Legal Research

The Palin Email Break-in

By Simon Fodden

It was being reported generally yesterday (BBC News, New York Times) that hackers, a group called Anonymous, broke in to Governor Sarah Palin’s Yahoo email accounts and copied some material which they then made public.

It doesn’t seem as though the material taken will in any way compromise or even embarrass the Governor — except in so far as it reveals her injudicious use of a large public email system in connection with government and important personal matters. It’s unlikely that any of us will suddenly find ourselves nominated for vice-president of a country, even a small one, and therefore the object of a hacker’s attention; but we do deal with confidential matters of course and this should be yet another warning to us all to stay away from Hotmail or Gmail etc. when dealing with sensitive material. Or, learn about encryption.

“Anonymous” sent the stolen material to Wikileaks, where you can see it even now.

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on September 18, 2008 (boomark / email).