Looks like they’re going to catch the Palin Hacker. And it sounds like he was an Obama supporter.
Prediction: the hacker will treated as a hero by the left and (mostly) the press –Â as opposed to, say, Scooter Libby.
UPDATE: The hacker is apparently one David Kernell– son of a Democratic state lawmaker. Let the canonization begin.
You think I’m kidding about the left’s creepy embrace of felonious radicals? What unrepentant criminal’s house did Obama launch his political career from?
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I hereby nominate "Watergate 2.0" as a name for the Palin email controversy. No more fill-in-the-blank-Gate, with scandals that bear not even a passing resemblance to the original. No, this is the real thing: a high-tech burglary by a dirty tricks campaign looking for dirt on a political opponent.
Now I have zero reason — ZERO REASON — to believe Senator Obama’s campaign is involved in this at all. He’s just plain not that stupid. (It remains to be seen whether he’s smart enough to stage a press conference, denounce this in no uncertain terms, and call for vigorous investigation and prosecution. That would be the smartest thing he could do.)
But for those who perpetrated this and those who celebrate it: congratulations! You are now the spiritual heirs of Richard Nixon and G. Gordon Liddy. Your parents must be so proud…
Martin essentially beat me to it. There is a long, long list of felonies here committed against multiple entities. It would be very difficult NOT to prosecute under these circumstances.
Should be amusing.
Looks like I agreed with your prediction when I posted this over at Balloon Juice:
Glennzilla (Glenn Greenwald) and his acolytes will condemn pursing/exposing the hacker as a right-wing "witchhunt".
Along with Andrew Sullivan.
The press has already spun this story into an anti-Palin story. CNN and ABC have already published "news" stories whose lead-in on this was (paraphrased) "Hacked email revives issue of Palin’s controversial use of personal email."
These people are so in the tank now that they actually, literally, obviously are calling the victim the criminal.
ABC refused to cooperate with the Secret Service.
I am more and more beginning to think that the overwhelming bias of the media towards Democrats is literally an actual threat to our democracy. When the "fourth estate" becomes nothing but the propaganda arm of one party, and protects that party while attacking that party’s opposition, you no longer have a "watchdog" press you have an "attack dog" press.
And it just gets worse every year.
CosmicConservative’s last blog post..They just can’t help themselves?
Despite my earlier comment I think everybody needs to take a deep breath and a cool sip of calm-the-hell-down.
Let it backfire on the press, as it must. They aren’t being democrats, they’re being the press: they smell blood and the feeding frenzy begins. The more people see of this the better for all concerned.
As to the ‘hacker’ a nice 2 year suspended sentence, a few years probation and one hour of walking around Berkeley, CA at midday with a "Maverick/Sarahcuda ‘08" sign sounds about right…
J.A.
I completely and utterly disagree.
They are being partisan hacks who are wholly invested in the liberal ideology and are not merely ROOTING for Democrats to win, they are more and more obviously doing everything in their POWER to make the Democrats win.
I don’t need to take a deep breath. I am dead serious, the loss of objectivity in our "free press" is a serious, serious threat to democracy in this country.
CosmicConservative’s last blog post..They just can’t help themselves?
"Palin sometimes uses non-government e-mail to conduct state business." (From Article
Well, now we know better don’t we? I guess her "Yahoo" account wasn’t very secure. Never use "Yahoo" or "Gmail" or any other widley used public service for official business. These things get hacked all the time.
My question is why would she want to use anything other than her government e-mail in the first place?
Now hacking a government e-mail is obviously a federal offense, but this was a "Yahoo" account. So does "Yahoo" want to take some responsibility in this? I doubt it, and I doubt the person who hacked her "Yahoo" account will get much.
Well, I’m not surprised you disagree CC. It’s not that I think the press isn’t biased here, we just look at their self-reported voting and donation habits and we know all we need to know, but… and it’s a big ‘but’, the press acts like jackals FIRST and democrats second.
Hard to tell apart, I know…
jrogge- I guess it was the expressed desire of the alleged hacker to find something to bring her down that makes it so offensive. As I posted yesterday, some of the more fanatical amongst the left are still casting wildly about for that magic bullet that will return the world to the way they just know it’s supposed to be. This is pretty much a textbook example of what I was talking about.
jrogge:
Here in the Denver, Colorado area the Mayor of Denver (a DEMOCRAT) has been fighting a lawsuit over his use of a private cell phone to conduct city business. As part of his defense he has pointed out that it is NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE to avoid conducting state business on his private phone (and no doubt email) accounts.
He has been sued by a right-leaning group to release his phone records.
This has been about as much of an issue here in Denver as it has been in Alaska up until now. In other words, nobody cared until someone in the press thought it might be the magic bullet that could bring Palin down.
CosmicConservative’s last blog post..They just can’t help themselves?
Here in the Denver, Colorado area the Mayor of Denver (a DEMOCRAT) has been fighting a lawsuit over his use of a private cell phone to conduct city business. As part of his defense he has pointed out that it is NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE to avoid conducting state business on his private phone (and no doubt email) accounts.
Well this is an issue of discretion. I admit I have never had the volume of e-mail that a senator must get or a state legislator, governor, etc. But surely there must be a way to redirect people to your government line for business. This is an issue of security. If people are using unsecured lines to talk about secure information in our government we are in trouble.
While I understand that people probably contact their private line and discuss things with them in lieu of conversation this should really be avoided. people can listen to unsecured cell-transmissions and land line conversations very easily. This includes e-mails on networks with minimal security such as AOL, YAHOO, or GMAIL.
I’m not saying that Palin is bad for doing this but I am saying that ignorance of computer security will cause more problems. The government network is fairly secure and also hacking even a k12 site is a federal offense so you have more leverage and power to prosecute as well. There’s no reason to use a non-government service.
jrogge:
No, it’s a question of common sense.
Let’s say the Mayor of Denver calls the Mayor of Ft. Collins, who happens to be a close personal friend, on his private phone to plan a trip to Aspen for a weekend of skiing.
Then the Mayor of Loveland says "Hey, I have a question about that Front Range mass transit bill."
You think the appropriate response is "Hang on, let me call you on my government phone."
Right.
CosmicConservative’s last blog post..They just can’t help themselves?
I guess it was the expressed desire of the alleged hacker to find something to bring her down that makes it so offensive. As I posted yesterday, some of the more fanatical amongst the left are still casting wildly about for that magic bullet that will return the world to the way they just know it’s supposed to be. This is pretty much a textbook example of what I was talking about.
Well, yeah isn’t that always the case? They haven’t learned yet to just make one up. It’s easier, and people will still believe it even if it is an obvious lie.
Let me try to take this to a more personal level.
I would guess that the majority of people on this blog have both a work and a home email address. I certainly do.
I try to keep the two separate, but I have also found it to be impossible to do so. In part that is because there is significant overlap between my professional and my personal circle of contacts. Plus I am not allowed to check my personal email while at work due to security concerns. (When I work from home I can do so since I have separate computers). So if someone wants to invite me to a lunch, they send my WORK email the invitation.
I would say that it is a rare week that I don’t have at least one significant personal exchange on my work email, and vice versa.
Trying to make an issue out of this is just a demonstration about how LITTLE the army of Obamatons actually have found to beat Sarah Palin with after three weeks digging under every moose dropping in Wasilla.
CosmicConservative’s last blog post..They just can’t help themselves?
You think the appropriate response is "Hang on, let me call you on my government phone."
Yes.
Considering the attitude adjustment to security after 911 I would say yes to that. If you want to advocate laziness that’s fine. You could also say, shoot me an e-mail on that (we know which one).
If you want common sense, work in a factory. Don’t work for a bureau or government office. In these positions you sometimes have sensitive data and the line is provided to you for a reason. I am sorry you feel that issues of security do not outweigh simple convenience.
If you are dealing with sensitive information, even if it is a bill that is public knowledge, you risk much using a public line to discuss it.
The hacker is apparently one David Kernell– son of a Democratic state lawmaker. Let the canonization begin.
Very far from proven yet. Don’t jump to conclusions. Did someone say "Hatfill"?
Dave,
I don’t know, which criminal’s house?
jrogge:
Well, if you ever run for office, I guess you’ll be the one with two blackberries and two cell phones to your ear all the time.
More power to you.
CosmicConservative’s last blog post..Tennessee State Representative’s son targeted in Palin email hack probe
And we should also extend Martin’s sage advice to the "other side". Â
There is no evidence that Palin used these email accounts for state business. Â That too is pure speculation at this point.
jrogge: Real life interferes with the ideal, sometimes. When I was working for State, I had two ‘government’ e-mail addresses; one unclassified, on classified. Not only were there two different addresses, but I needed two different machines to access them. Security regs required a 5-ft air gap between the two.
But you know what? The e-mail servers that handled the accounts weren’t always up and working. You can blame MS; you can blame the techs. Whichever was responsible, the systems were frequently down.
I had no qualms whatsoever about using my Yahoo e-mail to contact people to handle unclassified matters, particularly when the e-mail I was sending to had a .gov address. The message would be archived at one end instead of two, but it was archivable and, in the event of a FOIA request, searchable. Just not by me or my local techs. Otherwise, I could use a phone, but with an 8-hour time difference from DC, that wasn’t always useful.
If the classified e-mail was down, then I could either wait until it was up again or change to a scrambled phone if it was critical. There’s always somebody at the other end of that phone, 27/7.
Routine business can’t always wait until the system is up and running, particularly when you don’t know how long it will take before it to be up again. Sometimes, you have to actually do things, not just plan or talk about them. Giving confirmation that tickets are waiting for a flight tomorrow doesn’t work when the e-mail is down until two days from tomorrow. Sending a query that needs an immediate answer is not compatible with waiting for days for that answer. Telling someone that he shouldn’t get on a plane tonight is information that needs to move right now, not tomorrow.
As noted above, putting public systems out of bounds also means that no work gets done from home. Lots of work gets done from home.
I worked in a pretty secure office. I needed to punch in combinations in six different locks, including the elevator, on my way into my office, starting at the front gate. I had Marine Security Guards checking my office every night just to make sure I hadn’t left any classified materials out of the safes. I couldn’t have my cell phone in my office, couldn’t have a TV or radio, couldn’t even have a wall clock unless it was purchased under a secure protocol. PDAs were forbidden, even if they had no telephonic circuitry.
Diplomatic Security was very much on top of how our computers worked and didn’t work. They knew full well that public systems sometimes had to be used for official businesses. That didn’t bother them. They got bothered when classified information needed to be moved.
You see, even they had to face reality and use public systems sometimes, for some kinds of information flow. None of us was intentionally stupid about security and we knew what could and could not be said over open circuits. Since our home phones were bugged anyway, we also knew how to hint at the content of a sensitive message and then get to the proper device for the required level of security.
There was certainly no regulation forbidding the use of a public system to handle unclassified business. An e-mail from a .gov address to my personal address was accepted as being as authoritative as one to my .gov address because I was considered trustworthy as certified by my security clearance.
Could I have gamed the system? In some ways, certainly. There’s nothing, for example, that would prevent me from simply memorizing the contents of a classified cable, then retyping it in an unclassified e-mail. Except that I, and most of my government peers, had a sense of honor that wouldn’t permit us to do that. There were certainly punishments to be meted out after the fact if we did things like that, up to and including Leavenworth and hundred thousand dollar fines. But you know, most of us were decent people.
The ideal is wonderful. It’s sometimes attainable. When it isn’t, the world cannot push the pause button and wait until the IT folks get it all squared away.
John_B’s last blog post..Saudis Craft New Anti-Smoking Laws
The ideal is wonderful. It’s sometimes attainable. When it isn’t, the world cannot push the pause button and wait until the IT folks get it all squared away.
I agree with that. The only point I am making is, when you do do that you are risking something. If it were a dire emergency and the system was down and there was no way to send an encrypted message to someone that needs it now, then you have no choice.
All I am saying is, when you use a "Yahoo" account you have a good chance of getting hacked and getting that information to the wrong hands. The world may not be perfect, but under normal circumstances this should be avoided. If you are a high profile public figure, it is probably best to avoid this sort of thing for this very reason. I would hate to think someone sent our President vital security information on an unsecured AOL chat or a Gmail account. I am hoping this never happened.
John_B, you’re arguing pragmatism.
jrogge, you’re trying to educate, so people realize the limits of pragmatism and the risks in careless use of tech.
I’m not seeing any disagreement there, because you’re on two different tracks (and in my opinion, both right).
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