Sun
Sep 21 2008
04:52 am
Palin, her emails, her hacker: No secrets
By: JPROF


The theft of Sarah Palin's "private" emails from her Yahoo account this week flared into a potentially fascinating but short-lived story of the presidential campaign. Apparently, there is little within the emails that gives us new insight into the Republican vice presidential candidate.

What is far more interesting -- and instructive -- are the stories underneath this non-story. There are three:

  • Hacking with ease. It took virtually no technical expertise for the hacker to get into Palin's email account. The security question used to prevent unauthorized entry could easily be answered through a Google search or by just looking at a standard biography. Just about anyone with rudimentary knowledge of email systems could have done it. (See "Palin Email "Hack" Was Hardly a Hack at All" at Gizmodo.)
  • Secret government. Why was Sarah Palin using a private email account instead of the one provided for her by the state government of Alaska? She was doing so as a work-around to Alaska's Open Records Act. According to the Seattle Times, "Palin routinely uses a private Yahoo e-mail account to conduct state business. Others in the governor's office sometimes use personal e-mail accounts, too." To those of us who believe the public's business should be conducted in public, the attitude of the governor and her administration is troubling. But, given the permeable nature of "private" email accounts, this scheme comes up somewhat short of brilliant.
  • Tracking the hack. If Palin doesn't have any protection from intrusions, then neither does the hacker. Attention is being focused on a University of Tennessee student who is the son of a Democratic legislator. (UT is where I teach, but no, I don't know him.) Even though he made some efforts to conceal his identity, he was tracked through a number of clues he left about himself and information that appeared in his high school yearbook. (For more details, see the Knoxville News Sentinel's "Kernell mum on allegations son hacked into Palin’s e-mail."

The Big Lesson here: The web is no place to hide. What happens on the web doesn't stay on the web.

When we put information, thoughts, ideas, pictures or whatever on the web, we lose control of it. And sometimes it comes back to haunt us.

________

More from this guy at The Writing Wright and Honey Dot Comb.

Topics:
Sharon Cobb's picture

7BXN@9Z

Submitted by Sharon Cobb (not verified) on Sun, 2008/09/21 - 6:05pm.

While I'm not excusing bad behavior, there is, as it turns out, a bigger question here, and that is why Palin was using personal email for state business. It's a rhetorical question.

By doing what she has done, she has avoided transparency in government, just like Cheney. State emauls can be requested by the Open Records Act. Federal emails can be requested under FOIA-Freedom of Information Act.

Palin has avoided the public knowing what they have a right to know by using a personal account for state business.

R. Neal's picture

When we put information,

Submitted by R. Neal on Mon, 2008/09/22 - 8:49am.

When we put information, thoughts, ideas, pictures or whatever on the web, we lose control of it. And sometimes it comes back to haunt us.

That's a good point. In your new media conference at U.T. in the session on ethics, students expressed concern about Facebook and Myspace info coming back on them in job interviews, etc.

I pointed out that people are concerned about privacy yet freely give it up on the internet. If you don't want something known to everyone, don't post it.

That said, you should have a reasonable expectation of privacy when using email. Yahoo and other free web-based email services will, I'm sure, be reevaluating their password security.

And whoever is responsible for illegally accessing Palin's email accounts will most certainly be prosecuted, regardless of their motivations. I don't understand the mentality that leads to such activity being perceived as "cool." Hopefully this will be a lesson that it's not.

P.S. Nice work on the cartoon, JProf.

MDB's picture

Palin's privavy was violated

Submitted by MDB on Mon, 2008/09/22 - 9:29am.

That said, you should have a reasonable expectation of privacy when using email. Yahoo and other free web-based email services will, I'm sure, be reevaluating their password security.

And whoever is responsible for illegally accessing Palin's email accounts will most certainly be prosecuted, regardless of their motivations.

My thoughts exactly.

Yes, there is evidence that she was using personal e-mail for state business. However, that does not justify the way that evidence was discovered.

Crap like this is the reason so many good people don't enter politics -- they have to be afraid every little secret of their life will be exposed. You either have to have a skin as thick as a bull elephant to withstand it, or spent your entire life living like a cloistered nun.

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