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Court Rules That Palin Must Save Yahoo Emails
Posted by
timothy
on Sun Oct 12, 2008 03:19 PM
from the hope-yahoo's-ok-with-that dept.
from the hope-yahoo's-ok-with-that dept.
quarterbuck writes "An Anchorage judge has ruled that Governor Sarah Palin must save her emails, as they were apparently used for state business. Last week a Tennessee man was arrested over hacking one of her Yahoo email accounts. The Washington Post also reports that Sarah Palin, her husband, and officials had set up email accounts known only to each other."
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Taking one for the team. (Score:5, Interesting)
I guess you can say that 4chan kid took one for the team.
Had he not gained access (I don't use the word hack because he didn't hack anything) to her email account, this decision may not have come to be.
I guess you can say he took one for the team although that may not have been his original intentions.
Re:Taking one for the team. (Score:5, Informative)
Now he's going to be seen the some cowering, harmless punk kid who half-wittedly exposed the blatant stupidity of Sarah Palin and the weaknesses of Yahoo and similar mail services.
Parent
Re:Taking one for the team. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Taking one for the team. (Score:5, Informative)
But do you think that if he had not gained access to her emails, this decision would have been made? Regardless if he backed out, this still resulted in her being forced to keep her yahoo emails. This could come back to bite her if she doesn't remove those emails first.
I believe there was already an effort underway by some Alaskans to gain access to the emails in the commercial accounts that Palin and her staff were using. The account that got hacked was actually her personal Yahoo account, not one of the ones normally used for official business.
Parent
Re:Taking one for the team. (Score:5, Interesting)
Sorry, I don't believe for a second they were personal.
Parent
Re:Taking one for the team. (Score:5, Informative)
Personal email accounts called gov.palin@yahoo.com and where the subjects clearly implied she was talking business?
Sorry, I don't believe for a second they were personal.
gov.palin@yahoo.com was her personal use account. gov.sarah@yahoo.com was the one that she was using for official state business [adn.com].
Parent
Re:Taking one for the team. (Score:5, Interesting)
gov.palin@yahoo.com was her personal use account. gov.sarah@yahoo.com was the one that she was using for official state business.
It doesn't really matter what she says the account was used for, it is the actual usage that counts.
The list of subjects and correspondents from the so-called 'personal use account' that are posted on wikileaks is extremely incriminating.
I'm sure that the worst punishment she will receive will be a slap on the wrist, after all the president and his staff have already done far worse wrt to email hiding and nothing happened to them. But what it does do is expose 'politics as usual' for her, all claims to maverick status are pretty much null and void now.
Parent
Re:Taking one for the team. (Score:5, Insightful)
Second paragraph FTA, friend:
The judge issued the orders at the request of Andree McLeod, an Anchorage activist whose pursuit of Palin's e-mails revealed that the governor did considerable state business from a Yahoo e-mail address -- an arrangement that avoided the safeguards and accountability of the state's secure e-mail system.
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Gmail (Score:5, Funny)
Taking bets (Score:5, Interesting)
What do you want to bet she went ahead and cleared out any potentially incriminating emails?
I wonder if Yahoo would be able to retrieve it or if they would even have to.
Saving the emails is irrelevant (Score:5, Funny)
Why would Palin care to delete any emails, or even try to hide them?
Palin is a young earth creationist. She has no understanding of Evidence.
great (Score:5, Funny)
Re:great (Score:5, Funny)
Oh you betcha they can!
Parent
More reasons Palin isn't ready for VP... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not only was she stupid enough to have her yahoo account password resettable by an outsider, she was stupid enough to conduct state business on this and other non-state-secured e-mail accounts.
I'm sorry, but anyone who doesn't realize that in order to be safe it ALWAYS important to assume that your emails are immediately and fully in the hands of your worst enemies is hopelessly naive. Besides the sketchily legal issue of conducting state business over unsecure email, she also copied her husband on some of it.
Seriously Palin? Talk about it over the dinner table. Sending the email to your hubbie sends it over unsecure servers in the internet proper where they could be read in transit by any number of unruly or dangerous individuals. And that's assuming that she was sending it from a state-secured email on state-secured servers, which she obviously didn't at least some of the time.
The scary part now is that if she were to pull the same stuff in the whitehouse, there would be terrorists and spies trying to get ahold of national secrets, not just the inner workings of a state government. And I think we can all agree that the resources they have at their disposal are frightening.
I'm much happier with her gambling with Alaskan politics than National Security.
I wonder if... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Like hell she will... (Score:5, Informative)
Or she'll just claim the emails say the exact opposite of what they actually say, just like she did with the troopergate report [cbsnews.com].
Parent
Re:Like hell she will... (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Sooper secret email address !!! omgroflcopter!! (Score:5, Insightful)
why is a government employee sending emails on govt business through a free email account?
Why are taxpayers paying for the states computer infrastructure if she isn't using it?
Of course something dodgy is going on.
Parent
Re:Sooper secret email address !!! omgroflcopter!! (Score:5, Interesting)
why is a government employee sending emails on govt business through a free email account?
Because it's illegal to send campaign messages, partisan political messages, or e-mails dealing with RNC activities through a government account.
Parent
Re:Sooper secret email address !!! omgroflcopter!! (Score:5, Insightful)
They've already seen boxes of emails [adn.com] from her aides to her Yahoo account. In fact, all but one email was sent to her gov.sarah@Yahoo.com account. That's the account she used for state business. It's not the account that got hacked.
Parent
Re:Wait, she had private email... (Score:5, Insightful)
Good sir Ken,
The problem is that she used the personal email for official correspondence, which is not all that legal.
The personal account is required for campaign and private correspondence.
HTH
Parent
Re:Does that inbred hick even know how? (Score:5, Funny)
Why do you hate freedom?
Parent
Re:Privacy (Score:5, Informative)
Not that I'm for the ditz, but isn't everyone entitled to their privacy? Even online.
As in, being free to delete whatever non-work emails come to you.
The problem is that she was using a commercial account for state business [adn.com], which circumvents the security and accountability of using official state email services. She essentially made state business subject to Yahoo's terms of service rather than the laws of Alaska. Her official email is supposed to be public record, but the state can't access or archive her commercial account.
Parent
Re:Why is this bad? (Score:5, Insightful)
Shouldn't secret communications always be an option?
No, it shouldn't be. Not when a public official is acting in their official capacity. If it's not classified enough so that Yahoo mail wouldn't be a security breach, it's not so classified that the public shouldn't know about it.
And no, I don't buy into the theory that advisers give better advice if the know that the public won't know what they say.
Parent
Re:Why is this bad? (Score:5, Funny)
Hopefully we'll get good old secret police to operate on their own terms and put this here country back in shape.
Parent