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Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Sarah Palin's email hacked into by "Anonymous" (updated)
Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin had her Yahoo email account hacked into by the "Anonymous" group of hackers who have caused so much trouble for Scientology. They sent screen shots of Palin's email account, a list of Palin's email contacts, as well as two family photos taken from Palin's account to Wikileaks, who published the items here.
According to Wikileaks, Anonymous gained access to Palin's email account around midnight on Tuesday. Wikileaks also suggested that the violation of Palin's privacy was justified because Palin uses a private email account to conduct government business, which keeps Palin's email from becoming public through freedom of information requests.
Threat Level, the Wired magazine blog, has confirmed that at least one of the emails is authentic.
One of the screen shots included a message from someone calling themselves a "The good anonymous" to Ivy Frey, an aide to Palin. The text of the message reads:
Dear Ivy, You don't know me, but I am part of an internet group.
We call ourselves anonymous.This email was hacked by anonymous, but I took no part in that.
I simply got the password back, and changed it so no further damage could be done.
Please get in contact with Sarah Palin and inform her the new password to this account is.[xxx]
Thank you and best wishes,
- The good anonymous
Rick Davis, campaign manager for McCain-Palin, issued the following statement: "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."
UPDATE: The email account has been deleted, and some are suggesting that this is potentially an attempt to "destroy evidence." On MoJo, the blog for Mother Jones magazine: "Since then, the accounts have been deleted, which could be considered destruction of evidence if a court chose to pursue it."
Fox News reports: "Palin has faced scrutiny for using her private account to do government business. The Washington Post reported last week that a local Republican activist is trying to get Palin to release more than 1,100 e-mails she withheld from a public records request. The appeal reportedly questions why Palin and her aides shift between public and private e-mail accounts."
Associated Press writes: "The disclosure is raising new questions about the propriety of the Palin administration's use of nongovernment e-mail accounts to conduct state business. The practice was revealed prior to Palin's selection as the Republican vice presidential candidate, after political critics obtained internal e-mails documenting the practice by some aides."
UPDATE2: Here is a timeline of the hack.
UPDATE3: Check out this Google Trends chart for "Palin emails" (its "hotness" listing? "Volcanic"):
Here is a screenshot of the email to Frey, with Frey's email address removed:
Posted by P.M. Jaworski on September 17, 2008 in International Affairs | Permalink
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Comments
Anonymous is not a group of hackers - it's a leaderless collective of like-minded individuals, from all walks of life.
http://www.enturbulation.org/press-media/faq
Posted by: Anonymous | 2008-09-17 4:58:47 PM
A "leaderless collective of like-minded individuals"?
Don't they hack? And isn't "collective" a synonym for "group"?
It still seems to me like I have the description right. I'm happy to change it, if it's inaccurate, but I'll need more than nicer-sounding synonyms.
Posted by: P.M. Jaworski | 2008-09-17 5:01:48 PM
That Anonymous poster is posting the same nonsense all over the blogosphere. You particularly have to love his final words "from all walks of life".
That's a downright lie. These hackers come from the extreme Radical Left of the Democrat Party. They are sick minded individuals that would fit in well in Lord of the Flies.
They have now committed a federal crime in the U.S. Let's see how much they're laughing if the FBI catches up with them.
Posted by: Robert W. | 2008-09-17 5:13:46 PM
Robert, you know absolutely nothing about these people. I used to at least be an observer in their little in-crowd. If anything, they're like that hardcore libertarian that believes that the rules should only apply to people that aren't them. I'm positive they would do the exact same thing to Joe Biden if he was in a similar situation doing the same thing. They get off on destruction, whether it's the destroying someone's security, reputation, or their peace of mind. It's a power thing.
Posted by: N. | 2008-09-17 5:38:36 PM
To Robert: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! I'm sorry, but you couldn't be more wrong. Sick-mided? Yup. Radical? Most definitely. But Democrats? YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME. /b/tards, as they're called, do this because they FEEL LIKE IT. Because they don't care about the consequences. Because they thought it would be entertaining. Your comment saying that they did this because they are far left has only confirmed to me the fact that you are a right-wing, first-class, jesusland MORON who is looking for ANY reason - ANY REASON WHATSOEVER - to discredit the Democrats. People like you make me sick.
Posted by: R.A.B | 2008-09-17 5:51:08 PM
I love this line:
"Since then, the accounts have been deleted, which could be considered destruction of evidence if a court chose to pursue it."
Wow... deleting email accounts? Destruction of evidence? I guess we need a law preventing people from deleting email accounts.
The one thing we're not hearing about in these articles is an en-masse questioning of Yahoo!'s email security. I'd think that is as big of a story as whose email account got hacked. After all, whenever a bank's account information is hacked, the news is all on top of the bank itself.
Funny that we don't see the same line of questioning being directed at Yahoo!.
Posted by: Surecure | 2008-09-17 5:55:55 PM
Surecure,
The hackers may simply have used a brute force method to gain entry into Palin's mailbox. If her password was a dictionary word, it would be easy enough to simply try lots of different combinations until the right one was found (the computer would do it for you.)
You can't exactly blame Yahoo for that. I tend to lay fault for weak passwords on users, at least primarily.
Best,
Terrence
Posted by: Terrence Watson | 2008-09-17 6:27:08 PM
I'm part of the anonymous group. Anonymous seriously aren't a group of hackers. We're just scary people that have nothing better to do, and hell; after the Scientology strikes, rick rolling the Mets, and accidentally sending bomb threats to football stadiums....so much media coverage is kind of getting more constant. But remember, everyone is anonymous. You're anonymous too. Personal army, etc. Good luck, Mrs. Palin!
Posted by: Anonymous | 2008-09-17 6:31:58 PM
http://img515.imageshack.us/img515/6089/1221697597525ql8.jpg
Everyone is anonymous.
Posted by: Anonymous | 2008-09-17 6:35:40 PM
Her nomination has caused a total melt-down of the Left, which includes MSM. I can only hope that the FBI will pursue this crime seriously, for these people have committed a serious crime regardless of who the victim is.
It is also appalling that Wikileaks publishes this. They should also be prosecuted.
These people deserve nothing but contempt for they are scum.
Posted by: Alain | 2008-09-17 8:21:41 PM
Palin as a sportscaster.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/toby_harnden/blog/2008/09/17/sarah_palin_as_sports_anchor_starring_in_first_political_ad
Posted by: The Stig | 2008-09-17 8:28:02 PM
The Stig as a prognosticator on Sept. 13:
Gas prices are up! Gas prices are up and they'll never go down again!
As correctly pointed out, the spike was a four-day event.
Ever get tired of being the Joe Biden of bloggers ... being wrong all the time?
Posted by: set you free | 2008-09-17 8:51:09 PM
The Stig as a prognosticator on Sept. 13:
Gas prices are up! Gas prices are up and they'll never go down again!
Posted by: set you free | 17-Sep-08 8:51:09 PM
If you are going to quote what I wrote it would help if you actually used my quote and not one that you made up yourself. I'll debate you on what I wrote not what you made up. So go back to mopping the floors at the Burger King you work at.
Posted by: The Stig | 2008-09-17 9:08:30 PM
I lol'd
Posted by: Anonymous | 2008-09-17 11:45:03 PM
mirrors
http://rapidshare.com/files/146255573/palin_hacked_screenshots.zip.html
Posted by: mirrors | 2008-09-18 2:58:12 AM
The moral of this story is Jesus can't protect you if you use him as your password.
Posted by: David | 2008-09-18 6:16:36 AM
Throughout the entire primaries and the general election, the Obama campaign has played dirty politics. In addition to the never ending vitriol of the Obama bloggers on the internet, nearly every time I have posted a supportive blog for Hillary Clinton ... and, then for McCain/Palin ... my computer's mailbox has been inundated with hundreds of pieces of email spam. Another example of under handed behavior by Obama's henchmen, is that they have been organized to approach retirement homes, as volunteer community speakers ... only to visit multiple times spewing lop sided pro-Obama, and negative McCain propaganda to elderly people, to get their votes in November. And, now we can see unprincipled politicians and bias media hacks using the race card ... telling people " if you don't vote for Obama, you must be a racist". Usually, when Americans uncover such despicable tactics, they can count on the mainstream media to expose it to the public ... however, in this case, most of the mainstream media is in the tank for Obama ... so, they either look the other way, or they make phony biased excuses to mischaracterize, and cover up what's really happening.
Posted by: Gina | 2008-09-18 12:04:56 PM
Stig:
You're wrong again ,,, this time about my occupation.
Don't you ever get tired of being wrong?
Gina:
Bear in mind who's bringing up the racial issue ... Obama's lapdogs.
Curiously, there's no mention of race from the McCain/Palin camp.
The voters will remember.
Posted by: set you free | 2008-09-18 12:18:26 PM
Hm. Every time I see someone out something bad McCain/Palin duo has done, one of them has been personally involved, incl. the scandals around Palins conduct before the nomination.
Every time someone bursts about how Obama campaign is using underhanded tricks, it's always some unknown anonymous 'supporter' who supposedly spams someone's mail addy, writes trashy comments to their blog and generally disagrees.
...So, in other words, the other campaigns nominees are caught with their hands _in_ the cookie jar personally, and the other one is accused for the actions of completely unattached persons.
Can you blame Obama if he has zealous supporters? Can you blame Palin if she misuses power herself and then gets caught?
Which one is your preference?
Posted by: W | 2008-09-19 2:39:25 AM
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