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"Anonymous" Hacks Palin's Private Email
netbuzz writes "'Anonymous,' best known for its jousts with Scientology, has apparently hacked Sarah Palin's private Yahoo email account. Contents, including sample emails, an index, and family photos, have been posted by Wikileaks, which calls them evidence that the GOP vice presidential candidate has improperly used private email to shield government business from public scrutiny." Note that there is no easy way to tell if the material on Wikileaks is genuine or a hoax. Update by J : Genuine.
I, for one, think the laws should be applied equally to all parties regardless of their insane beliefs.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Since when is it 'hacking' to guess that her email password is her zip code? You can't hack stupidity and ignorance.
This wouldn't have even been an issue if she'd used encryption.
Maybe high-profile leaks like this will help convince the public at large that encryption is beneficial, even if you aren't doing anything wrong.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
This is a really good reason why they should NOT be using their private email. Sure, using the government systems opens them up to having their corruption on record, but having it on something like Yahoo mail opens it up to something like this, potentially exposing WAY more information than that. Not that government email is unhackable, but I'd certainly expect it to be at least a little bit more secure.
On one hand.. I agree they crossed the line.. on the other I kind of understand people's motives. Now I am in no way shape or form advocating hacking someone's email account, but there's something important to consider here. There's a great article at NY Times which talks about Palin's rise in politics. Here's one excerpt:
Interviews show that Ms. Palin runs an administration that puts a premium on loyalty and secrecy. The governor and her top officials sometimes use personal e-mail accounts for state business; dozens of e-mail messages obtained by The New York Times show that her staff members studied whether that could allow them to circumvent subpoenas seeking public records.
If she does infact use her private email address for correspondence with other staff members or governmental bodies, can you really consider it a private email account anymore? I'm not asking for response from slashdotters with analogies here, but if she does infact potentially use her personal email to avoid subpoenas then why the hell should it be considered personal. She is paid by the taxpayers and they have a right to know what is going on. Why have her staff members been studying the use of personal email accounts for official business anyways?
Maybe the deal with her using personal email for work is just a rumor, and maybe the whole deal with "Anonymous" is not true, but still things aren't just black and white here.
If this is true, I think it's possible that Anonymous has just painted a gigantic bulls-eye on a free internet.
I am all for ferreting out corruption, but what I worry about is how many will paint this: "Terrorist Rogue Hacker attacks Vice Presidential Candidate."
What limits are there on privacy now? I hope I am wrong.
As much as I think Scientology is a dangerous cult, the actions of Anonymous to date have been demonstrating that they are just a group of dangerous radicals. Anonymous is dangerous because they attack and slander groups they disagree with and hide behind masks so that their opponents can not adequately defend themself. Now, I know many of the people who hate Sarah Palin and the Republicans won't see a problem with this, but for a moment imagine how you would feel if a similar group performed the same action on Barack Obama (or a political leader in your own country) and see how 'wonderful' it would be.
As I understand it, what is in the emails isn't what's important. There have been several people accusing her of using her personal email account to conduct public business, in order to hide the emails from becoming part of the public record (sounds familiar). The catch was that the people who were supposed to be investigating this claim stated there was no proof, therefore nothing to investigate...
Now, there is proof...
What she said isn't the story, it's who she said it to.
Repeat after me: STATE/FEDERAL business MAY NOT use NON-STATE/NON-FEDERAL Email servers.
It is not legal, it violates records retention acts and it is unethical as well as it
keeps the business of OUR government from OUR scrutiny.
To head off the quips, yes the business of government is not normally availible to the public,
however it MUST BE MADE PUBLIC upon lawful order. If the exchanges are not on STATE/FEDERAL
servers, then the public release of it may not be possible.
Right, remember this is the same group that hacked an epilepsy support page to try to induce seizures. Also realize this is pretty much the opposite of constructive: Palin is being used as a distraction to keep us from thinking about real issues. This only furthers that distraction. It would be one thing if they found evidence of corruption, but this is merely digital tabloid fluff.
Anonymous is doing this entirely to feed their own egos.
I would actually agree with you there, were it not for the fact that she had discussed using her Y! mail account as a way to conduct communications regarding state business that would not be archived, as the law requires. In other words, she wasn't just using it as her "personal" account to send family picnic invites and negotiate deals with wealthy Nigerians, she was using this account as a way to skirt the law and conduct official business in her capacity as governor without the accountability that the law requires.
Since she's advertising herself as a candidate with strong ethics who's trying to clean up government and get rid of backroom dealing, she clearly feels that she's not accountable to the same standard of ethics that others should be held to. This is a huge lapse in judgment that voters need to be aware of before they cast their votes.
Yeah, ever since Bourne Identity, I've come to rely on Matt Damon's advice more and more. I mean, I betrayed the organization because it was right, and he's got kick-ass fighting moves. That's the guy I want my political commentary from!
But I suspect secret service is investigating mostly to determine if there's a real security risk IE if she e-mailed out that there was a spare key to her house under a fake rock in the garden, or she was going to be in room 287 of the doubletree hotel.
I suspect the Secret Service is investigating mostly because this is high profile and will end up being publicly embarrassing. Not so much to Palin as to the people she was communicating with.
No doubt someone archived the entire account in their e-mail program and will dump it all online sometime before the election.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
"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'..."
When someone does this sort of hacking/eavesdropping/snooping to a government official, it's called "a shocking invasion of...privacy and a violation of law."
When the government does it to you, it's called the "Patriot Act."
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
I think that I understand the reasoning of anonymous actions, in that s/he thinks Palin is doing wrong, and s/he wants to call attention to it.
This may just backfire, and generate support for Palin, thereby defeating his actions purpose. Indeed, this type of attack could even be used as a method for generating support by Palins camp.
The end is not justified by the means, and these types of attacks should not be pursued, either by the attacker, nor by the readers of such "information".
..........FULL STOP.
So far only two emails, some personal photos, a contact list and some inbox screenshots have been posted. Nothing incriminating.
Depends how you define "incriminating".
Work email goes to and from work accounts. Personal email goes to and from personal accounts. That's a policy common in corporations and in government, and is increasingly strictly adhered to the higher up the ranks you go.
As a member of public office, she is accountable to the public, and her email pertaining to her office is a matter of the public record, and subject to things like the Freedom-of-Information-Act (FOIA). Using a personal Yahoo account to conduct government business would be hugely inappropriate for a multitude of reasons; not least of which is undermines her accountability to FOIA.
In Palin's case its evident that a number of her contacts are @alaska.gov... meaning she was corresponding as 'personal palin' to other public officials using their office-accounts.
While perhaps not incriminating, it is hugely inappropriate. Either she was sending them personal messages -- which is inappropriate; she should have sent those to their personal accounts, or she was sending or receiving work related messages which is completely unacceptable.
Palin clearly didn't adhere to this separation of work and personal (hell, her "personal" account is 'gov.palin' which is itself inapprorpiate) and while I'm sure many many people are guilty of it, its still inappropriate, and most of us aren't angling to be 2nd in line to the presidency, so the scrutiny on her is warranted. It would be nice if we could unmask the other canditates personal accounts too, to have a more balanced exposee, but that's beside the point.
Anonymous most likely are doing this because they got lucky. I would guess hack attempts are made at a number of public and political figures. If they have a successful strike, then I'd expect them to run with it. I wouldn't overplay the deliberateness of this.On the other hand if a possible vice- or actual president is daft enough to have unencrypted emails floating round a public system, then it's hardly surprising those emails surface. And anyone can be Anonymous - that's it's greatest strength (even more so than the technical competence of some of its members).
Now if they have found that she was conducting official business through private email accounts and was doing so to avoid scrutiny, then that is interesting.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
This is what I don't get, after reading about half of the posts in this thread: About 95% of the posts don't mention the right to privacy, at all. But monitoring e-mail traffic by secret service in order to catch terrorists or prevent possible terrorist attacks, is frown upon by the great majority of Slashdotters.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
I'll take your NYTimes article and raise you a Financial Times editorial.
The dumbest thing the democrats have done so far in this campaign is focus on Palin. What the hell happened to the issue-driven debate? This was really the time for Obama&Co to shine, so if they botch the whole deal because they chose to make the election a question of character, which is the republicans' favorite playing ground, they'll have no one to blame but themselves.
Get back on topic!
I don't like Palin or the entire McCain campaign in the least... but how is this even remotely acceptable? We cry and bitch and moan about warrantless government wiretapping, yet when some group of a-holes breaks into an elected official's personal email account and posts screenshots on the web, we see it as just some more dirt on a candidate. The best word that describes that is "despicable."
Mark this as flamebait all you want, but people running for public office have constitutional rights too. I've always considered Anonymous a bit shady in their dealings, and this justs seals the deal.
Matt Damon or Lindsey Lohan would do the same to you, if you tell them, Obama is a crock... With Barbara Streisand singing a notch lauder to drown your screams...
Seriously, there is a good reason, Romans considered entertainers to be among the lowest class of citizens — above only prostitutes... They weren't even allowed to serve in the regular army units.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
When the McCain announced Palin as his running mate, I recognized quickly it was quite an ingenious move on their part. I wouldn't be surprised that one of the big reasons she was picked was because of all the issues and drama surrounding her. It is enough to create a media feeding frenzy, diverting the major coverage away from the issues that could defeat them. As they say no publicity is bad publicity, and all the negative coverage paints her as the victim or underdog, whom literature has taught us to root for.
"no publicity is bad publicity"
Spoken like someone who knows nothing about marketing. One of the first things I was taught in my marketing classes is how that is a crock.
Bad publicity has bankrupted companies, people and countries. It's drove people to suicide. There IS bad publicity.
Gone!
It's entirely likely that some scientologit did this and claimed that "anonymous" was behind it. Google for "operation freakout" for another example of the criminal nut-cult framing an innocent party for a crime.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Holy shit. How you believe we originated really matters on whether you should have control of nuclear codes?
Presumably the connection is that a creationist clearly lacks even a modest helping of critical and independant thinking.
excuse me, but she lost her privacy rights on that account right at the moment she sent the first government related email, or replied to a government related email.
the fact that we weren't in the know in regard to her violation of law, her illegal act before the hacking, doesnt make her any more right about the matter. a crime is being committed, you just dont have proof.
its like someone filming a gang operation and publishing it, and then gang coming up and claiming that their privacy rights were violated.
Read radical news here
You misunderstand. Bad publicity is bad publicity. No publicity is also bad publicity. Sometimes slightly bad publicity can drown out the really bad stuff, or divert attention without hurting too much. Especially when the issue is not selling a product to make a profit (like a business), but flinging mud at a political opponent.
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
Except that's just not true. People put blinders on when it comes to their religion. For example, the best mathematician I've ever met personnaly was a prof at Rice University--an altogether brilliant man--who was a devout Christian. I doubt he was specifically a creationist, but he believed in literal interpretation of equally odd parts of the Bible. The last day of class before finals he would always give a lecture on the importance of developing a close personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and pass out Bibles or portions thereof. The students always put up with it because he was a once-in-a-lifetime combination of genius and great lecturer.
I can't explain it, but it's true nevertheless. Heck, look at William Buckley, certainlt a critical and indpendent thinker, who would present profund insight into the value of personal libery and personal choice, and then in the next breath condemn legal abortion as a great evil.
It just doesn't hold that believing in some crazy religious BS entails being stupid in other areas.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Holy shit. How you believe we originated really matters on whether you should have control of nuclear codes?
Maybe not, but if she's getting the launch codes, I sure as hell care about whether she is counting on the Rapture.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
Except that no one has read the emails. The "damning evidence" is a screenshot with a few potentially public matter subject lines. The email from Amy McCorkell mearly tells her not to let criticism get to her. Is that an email between two public officials? Yes. Is it an email of public business? Not even close.
It's often said you can't believe everything you read on the internet, you're banking on something you haven't even really read yet.
She's probably guiltier than sin, but I try to wait till something is verified before I bring out the tar and feathers, especially if your news source is Anonymous.
Anonymous isn't a group any more then the western hemisphear is a group. There's not exactly an application. All this means is someone from 4chan got into her account and posted it for a laugh. Also: " It would be one thing if they found evidence of corruption, but this is merely digital tabloid fluff. " You won't find anything if you don't look.
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master.
You're giving 'Anonymous' a bit much credit there. Anonymous doesn't have an agenda, per se. They do it for the Lulz. Scientology is an easy target. Mrs. Palin is, if anything, an easier target due to her sudden and dramatic rise. I have no doubt in my mind that if Anonymous could find Mr. Obama's personal email account, they would do the same thing with exactly the same glee.
'Anonymous' extends from the anonymous posting habits on 4chan and certain other message boards, where it's easy to bullshit, dickwave, and otherwise behave in a sociopathic manner. They hate because it's fun and not because it serves any purpose. It's not about supporting one candidate or the other. It's about hatred, misanthropy, ego gratification, and taking sadistic pleasure in torturing someone. Bigotry, sexism, and racism probably play into the mix as well.
Anonymous published Mrs. Palin's email address with exactly the same glee that they would report a Camwhore's secrets to her family and school administration.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
It just doesn't hold that believing in some crazy religious BS entails being stupid in other areas.
No, it doesn't. Not necessarily. But being a creationist shows that you're willing to overlook overwhelming evidence in order to believe something written in the bible. What happens when there's a Second Cold War and the fundamentalist with their finger on the big red button starts reading about Noah and how God killed everyone but Noah and his family?
And remember, Bush's "crusade" is still killing people every day.
I want the person with their finger on the button to think that they're going to murder billions, not send them all to happy fluffy fucking cloud world.
POTUS is no job for someone with a world view that's more conservative than the one espoused by the Catholic church.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Someone went through the password recovery dialog and was able to guess answer "Where did you meet your spouse?".
Can someone give me the rationale for those password recovery mechanism that are usually far weaker than the passwords themselves? They seem like such a blatantly bad idea, that I must be missing something in failing to understand why they exist at all
Prime numbers are exactly what Alan Greenspan says they are -S. Minsky
Someone went through the password recovery dialog and was able to guess answer "Where did you meet your spouse?".
What's with that anyway? Sites insist on a long gobbledygook password (God forbid we use something that doesn't have digits and capital letters) and then let us change the password by typing in something where a list of 100 covers about 99% of the answers. Just how stupid are these supposed security experts?
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Obama is a socialist. I don't want that kind of change. On the other hand McCain isn't any better, just another version of the current administration. So, the choices appear to be keep the poor status quo or make a change toward socialism.
You think Obama is a socialist? Silly American, you have no idea what socialism is.
I'm very non-religious, having had most of the religion driven out of me by my experience at the Air Force Academy. However, I became fairly pro-life on all counts.
You don't need religion to be pro-life and anti-abortion (Two separate topics in my opinion).
I simply cannot find a more definitive point at which 'life' begins than at conception. It has nothing to do with my religion, but it is the most logical point at which you can say "Before that point, it was definitely not a human" and after that point "If we do not interfere, it will become a human". I've tried to rationalize abortion by looking at different stages of pregnancy, but I cannot find, or it hasn't yet been identified, that there is a singular event that bridges alive and not alive. Conception, is the most definitive point.
Of course, I'm also very much opposed to the death penalty.
I also, thankfully, have not had my beliefs tested at any extreme level (Child with downs syndrome, or due to rape, or had a loved one murdered and the suspect caught). I am very thankful for that. So while I do not know if I'm strong enough to hold to my convictions, I hope that I never have to face them, but if I do, that I remain true to my beliefs.
So please don't assume that it is just the religious that are against abortion. You can have completely secular objections against it.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
1. Define "socialism" as you meant it above.
2. Why not?
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Why can't you make something useful and sell it?
It must be nice on your planet where all knowledge is directly sellable and profitable! Biology is not all about making cures for the common cold and viagra. The most important work going on today is understanding the basics. Discovering a gene that maintains chromesomal integrity will get you absolutely nothing that you can sell but would be absolutely essential to a real cure for cancer. Just not directly. That's why the government gives grants, because the research that it buys proves its worth in the long run and isn't rewarded by market forces. Same reason the military isn't a private enterprise.
Being dependent on the federal government especially does not entitle you to run any portion of it.
I was explaining my reasoning for my statement that I didn't want a creationist in the white house, not saying I get to decide the next president. Keep up with the conversation or go play with your toys somewhere else.
What is a threat about Palin is not her inexperience, it's that her policies, ignorance, and will to corruption are essentially Bush on steroids. And the fact that McCain picked her is just one more piece on the pile of evidence that he has abandoned whatever principles he may ever have had, if any.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
If you vote for a third party, you may as well vote for whichever of the two candidates you hate the most because that's what you're doing.
Voting for a third party does not, never has, and never will, send a message. The two major parties are well aware of what the outliers in their party want. They don't care. Democratic candidates are not going to move further left, the Republicans are not going to move any further right, no matter if you vote for a Pat Buchanan or a Ralph Nader.
They're not going to do this because catering to the lunatic fringe loses you the middle which is where elections are determined. No one gives a rats if you vote for a lunatic fringe party because catering more towards your ideology would lose them the election faster than losing your vote.
As a side note, before you start throwing around the word "Socialism", learn what it means. By any global standard, Obama is not even remotely socialist. He believes in things like universal health care, but that's not socialism, it's just universal health care. If you don't agree with universal health care say you disagree with it, but don't try to claim that it's socialist and bury it under the "I hate the commies" pile.
You might also want to consider that the current Republican Administration currently owns controlling shares in the largest insurance company in the country, as well as two major investment bankers.
The "free market" ideals of the current government have forced them to take a more "socialist" control of the economy than any previous government in US history, just to fix up their mistakes.
See, now, when I look at the stages of pregnancy, I see fertilization as "large cell plus tiny wannabe-cell equals large cell", not some sort of dramatic change worthy of special treatment... much less a supernatural event where a hidden deity sneaks a soul in, as claimed by the religious folks. This view is validated by the fact that a single fertilization can readily lead to two (or hypothetically more) resulting embryos, resulting in multiple unique individuals with identical DNA. This tells me that DNA is not really central to what it means to be an individual, unique person. Therefore, the moment when two haploid genomes join into a diploid genome isn't a particularly good moment to start saying that a cell has become a person.
Instead, I ask myself the question: what makes a person a person? And my answer is that a person (1) reacts to the surrounding environment; (2) remembers the past, learns from it, and makes predictions from it; and (3) has a personality, which seems to be a second-order effect of established memory plus genetic biases. (Yes, by this standard, many animals count as "persons". I'm not terribly concerned about that: in this context of "person", I'm concerned with how to treat a person ethically, and it's clear that animals with these traits must also be treated ethically.) And it's obvious to me that, while some of these things start while the fetus is in the womb — certainly the first, and the beginnings of the second — they definitely don't start until after the embryo has become a fetus, and based on how the brain works they definitely don't start prior to the formation of the human-style frontal cortex around weeks 22-26.
As a result, I don't see any moral issues whatsoever in abortion in the first trimester or the early second trimester, for the same reason I don't see moral issues in masturbation or exfoliation or hysterectomies. The bigger moral concern is the emotional well-being of the mother. Pregnancy is a big deal, after all: the choices surrounding pregnancy — abortion included — take on a very weighty importance due to their massively life-changing consequences.
Range Voting: preference intensity matters
I'm going to go out on a limb and say he doesn't want to vote for a socialist because he's not a socialist and doesn't believe in socialism.
Socialism doesn't work because of the moral hazard issue. The lazy get to profit off of the labor of the hard working. Sure, you lift the bottom up a little relative to everyone else, but the cost is destroying innovation and potential for growth.
If I'm going to make the same if I mail it in and work 30 hours or if I work 80 hours, guess what? I'm mailing it in...