Posted on 09/17/2008 3:10:55 PM PDT by americanophile
Gawker, a site best known for its catty observations about important subjects like celebrity clothing faux pas and stalker celebrity sightings, claims to have obtained screen shots from one of Sarah Palin's private Yahoo e-mail accounts.
Now, of course, Gawker isn't the New York Times, so it's only reasonable to be skeptical, but there are reasons to think this report is legitimate.
According to Gawker, numerous anonymous individuals managed to hack their way into one of Palin's private accounts, gov.palin@yahoo.com. This is a different e-mail than gov.sarah@yahoo.com, which Palin allegedly used to send work-related messages, including e-mails about her involvement in Troopergate. Both e-mail accounts have now apparently been deleted.
The screen shots Gawker includes of the hacked account suggests that it actually belonged to Palin. There are e-mails to Ivy Frye, a Palin aide, as well as to an address known to belong to Palin's husband, Todd. Need more evidence? There's also a cellphone number for Bristol Palin that seems to go to her voice-mail. There are pictures of Palin's family reportedly downloaded from the account. And as the Gawker post points out, "The public profile for the gov.palin address dates its last update to April of this year -- well before she became McCain's running mate. So if it's a hoax, it's a hoax that began long before anyone outside of Alaska cared about Palin."
However, those interested in the actual content of the e-mails may be disappointed. While the account may add to the speculation that Palin was conducting public business from a private account -- perhaps in an attempt to immunize herself from public records and disclosure laws -- Gawker's images offer up little in the way of newsworthy information. Gawker shows an e-mail in which Palin writes about her understanding of the role of the vice president and another in which she discusses a local radio talk show host. Not exactly items that will make or break a candidacy.
A McCain spokesman did not respond to a request for comment from Salon.
Update: The e-mail account was real. Rick Davis, John McCain's campaign manager, has issued this 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.
“These are the same liberals who don’t want the FBI looking at terrorists’ emails or listening to their phone calls.”
Isn’t liberal hypocrisy amazing?
These same liberals want terrorists to have the SAME rights that you and I have as citizens. Bet ya, they won’t want to investigate it either.
Personal or business, it’s against the law!
Snickering at this
“Did we say that we ‘hacked’ Governor Palin’s email? We meant we ‘backed’ her email. Her RIGHT to email...”
I went there.
A snotty site with snotty, short winded comments.
‘nary a thought about the lawyers they will soon be needing to hire.
Bwaahaahhaaaaa
So are there some hackers out there peeing themselves right now?
If they catch the culprit I think rather than prison they should just send him out on the fishing boat with Todd and let him have a little chat with him.
They obviously haven't looked at DU.
Gawker, by publishing screen shots, should be watching for the FBI.....makes them complicit in the crime....
Hacking into private e-mail is a felony, so let us hope that the FBI is all over this report and finds out what is really going on here...
Libs are so childish.
Or more likely it was because Yahoo's email was probably more reliable for 24/7 access to her e-mail from everywhere.
Governments are way behind in implementing secure intranets with secure external access to e-mail, contacts, and other data.
Thanx for that terrific insight.
Gnash.
I don’t know or care if this is true, but it does confirm my suspicion that it’ll be damn near impossible for someone to get elected 20 years from now.
Every yahoo and google email and IM lives FOREVER. Suppose a person flirting via IM in college decides to run for President 30 years later... someone at those sites can EASILY dig through the archives and “leak” the contents.
If this turns out to be true, I’d bet anything it was an inside job at Yahoo.
I'm guessing there are some lib Yahoo employees who may be peeing themselves soon for releasing her authentication information illegally.
That's a FELONY.
Pray for Sarah...They are trying to break her.
If they can make her upset or get a picture of her crying....they will prey on weakness....
Evil just Evil. PRAY FOR SARAH AND JOHN
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