Global: Hackers invade Palin's privacy

Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin said “farewell” to much of her privacy yesterday, after a group called Anonymous hacked into her personal e-mail account.

The invasion of privacy comes at a time when Palin and her husband are being questioned about the firing of Alaska’s former public safety commissioner Walt Monegan. Palin’s campaign manager released a statement saying: “This is a shocking invasion of the Governor’s privacy and a violation of law.”

World bloggers agree.

English blogger Graham Cluely wrote in his blog ^[1], although using a Yahoo! account for government work was “silly of her,” the hack was an offensive.

“Breaking into Sarah Palin’s Yahoo account is an offence. Yes, there may be interest in what she has been doing in her “private” email account but that is no excuse for breaching security and breaking the law.”

Cluely, who is a technology consultant, added his tech-savvy expertise in the matter.

“Of course, none of this explains exactly how Palin’s email account was hacked. Did she access her Yahoo account from an insecure PC? Had she logged into her account using an unencrypted Wi-Fi connection in a public place? Had she chosen an easy-to-guess or easy-to-crack password (like a dictionary word)? Had she chosen the same password for every website she used? (Our research shows that 41% of people do precisely that).”

Israeli Avi Green wrote in his blog, Tel-Chai Nation ^[2], about what extremes certain people will go to reach their objectives.

“Palin Derangement Syndrome has reached a pure low now, as this shows that leftists are willing to commit federal crimes to achieve their goals. The criminals who committed this offense must be caught and jailed and made to pay considerable fines for their crime.”

Spanish-American blogger Claudia, writes in PoliGazette ^[3], that the incident was “nasty” and begged for attention from the hackers, themselves.

“Apparently some hackers have hacked her personal email and have posted screenshots thereof. They even boast that they went so far as to call daughter Bristol on her phone using the information on the email, just to be sure it really was Palin's mail.

Knowing how some hackers operate, I would tend to think they were attracted to Palin because a- She, being inexperienced on the national stage doesn’t know how to protect her data as well and b- messing with her will get them a ton of attention.

Regardless it’s an unacceptable (not to mention illegal) invasion of personal privacy, something I hope the police can explain to them as soon as they can be found and arrested.”