done more for lulz than for politics or ideology. The way I understand it, notification of the compromise went out to one of her contacts at the same time that the password was posted to /b/, so with all of Anonymous trying to log in at once, the account got shut down quickly, and was deleted shortly thereafter.

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

#62

Post by hugh »

tptacek wrote: post #20
webwright wrote: post #19

Earlier 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…

I'm not sure whether "Request for documents" and "Confidential ethics investigation" are really there, but even if they are, they may still be personal email.

"Request for documents" could be any kind of request for documents. Maybe it's the McCain campaign doing some vetting. Maybe it's some journalist requesting a copy of Trig's birth certificate. I actually think it's unlikely to be official business -- if you need documents from the governor's office you probably request them from a low-level official, not from the governor herself.

"Confidential: ethics investigation" could be personal too -- if she's under investigation and has hired a lawyer, for instance, then communications with that lawyer should be protected under client/lawyer privilege and shouldn't be a matter of public record.

I"m not sure exactly where the dividing line is between personal and official email for government officials -- I expect it's blurry, having been defined in a law somewhere but never tested in court.

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

#63

Post by pius »

miked wrote: post #56
jonknee wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it was just personal emails you'd be right, but she broke the law and conducted state business with her Yahoo account. While it was reported before, this confirms it. I'd say since she routinely used her Yahoo account for state business it should be public, just like her main account.

Please provide: 1) legal citations to the Alaska and/or Federal laws that say an elected official may not use a personal email account to conduct business. 2) links to the email(s) showing evidence that she broke a law. 3) an explanation as to why you are angry about a claim, stated without any evidence, that she broke the law, but quite happy about an ideological friend who has clearly broken the law and violated so…

I'm in a rush, so I don't have time to dissect this the way I want to. I will say, however that:

Please provide ... the name of a good civil defense attorney. Public accusations of the criminality of the unconvicted are legally actionable.

... is ill-informed, melodramatic, and weakens what's otherwise a strong post, albeit one whose sentiment I disagree with.

Sarah Palin's a public figure and, unless the person you're responding to is an officer of the court or a news agency of some kind, I don't think he's going to need a "civil defense" attorney for stating his opinion.

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

#64

Post by rbanffy »

vaksel wrote: post #2

Thats why you need better security settings if you are in public office, considering all the secret questions one might ask about you to retrieve your password can be found on your wiki page

You shouldn´t use your Yahoo account for work. Period.

OTOH, if she uses Yahoo for her personal stuff only, then it´s just a common privacy violation and should be prosecuted as such.

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

#65

Post by hugh »

jhancock wrote: post #54
ckinnan wrote: post #31

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.

yes, the long arm of the arm will have its day on this one. However, it is important to remember that most/all revolutionary behavior involves breaking the law. I'm not saying this was an appropriate thing to do. But obviously, whoever did this thought it worth the almost certain chance they would go to jail for what they did. So, who's the better American? The ones who violate the law and try to effect change or the…

Oh yeah, hoo-fricking-ray for that brave 4chan script kiddie, heroicially giving up his own freedom so that the rest of us could see more of Sarah Palin's family photos.

More likely this particular asshole is just an idiot who didn't think through the consequences of his actions. He just thought it'd be funny.

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

#66

Post by rbanffy »

tptacek wrote: post #40
hugh wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

For just a couple bucks a month you buy a virtual server you can install your IMAP server and do VPN or SSL (or both, just in case).

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

#67

Post by iamelgringo »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #57
iamelgringo wrote: post #55

As an aside, I'm coming to this story 18 hours late, but every single link posted on this page, is down. Wikileaks is even down. All of it. I feel bad for the script kiddies that did this. They are going to get Mitnicked on this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Mitnick General law enforcement in the US is crap when it comes to computer crime, but if you get the boys at the NSA, the FBI or at Secret Service int…

Funny, I really don't feel bad for people who break into other people's accounts and steal their information. Whom I feel bad for is all the regular folks that had the same thing happen and are not running for office.

I'm sorry for the confusion. I'm not endorsing that people break into other people's accounts. What I am saying, is that I don't really think that the script kiddies that (I'm assuming) did this truly realize the extent of the deep guano that they've just gotten themselves into.

I won't feel bad that these people get punished for their crimes. I will feel bad if these people have charges of "terrorism" brought against them, which I suspect might happen.

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

#68

Post by miked »

pius wrote: post #63
miked wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please provide: 1) legal citations to the Alaska and/or Federal laws that say an elected official may not use a personal email account to conduct business. 2) links to the email(s) showing evidence that she broke a law. 3) an explanation as to why you are angry about a claim, stated without any evidence, that she broke the law, but quite happy about an ideological friend who has clearly broken the law and violated so…

I'm in a rush, so I don't have time to dissect this the way I want to. I will say, however that: Please provide ... the name of a good civil defense attorney. Public accusations of the criminality of the unconvicted are legally actionable. ... is ill-informed, melodramatic, and weakens what's otherwise a strong post, albeit one whose sentiment I disagree with. Sarah Palin's a public figure and, unless the person you'…

Yes, in the cold light of day, it perhaps was a bit over-the-top. Give me this though: she's been smeared as no other candidate in my lifetime has been (I'm 53). This link (from a site backed by a group that once gave Obama a bunch of money, ironically) clears up some of the worst smears.

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/sliming_palin.html

I appreciate the civility of your reply and have upmodded you.

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

#69

Post by jonknee »

miked wrote: post #56
jonknee wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it was just personal emails you'd be right, but she broke the law and conducted state business with her Yahoo account. While it was reported before, this confirms it. I'd say since she routinely used her Yahoo account for state business it should be public, just like her main account.

Please provide: 1) legal citations to the Alaska and/or Federal laws that say an elected official may not use a personal email account to conduct business. 2) links to the email(s) showing evidence that she broke a law. 3) an explanation as to why you are angry about a claim, stated without any evidence, that she broke the law, but quite happy about an ideological friend who has clearly broken the law and violated so…

Wow, did you wake up on the wrong side of the bed today? For the record lots of politicians have been caught using personal email accounts for business and I think the same for all of them. The entire reason her email account was hacked was that she was caught using it for state business. If she hadn't skirted the law the email address wouldn't have been known and it wouldn't have been hacked. I do not know the politics of the hacker, but evading public scrutiny by using private email for public matters is not a political issue--it's wrong no matter the party.

The Washington Post has a piece about Palin's email policies, which include CCing her husband on state business:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09...

Employees of major corporations would be fired for the same behavior (Sarbanes-Oxley has 'em all shit scared--destroying evidence like she did is major jail time).

Time agrees that using this un-archived email system is indeed a crime:

http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1842097,00....

> The Alaska Governor could also face charges for conducting official state business using her personal, unarchived e-mail account (a crime), with some critics accusing her of skirting freedom-of- information laws in doing so.

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

#70

Post by olefoo »

miked wrote: post #68
pius wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in a rush, so I don't have time to dissect this the way I want to. I will say, however that: Please provide ... the name of a good civil defense attorney. Public accusations of the criminality of the unconvicted are legally actionable. ... is ill-informed, melodramatic, and weakens what's otherwise a strong post, albeit one whose sentiment I disagree with. Sarah Palin's a public figure and, unless the person you'…

Yes, in the cold light of day, it perhaps was a bit over-the-top. Give me this though: she's been smeared as no other candidate in my lifetime has been (I'm 53). This link (from a site backed by a group that once gave Obama a bunch of money, ironically) clears up some of the worst smears. http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/sliming_palin.html I appreciate the civility of your reply and have upmodded you.

she's been smeared as no other candidate in my lifetime has been

Obviously you were in a coma during the 2000 and 2004 election cycles.

//$22 Million in debt over 5 years as mayor...

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