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 love Palin, but can’t disagree that using Yahoo! (or any other similar) email for business is less than genius.
I thought we couldn't post stuff from The Onion on FreeRepublic anymore.
And you know she did this because..... ???
Typical Communist tactics: The Big Lie accompanied by The Big Smear.
It will backfire on these losers.
I wonder how Mr Anonymous would act if his account was hacked!!"Anonymous" is more of an organization than an individual. And they "hack" each other's email all the time(although they don't *actually* hack anything, mostly they socially engineer ways of getting people's passwords).
The author has a point, that internet is full of not very nice people and using webmail for government communications is inviting trouble.
Yes, I thought so too when I read it. Later they say that it’s not open because emails are not preserved.
I made the mistake of visiting the ABC site to check the comments — the tin foil BDS brigade is out in force - mostly making no sense. One thing I found amusing as I was scrolling down was on the left side there was a big picure of Dumbo the Empty Suit and the words “visit the official Obama site!”
All I could think was “I apparently AM.”
Sorry, but it *is* pretty stupid to use Yahoo to conduct official business. Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail...they don’t even pretend to provide you with security - just targeted advertising. Heck, she may as well have used Mailinator. And look what happened.
I can’t comment on what Alaska law may be regarding conduct of official state business on non-government systems, retention of official correspondence, etc. so I won’t speculate.
If you expect your e-mail to remain confidential, then you should use a system designed to provide that level of protection. Yahoo ain’t it.
This is the same as when some Democratic “operatives” recorded the cellphone conversations of Newt Gingrich talking to his lawyers about his ethics complaints. The Democrats claimed that it was to the illegal wiretap that was the issue, it was the content of the conversations that were the crime.
These were PERSONAL EMAILS from a PERSONAL ACCOUNT! She’s not SUPPOSED to send PERSONAL EMAILS from the GOV’T ACCOUNT!!
AHHHHAHHAAHHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!
Ahh.. uhhh.. oh my Freekin’ WHY...
morons.
Doesn’t matter anyhow if there is open government or not.
AlGore “lost” thousands of emails when it came time to give them up.
I was curious as to why she didn’t use a government system, but that makes sense. Thanks.
They’ve become more vocal and are really ramping up their attacks for the Obamessiah.
I work for a state also. Its a lot more trouble to log into the state’s proxy mail server from home to send a mail to my boss telling him about my sniffles than it is just to use my gmail account.
The fact that she emailed her aides doesn’t mean squat to me. So what?
After awhile I think all of us get the sense of what has legs and what doesn’t. The libs just don’t seem to be real good at this. They seem quite gleeful over at DU about this and I think a whole bucket of stink is about to land on the kid that did this, the people who posted or shared this, the people who cheered it, and the people who failed to denounce it.
I am making popcorn and waiting for Obama’s obligatory apology for the whole left-wing apparatus. Instead of working on their message they’ll be busy reacting and crafting an(other) apology to a woman that its not in his best interest even to acknowlege. Flypaper Palin has got him again.
Hell, Palin’s little email issue may blow the stock market off the front page. That’ll throw some sand in their grits.
I looked at the emails yesterday that were supposedly “government business” communication to her aides. Nothing in Sarah’s emails is government business. This article is built on lies.
ABC provides a link to a source for Palin “reportedly” using her private e-mail for state biz. The source includes the little gem:
“Some of her aides also routinely use Yahoo, but even messages sent from one private account to another should be public, if they concern public business, said Dave Jones, an assistant attorney general.
“The difficulty is finding out they exist,” Jones said.
In other words, IT IS PURE SPECULATION.
MSM mendacity, as usual.
I live in Alaska, and my wife works for the State as a division director. About a year ago, the state issued a new policy that required her to open up a separate email account to use for private messages (non-official business, like “what do you want for dinner?”). She still uses a separate state email account for official business.
It’s ridiculous to criticize Sarah for having a private Yahoo account, when all state employees are required to do that. And you can easily see that Sarah did not use the hacked accounts for official business.
Hey ABC... clear it up for you any?
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