TheAgitator.com
So which is worse…
Thursday, October 9th, 2008…that the highest ranking public official in Alaska was using private email accounts to conduct official state business so she’d be less susceptible to open records laws and subpoenas, or some dumb kid guessing her personal information, enabling him to change her password and access that account?
What does it say that the latter is facing charges, but the former isn’t?
well, duh!
Which law is it illegal she did that just to reference, I am curious.
#2 — Fair point. I amended the post to remove the word “illegal,” because it’s not clear under Alaska law. It would have been illegal if she were a federal official.
If she was deleting Yahoo emails that were official state business, that would be illegal. Of course, we don’t know if that’s the case, because she refuses to subject her personal email accounts to open records requests.
It’s the kind of runaround we’ve been getting for the last seven years from the Bush administration. She’ll fit right in.
But you’re right. It isn’t clear she has violated the letter of the law.
Who are you to doubt the class-privileges of the wealthy and the powerful.
This kid is fucked because there is no system of fair laws in the united states. They’ve done away with that since it was an inconvenience to power.
//What does it say that the latter is facing charges, but the former isn’t?//
…
//But you’re right. It isn’t clear she has violated the letter of the law.//
Are you implying that you would like to see people prosecuted for doing things which aren’t illegal, because you think they should be? Or is it that they should be prosecuted for things which they might possibly be doing?
Umm… I see to recall that her Yahoo account was closed after she got it back. If this is the case wouldn’t the emails there have been deleted?
#5 — If she didn’t break the law, she shouldn’t be prosecuted.
But if it isn’t against the law to conduct official state business on private accounts so you can get around public access laws, it ought to be, so future public officials can’t pull the same crap.
It defeats the entire purpose of open records laws.
From what I saw on Gawker, the kid himself said he found, quote, “NOTHING” bad to nail her on. The emails that were “official” were really of a personal nature and while regarding state business, they were about her feelings and opinions about people that you simply would not write in any official context. The nature of the conversation was clearly personal and while the subject was about her job, it wasn’t in an official capacity. I personally think people are blowing this whole thing out of proportion and think that these personal emails somehow comprise “official business”. The kid who hacked the account is a TN state legislator’s son, so I don’t want to hear about who’s got class and privilege protections when he was clearly born with the silver spoon and decided to take the illegal action in hacking someone’s personal accounts. Since the person of interest is a pres VP candidate, the secret service is charged with her protection. Honestly, I don’t know how this kid was dumb enough to pull this stunt and think he’d get away with it.
The hacker claimed that he didn’t even find anything remotely of interest.
Funny thing is, if she had been doing stuff like campaigning for other politicians from that account, as has been suggested, it probably would have been an ethics violation for her to use a government email address.
And yet, you’d be apoplectic if it had been a government agent using a little social engineering to “harmlessly” verify certain details such as your bills, bank statements… He’s 20. The only thing that could make him count as a “dumb kid” is if he had Downs Syndrome.
#8 — Read the ADN article linked in the post. This was clearly a coordinated campaign to prevent official emails from being audited. Note the aide to Palin who was chided for sending an email to her state account instead of her personal account.
Well it LOOKS like what she did isn’t illegal. But it certainly ought to be illegal for politicians to circumvent transparency laws.
I don’t believe people are voting you up for that idiotic comment. The kid was charged with a single act of accessing a protected computer. Which is exactly what he did. In the end he will plea bargain and he will do community service. Hardly being ‘fucked’ for something he admitted to and actually did.
So hacking should be legal?
Really?
It wasn’t “hacking”. This kid has no more technical knowledge (or hacking abilities) than anyone here.
This is why government officials should not use yahoo accounts to conduct official business.
If you think it isn’t “hacking”, you don’t know what hacking is. Read up on Kevin Mitnick sometime.
As for Palin doing “illegal” things with this account, the hacker himself lamented that he found nothing wrong in there, after reading every single email. I read his post. There’s no evidence that she was using this account to bypass open records laws.
Oh, and I’ve read the ADN article. Still not convinced. The bottom line is that all the email is posted, so they should be able to point to at least one email that would be, ahem, problematic. Right? Rather than talking about hearsay?
#15, I agree with you whole heartedly. The party that prides itself on National Security should never even think about nonsecure personal email accounts that refer to any official business. I realize that Palin did not discuss or mention any sensitive material that could fall into enemy hands…like those dirty liberals in the media. It sets a very bad precedence. What if someone in the future leaks the whereabouts of detainees in secret prisons or the public finds out about the next assault on our civil liberties. It would be disastrous for the Republican Party and America. She should know better than to operate in a manner that could possibly compramise the neoconservative agenda.
I read one article when this first came up that mentioned an Alaskan law that was broken. Never did see another article mention it, so I am dubious about whether any laws were broken.
While I can’t condone what the kid did, people like Palin and her ilk really do deserve this.
Remember, these are the same people who have no problem with your internet provider spying on you, or illegal phone wiretaps. It’s only when THEY are the victim do they feel wronged. Do you think that if anyone else complained that someone hacked their e-mail account, the authorities would come down this hard on them?
Talk about the unequal application of the law. Meanwhile, I have a person who has stolen my identity and forged checks in my businesses name. The local authorities can’t do anything because he resides in a different state, and claim no crime was committed because the bank compensates me when it happens. Technically, it is a federal crime and the responsibility of the FBI. But the FBI won’t investigate since they are too busy prosecuting this kid. And pot users.
Holy crap, people. I am not so high on the phrase ‘where there’s smoke, there’s fire’, especially after being a long time reader of this blog. But in this case, it would seem to hold true. Why on earth would someone use unofficial channels to conduct official business? I know I’m trading on thin ice liberty-wise here, but I just can’t seem to discern a proper reason for doing that unless there were things you did not want seen. It’s awfully fishy. Now that doesn’t prove shite but still . . . it doesn’t look good at all.
I also find it odd that that the guy who ‘hacked’ into her account was arrested and indicted for it. Someone ‘hacked’ into my Gmail account last year and went through my personal correspondence. I know it to be true because they mentioned something to me in passing that they only could have learned through that particular account. When I pressed Gmail for answers as to who did it, they told me they could not give me any information about who other than me may have accessed my account. I even gave them the two IP addresses I use to access my Gmail account and I even was able to pinpoint the time the account was accessed by someone other than me within a 2 hour window. And still they refused. And now I read this claptrap. Guess I should run for office or something to get satisfaction.
What a fucking world.
As a rule, I don’t write anything personal in any of my work emails. I have a separate personal email account that I use. Palin did the exact same thing. Maybe occasionally someone mentioned something official, like, “are you going to the official presenatation tonight?” but that’s the nature of email. Just like if someone asks me in a personal email if I’m working late tonight, and I respond, “yes, this project is a real killer, etc.” Anyone who wants to throw someone in jail for that sure as heck doesn’t deserve to call himself a libertarian.
It’s amazing how easily one becomes what one pretends to oppose. You don’t like the use of state force, until you do.
“Nothing of interest” isn’t quite right.
Something else of interest to Alaskans is whether she and her husband abused her official position in an attempt to get someone fired, and DID fire someone else. If this was all discussed via her Yahoo Email, it would have been hard to argue it was personal business on personal account. The bottom line is, there were ethics violations if not by the letter, than by the intent, and that matters to us. To simply be able to delete an account and wash your hands of all accountability? BS. Bush 101.
Her polls are dropping and there’s talk of recall or impeachment. A lot of people won’t want her back so this VP thing was actually the worst thing for her, all or nothing. She’s got brass, but hopefully some good plans to move down south as well. Just not DC.
What I find unconscionable is that they brought him into court handcuffed and shackled as if he was a dangerous felon or a flight risk (after he turned himself in)!
Radley — I think you’re a little off on this. The need for transparency in government is important — I agree with you and we need more of it, particularly with public meetings — all should be streamed over the web, live. But the previous comment on it being an eithcs violation to use state email for non-state was right on. I work for an elected official in California. He uses Comcast email almost exclusively — mostly for convenience, but also in order to avoid the possibility that he might unwittingly violate a law. Example — if I were to send an email to my buddies on my state computer saying “see you at the event (fundraiser) tonight” that would be a felony misuse of state resources. To avoid ths situation, under California law, every elected can have a separate broadband connection in the office, paid by campaign, for whatever they want to do with it. I hazard pretty much every elected in California does this. From the comments, it looks like people have a problem with this arrangement. But look at it this way — What way do you have to monitor phone calls? You don’t. So even if you wanted all written communications to be public, those who want to do communicate nefariously could still just pick up the phone. There can be all kinds of laws to keep our leaders honest, but at the the end of the day, the only thing that really matters is whether that individual elected official respects the law, or not.
I didn’t see the Palin emails but my guess is her staff thought that was the best way to reach her at the time with something like, “I made the edits you wanted to the Schwarzenegger veto letter. OK to sign and send?” Our jobs really aren’t much more exalted than that, sorry to disappoint.
As far as why it’s important to prosecute this guy. I think it’s important because he tried to throw a presidential election by breaking the law.
A few things that haven’t been mentioned:
1)The kid hacked…..no, hacked is the wrong word–hacking requires technical skill….socially engineered the wrong account. Palin had *two* Yahoo email accounts. I think the state business one was gov.palin@yahoo and the personal one was gov.sarah@yahoo or something like that. I’d have to look it up but I’m lazy. The one he got (gov.sarah) into was not the one she was doing state business on, but the one we knew was her personal account. We know positively that she was doing state business on the un-accessed account because there is an official record of her aide being told to use the other, unaccessed account to conduct state business.
2)I do believe it is illegal to circumvent open records laws, at least federally. Hatch act, I think? Anyways, it was what the Bush administration was in trouble for when it turned out they were conducting business on the RNC servers that then mysteriously disappeared.
3)Opinion wise…seems to me that if you’re a government official and you use a private email account to conduct state business….well, as a lawyer, I would argue that that account becomes a de facto official account, and therefore is subpoenable or FOIAble, or whatever.
#11 You state “This was clearly a coordinated campaign to prevent official emails from being audited” but by my reading of the article it is pretty explicit that the sort of audit that they were trying to avoid was an audit on use of State resources for private messages.
The article is agnostic on your issue — it asks “Was the administration trying to get around the public records law through broad exemptions or private e-mail accounts?” — and all of the assertions that she did use private accounts for official use are clearly quotations from her political opponents. And even in the message where one might think that they are caught red-handed — (“”Frank, This is not the Governor’s personal e-mail account,” an assistant to Palin wrote to Bailey in February.”) we are not told whether that email was official, campaign, or personal business.
Look, this is real simple from a libertarian perspective.
Do you have a right to privacy?
If someone knowingly and maliciously violates that right to privacy (specifically for political gain) should they be help criminally liable?
To me, those are huge as YESes on both counts.
The little shit broke into her mailbox. It’s no different than if he was stealing her home USPS mail to see if she had anything in it “that she should have had sent to the Governor’s mansion.”
Even if she WAS doing something illegal, it would be wrong to break into her mail. In fact, if she wasn’t a politician that you had a distaste for, and in fact a private citizen, nearly everyone here would be arguing to apply the exclusionary principle even if it did turn out that she was breaking the law, because of the tainted way it would have been discovered.
She has a duty to be transparent in her dealings as a public official. That doesn’t mean she forfeits her right to privacy.
Also, if this isn’t hacking, does that mean that if the government can “guess” the information used to reset your passwords (like maybe using all the nifty info that they have on you) that it is OK to go through all of your online accounts?
After all, that just something that scamps do as a harmless prank, right?
Nobody’s saying that what he did wasn’t illegal. I only said that it wasn’t hacking. Hacking is a very definitive term meaning using computer skills and programming exploits to break into, and then maliciously deface a system.
He didn’t use programming skills or exploits; he guessed some info. An analogy that comes to mind is a guy walking into a bank and tells everybody he’s the bank president, and is handed the money, which he then returns, vs. somebody going into it with a gun and taking the money.
Both are illegal, but one is clearly worse. Radley didn’t say that what the kid did wasn’t illegal; he stated that he found it worse to circumvent open government by using a private email account.
There is nothing definitive about the term hacking.
Even if you limit it to cracking (the preferred nomenclature) it is very much also encompasses social engineering — which this most certainly was.
BTW, did the state of Alaska provide two separate e-mail boxes to Governor Palin, one for intra-government correspondence and one for people outside to mail her (equivalent to president@whitehouse.gov)? If not, since an elected official would seem to need at least three accounts, it would be logical for two of them to be outside the state system (probably for personal email and one for outside correspondence). It would probably be possible to set up an automatic copy-forward of the outside correspondence one to a state archive if desired.
Personally, my only fault with Gov. Palin is that she didn’t spend a little something for a paid email account. They’re not terribly expensive, but the owner of a paid account has a much more clearly defined property interest in the contents thereof than a user of a free account.
I have to agree with supercat on this one. Why on earth is the governor of a state using a yahoo account (AND keeping emails stored there for any length of time whatsoever) instead of some type of heavily-encrypted account. Seriously, if I were any sort of public official at all, in this day and age, I’d want to ensure the personal emails I send every day never got out there to begin with. Hell, if I were so much as a city counsel person where I live I’d drop my hotmail accounts like hot potatoes and move to something much more sophisticated. It’s the level of incomptence that bothers me most in this entire situation.
Uh, maybe a governor of a state is using a yahoo account for purely personal and non-critical email.
Like, uh, exactly what this fraud found.