Posted on 09/18/2008 10:55:25 AM PDT by Pinkbell
It's not a great idea to run a government using Yahoo! e-mail accounts.
Gov. Sarah Palin's e-mail habit of using a private account to communicate with aides echos the worst practices of the Bush administration, says one expert.
That's the word from experts, anyway, reacting to news that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's Yahoo! e-mail had been hacked earlier this week. McCain's vice-presidential pick apparently used the accounts to communicate with key aides about government business.
The practice is dangerous, said experts, and can run counter to laws ensuring government is open and accountable -- a tough point for Palin, who has made "open government" a catchphrase of her political identity.
By using non-governmental email systems, "Your information is out there available, beyond the official mechanisms there to protect it," said Amit Yoran, the nation's first cybersecurity chief. Yoran is now CEO of Netwitness Corp., a computer security firm for government and private entities.
"When she's communicating about government programs, that information is not being protected with the typical precautions the government has put in place in its own risk management process," said Yoran.
Moreover, a hacked account could be used to falsify communications, noted Yoran – a point proven by one of the hackers, who used Palin's account to send a message to one of her assistants.
Two Yahoo! email accounts belonging to Palin were hacked early Tuesday by a group calling itself 'Anonymous'. Screen shots of her inbox were posted online, as well as a screenshot showing an email of an apparently personal nature from a Palin appointee to the governor.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
I went to the ABC site to protest and then I looked at the so-called “news” items...it was a gossip fest, not a news organization.
I am so very upset with the MSM and totally flummoxed as to why they are risking their reputations for crediblility and just letting their revenues continue to sink farther and farther by their EXTREME bias against the GOP.
Usually, there is some truth to the axiom, “Follow the money” but these news organizations are losing money and it doesn’t make any sense to me as to why there is no serious analysis as to why and seemingly no care that they are losing money....I really don’t understand. I know that there are in the tank for the Liberats, but ususally at some point the money takes over for ideology for businesses. The television medium is not renowned for their consistent sense of ideology....it is a money-greedy, money-hungry, money-envious entity.
I am wondering why they are acting so fervently against their own self-interest. What is this really all about?
>>Gov. Sarah Palin’s e-mail habit of using a private account to communicate with aides echos the worst practices of the Bush administration, says one expert.<<
Communicate what? The office picnic - or the nuclear codes?
There is a difference. And it matters.
I have yet to see or hear of a single email in this yahoo account that was remotely sensitive “government business”. Until I do, this article is nothing more than a tabloid hit piece.
I am going to say this again, and this time I’m going to yell so that people might read it and refrain from making uninformed statements like you did:
SHE WAS NOT USING THE YAHOO ACCOUNT FOR BUSINESS PURPOSES! THE HACKER HIMSELF HAS STATED THAT HE HOPED TO FIND SUCH EVIDENCE, BUT THAT THERE WAS NOTHING THERE THAT WAS INCRIMINATING. DON’T BELIEVE EVERYTHING THE MSM TELLS YOU IN ARTICLES LIKE THIS. YOU ARE BEING DUPED BY “JOURNALISTS” WHO WANT YOU TO DO EXACTLY WHAT YOU DID - JUST ASSUME THAT, BECAUSE THEY SAY THERE WAS “SPECULATION” THAT SHE WAS USING THE EMAIL ACCOUNT FOR STATE BUSINESS THAT IT MUST BE TRUE, WHEN ALL OF THE EVIDENCE SHOWS THAT THE EMAILS THAT WERE FOUND IN THIS ACCOUNT WERE PERSONAL EMAILS, NOT STATE BUSINESS. THE MOST “DAMNING” EMAIL, IF YOU WILL, WAS BETWEEN HER AND THE LT. GOVERNOR AND ALL THEY WERE DOING WAS COMPLAINING ABOUT A RADIO TALK SHOW HOST. THAT IS A PERSONAL POLITICAL EMAIL, NOT AN OFFICIAL STATE BUSINESS EMAIL, SO THE APPROPRIATE PLACE FOR IT WAS IN HER PERSONAL EMAIL ACCOUNT.
A bunch of personal emails from friends and relatives saying "God bless" and "good luck" is "official business"???
So which is it? Should a candidate for president be able to Yahoo or not? McCain can’t Yahoo so he is disqualified. Palin can Yahoo so that disqualifies her. These liberal wackos in “the media” are absolutely nuts.
Nice. Blame the victim.
So are they saying that Obama doesn’t have a personal email account?????? Or that nobody should in govt? Because that is not what I am hearing. What I am hearing is that Sarah should not have one.
Absolutely disgusting.
I wonder, does Justin Rood get his paycheck from ABC, or from the Obama campaign? Actually, is there a difference?
Thank you!
Geesh, I can’t believe some FReepers are buying the lib lies on this.
What is there was “official” state business?
I think that this is much more than an email issue. They posted private phone numbers from her computer phone list. They went way deeper than her yahoo account.
“I love Palin, but can’t disagree that using Yahoo! (or any other similar) email for business is less than genius.”
Bzzzt. She didn’t. Even the hacker was upset he couldn’t find any state biz in her e-mails. Go to Malkin’s site for a re-hash. She was using a private e-mail for personal and family biz
Also, see my post above. It is pure speculation on the enemdiea’s part.
If she had use govt e-mail for personal business, they would be screeching about that in hit pieces.
Glad to see a lot of other people see it the same way I do.... WTF. So her email gets hacked and somehow she is to blame for it...WTF???? Don’t you non-thinkers posting in here think that since these left-wing, moonbat, demonRATS DO NOT HAVE ONE THING TO SHOW FOR THEIR INTRUSION that means that SHE WAS INDEED NOT USING HER PERSONAL EMAIL FOR STATE BUSINESS!!!!!! Since they did not find one damn thing, while pouring through her PERSONAL emails and photos, now the CRONIES have to SUPPOSE that she was indeeded doing what their LAWBREAKING hacks could not prove....come on get a BRAIN!!!!!!!!!!!
They didn't find anything interesting. Just some family pictures and unspecified documents.
That's why it's a non-story, no matter how much the MSM tries to make it into one.
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Hey folks, normal email is not secure. It is not even necessary to hack into someone’s web email account to gain access to their email messages. The SMTP servers normal email messages must hop through to get from sender to recipients are generally not hardened (non secure). Hacking into such servers with Sniffing programs which forward copies of messages with certain addresses to third parties is not hard to do and happens frequently.
Andre Bacard, author of The Computer Privacy Handbook calls Normal Internet/email the most comprehensive surveillance system ever invented. Security was simply not a design priority when email as we know it was being invented.
Ah, this is the meme they’re pushing... it’s Palin’s fault she was the victim of “domestic surveillance” by the Obama camp.
Ask ABC or Fuchs of this phony “National Security Archives” why they weren’t really interested in this before the 2000 election:
September 22, 2000
Web posted at: 6:35 p.m. EDT (2235 GMT)
WASHINGTON (CNN) — Vice President Al Gore was asked to bring $20 to the Hsi Lai Buddhist Temple fund-raiser and his staff was informed that a businessman was willing to raise $250,000 in exchange for coffee with President Clinton, according to recently reconstructed White House e-mails.
The half-inch stack of e-mails released Friday are part of some 100,000 incoming messages that were not properly archived under the White House e-mail system — and thus, not turned over to investigators in response to various subpoenas issued by the Office of Independent Counsel, the Justice Department, and several congressional committees.
The e-mails were turned over to House Government Reform Committee Chairman Dan Burton, a long time critic of the Clinton administration.
“The evidence is clear the Whitehouse has obstructed this committee’s investigation time and time again,” said Burton in a statement.
Gore spokesman Jim Kennedy said Friday that the e-mails contained “nothing of significance.”
Attorney General Janet Reno announces that she will not name a special prosecutor to investigate Vice President Gore (08-23-00)
One e-mail offered to raise $250,000 in exchange for a White House coffee and a Clinton interview with a Taiwanese reporter. The offer was made by Taiwanese-American businessman George Chang of Virginia.
Kennedy said that message was turned over to Capitol Hill more than three years ago. “It is old and was reviewed at the time,” Kennedy said.
The e-mail messages do appear to contradict initial claims made by Gore and other White House officials that the vice president did not know the Buddhist temple event was a fund-raiser. Gore initially said he believed it was a community outreach event, and later acknowledged that it was “donor-related.”
The e-mails released Friday reflect that the vice president’s staff considered the Buddhist Temple event to be money-related.
“Currently, we are committed in San Jose and L.A. for fund-raising events,” one staff e-mail said regarding the April 1996 trip.
One e-mail urged the vice president to take $20 along on the trip so he could make an offering at the Buddhist temple. “The VP will need to have some cash on hand (Ladon recommended $20) to offer as an offering at the Buddhist temple in L.A.,” the message said.
In another April 1996 e-mail message, one Gore staffer raised a question about upcoming White House coffees: “I do not remember asking, but I may have. These are FR coffees, right?”
A White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they believe the FR was a shorthand for “fund-raising” or “finance-related.”
The messages were reconstructed from back-up tapes as ordered by U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth, who is holding hearings on allegations of obstruction of justice by White House officials concerning the computer problem. Judge Lamberth ordered the White House to reconstruct the e-mails on a timely basis in conjunction with the lawsuit, which was brought by the conservative group Judicial Watch.
The disclosure of the e-mails comes less than a month after Attorney General Janet Reno announced she would not appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the vice president over statements he made regarding the Buddhist temple and other fund-raising events.
They were PERSONAL e-mails, NOT OFFICAL BUSINESS....
Geez, does ABC get it’s feed directly from DU and KOS????
Nevermind, I know the answer to that question.
Please read some of the other comments here. Or maybe just read the end of the article excerpt.
In short, SHE DIDN’T USE THE YAHOO ACCOUNT FOR GOVERNMENT BUSINESS. Even the hacker couldn’t find any. See Malkins in depth article on the topic.
SHEESH.
Yahoo!’s stock should nosedive from these hit pieces in the media.
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