Integrity News

Let me start by saying I disagree with breaking into someone’s personal email account and sharing information what was intended for the recipient only. I’m not sure exactly how many laws, or even which laws it violates, but it’s just rude and crude.

Now some of you have heard about someone hacking into Sarah Palin’s email account. If not, well, now you have.Check out this story for more details: FBI Searches Apartment in Palin Hacking Case.

Readers, I have advised you before to read between the lines and to ask questions. Well, after reading the story and re-reading the story, here are a few of mine:

Palin used “gov.sarah” in one of her Yahoo e-mail addresses she sometimes uses to conduct state business. The hacker targeted her separate “gov.palin” account.

She uses a Yahoo! email account to conduct state business!?!?!? What’s up with that? As many of you know, I have family in Alaska, and two of my family members are employed by the state of Alaska. Their work emails end in “alaska.gov.” If my family can get government email accounts for their government jobs, why can’t the governor? Of course maybe she was communicating something outside of official channels and didn’t want it to be discovered. Forget it. That’s another topic of discussion.

The FBI obtained logs Saturday establishing the connection from Gabriel Ramuglia of Athens, Ga., who operates an Internet anonymity service used by the hacker.

Ramuglia told the AP the FBI asked him to confirm the address appeared in his records, and it did. Ramuglia said his logs showed the hacker visiting Yahoo’s mail service.

Remind me not to use his anonymity service. Doesn’t appear very anonymous.

Experts said the hacker apparently left an easy trail for investigators.

“He might as well have taken a picture of his house and uploaded it,” said Ken Pfeil, an Internet security expert. “He should have just set up a big beacon that said, ‘Here’s my house,’ or confessed. If they can’t catch this guy based on all the information posted on the Web then all bets are off.”

So the perpetrator made it incredibly easy to trace and pin on the son of Democratic legislator in Tennessee. Hhmm! Either his son is incredibly stupid, or there is a set-up. I can’t say for sure, but this will be an interesting case.

The hacker described guessing correctly that Alaska’s governor had met her husband in high school, and knew Palin’s date of birth and home Zip code. Using those details, the hacker tricked Yahoo’s service into assigning a new password, “popcorn,” for Palin’s e-mail account.

Birthdate and home ZIP code. That’s easy. I can find most people’s birthdates and ZIP codes in less than five minutes. The way she met her husband would be a little more difficult, but given that she is a public figure and someone who was probably asked that question repeatedly over the course of her brief political career, it shouldn’t take too long to learn either.