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"Anonymous" Hacks Palin's Private Email

Posted by kdawson on from the should-have-used-hushmail dept.

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.

8 of 1,733 comments (clear)

  1. The crossed the line this time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Attacking Scientology is one thing. We all know that it is a crock of crap. However, when somebody hacks a VP candidate, the FBI and Secret Service will react strongly.

    1. Re:The crossed the line this time by philspear · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I would imagine though that hacking into a yahoo e-mail account, even if it's a political figure, is not really going to get any serious penalties. It's not like they hacked into a government e-mail account. It's also not as if she has launch codes yet. McCain has to be elected, then die of a heart attack for her e-mail to be of much real importance. ... of course, if she did, they would probably end up in her yahoo account. And we'll be dead soon anyway. As Matt Damon said, someone who belives in creationism should not be an (old) heartbeat away from the football.

      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.

    2. Re:The crossed the line this time by anaesthetica · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Palin was a trap that the Democrats walked into. There are many substantive policy issues upon which one could attack Palin, instead she was attacked personally and her family was made the center of attention. Within a week, Obama's poll numbers took a nosedive and McCain led in both national polls and electoral vote count. The Guardian commentary summarized it nicely:

      [I]nstead of protecting their precious advantage, they succumbed to a spasm of hatred and threw the vase, the crockery, the cutlery and the kitchen sink at an obscure politician from Alaska.

      Two weeks ago an Obama volunteer who knew from class came up to me and gave me that well-tread talking point about Palin's lack of experience, and the hilarious "heartbeat away from the presidency" cliche.

      The bottom line is that both Obama and Palin have been at their presidency-qualifying jobs (Senator & Governor) for less than four years. Obama having two years on Palin is insignificant compared to the experience that McCain and Biden have: 25 years and 35 years in Congress, respectively.

      It's also insignificant compared to the experience that our three youngest presidents--TR, Jack Kennedy and William Jefferson Clinton--had before assuming the presidency. TR had already been Asst. Sec. of the Navy, Governor of New York, and Vice President. Jack Kennedy was in the House and Senate for a combined 13 years. And William Jefferson Clinton was Governor of Arkansas for 14 years.

      The major difference between Obama and Palin, in terms of experience and bracketing their policy differences, is that the former is running for the presidency, whereas the latter will only assume the presidency if McCain keels over. The big threat the democrats keep speculating about is how inexperienced Palin will be if she is called up to the presidency, schizophrenically trying to ignore that by voting for Obama they're guaranteeing someone with an inexcusable dearth of experience will be the president. Doublethink. On experience alone, neither Obama or Palin should be in the race, both are bad choices (again leaving aside their policy positions and "vision").

      What's so unbelievably hypocritical on the Democratic side of things was their opposition to Hillary's "experience experience experience" propaganda that she used against Obama. Now they're turning around and reproducing the same failed strategy by doing exactly what Hillary did, giving lie to their protestations that experience wasn't the most important thing when defending Obama against Hillary's OMGTHREEINTHEMORNINGPHONECALL attacks.

      There are significant substantive problems with Palin. Instead Democrats emphasized their own weaknesses in attacking Palin. Dumb.

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      The Rise and Fall of Online Community
  2. Probably Genuine by amaupin · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Note that there is no easy way to tell if the material on Wikileaks is genuine or a hoax.

    Wired has confirmed from one sender, Amy McCorkell, that the displayed message from her to Sarah Palin is genuine.

  3. Hooray for women's rights! by philspear · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Sarah Palin is proof that there is no glass ceiling for women, as long as you're not ugly, have fufilled your reproductive obligations, don't have any actual power, will be subordinate to a man, seem clueless, and hiring you will keep a black man out of the white house.

  4. Re:I've looked. Check Gawker by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    the scuttlebut on /b/ yesterday was that no, Anon did not download a backup file, and got cold feet when he realised where he was and that partyvans would be dispatched shortly. There was much crying and gnashing of teeth among /b/tards yesterday, I tell you, who were hoping for complete copies of the e-mails, and were denied.

  5. Re:Intended purpose of hacking the e-mail by Plekto · · Score: 5, Interesting

    http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/09/17/palins_yahoo_account_hacked.html

    This is from the Washington Post

    "Among the e-mails released as part of the records request in June were several from Frye asking a state official whether private e-mail accounts and messages sent to BlackBerry devices are immune to subpoena, then reporting the answer to the governor and her husband, Todd, who also uses a Yahoo! mail address."

    She's screwed. She's using her personal address to ask if here blackberry account can't be subponea'd. It looks pretty conclusive to me that she was doing or planning to do bad things with her personal accounts to keep the courts from getting ahold of it easily. So says the Washington Post, and well, that's about as good as it gets.

  6. Re:Intended purpose of hacking the e-mail by meringuoid · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Second, Scientology gets the benefit of watching/gloating as the Secret Service does all the heavy lifting in uncovering these guys. I'm pretty sure that when the Feds are done with these guys, the one thing they won't be is anonymous.

    You think they're the same people? Anonymous isn't an organisation. It's a meme complex, nothing more. It's a collective term used for the posters on a variety of independent imageboards sharing a common culture of in-jokes, comic references, stock trolls and memes. Some Anons protest scifags; others crack email accounts; others go on Habbo Hotel dressed as Samuel L. Jackson and announce that the pool's closed; others grief furries on Second Life; others go to online memorials for teen suicides and declare the dead kid an hero. Although actually, it's usually ebaumsworld doing that stuff and not Anonymous at all.

    It's actually very unlikely that the Anonymous we're dealing with here have anything to do with the Scientology campaign. That's mostly moved off the chans to its own dedicated forums now. Most of the sentiment among the Anonymous mainstream is that protestfags are part of the cancer that is killing /b/.

    --
    Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.