Palin's Yahoo E-mail Account Hacked, Contents Posted Online:
Fox News reports:
UPDATE: The FBI and Secret Service are conducting a joint investigation. The easiest crime to prove here is 18 U.S.C. 1030(a)(2)(C), accessing a protected computer without authorization to obtain information, with the possibility of felony liability under 18 U.S.C. 1030(c)(2)(B)(ii)-(iii) and also the possibility of felony liability under 18 U.S.C. 1030(a)(4). As with most computer crime cases, the real trick will be finding the bad guy rather than finding a charge.
ANOTHER UPDATE: In the comment thread, J. Aldridge writes:
In the latest of a series of invasions into Sarah Palin’s personal life, hackers have broken into the Republican vice presidential candidate’s private e-mail account, and a widely read Web site has published screen grabs from it.Gawker has posted the contents in several individual posts; here is the most recent.
An article Wednesday in Gawker.com posts family photos and snapshots of e-mail exchanges the Alaska governor had with colleagues. Gawker says the-email account has since been shut down, but it will leave the images up on its site for all to see.
"Here are the screenshots of the emails saved before the account went dark, along with the contact list. It’s newsworthy and we will not be taking it down!" the site declares.
UPDATE: The FBI and Secret Service are conducting a joint investigation. The easiest crime to prove here is 18 U.S.C. 1030(a)(2)(C), accessing a protected computer without authorization to obtain information, with the possibility of felony liability under 18 U.S.C. 1030(c)(2)(B)(ii)-(iii) and also the possibility of felony liability under 18 U.S.C. 1030(a)(4). As with most computer crime cases, the real trick will be finding the bad guy rather than finding a charge.
ANOTHER UPDATE: In the comment thread, J. Aldridge writes:
Since Gawker is fully aware this information was obtained illegally they are looking at some serious charges.Well, it's a free country, so anyone can look. But I don't think Gawker is criminally liable for posting the information. While it's unseemly and perhaps rather nasty to post it, it's normally not a crime to post evidence that was obtained as a fruit of crime. There is no claim that the information was obtained in violation of the Wiretap Act, 18 U.S.C. 2511, which might trigger a prohibition on disclosing illegally intercepted materials. The contents here were stored, not in transit, and thus the Wiretap Act's disclosure limitations don't apply. See, e.g., United States v. Steiger, 318 F.3d 1039 (11th Cir. 2003). Further, even if a statute did prohibit such a disclosure — and again, I don't know of such a statute — publishing it is likely protected by the First Amendment under Bartnicki v. Vopper, 532 U.S. 514 (2001), assuming that Gawker was not involved in the hack.
would it be possible/ a good idea to prosecute this against gawker (assuming gawker was not the hacker-just the reproducer)
Jesus, dude, do you ever research the law before posting? I'll give you a hint: Bartnicki v. Vopper.
This afternoon, in a thread that was later deleted, an individual claiming to be the original poster gave his account of what happened. I’ve attached screencaps. Here’s the text. The original poster used the name “rubico.” The linked email address for the poster was rubico10@yahoo.com.
This is what rubico said:
rubico 09/17/08(Wed)12:57:22 No.85782652
Hello, /b/ as many of you might already know, last night sarah palin’s yahoo was “hacked” and caps were posted on /b/, i am the lurker who did it, and i would like to tell the story.
In the past couple days news had come to light about palin using a yahoo mail account, it was in news stories and such, a thread was started full of newfags trying to do something that would not get this off the ground, for the next 2 hours the acct was locked from password recovery presumably from all this bullshit spamming.
after the password recovery was reenabled, it took seriously 45 mins on wikipedia and google to find the info, Birthday? 15 seconds on wikipedia, zip code? well she had always been from wasilla, and it only has 2 zip codes (thanks online postal service!)
the second was somewhat harder, the question was “where did you meet your spouse?” did some research, and apparently she had eloped with mister palin after college, if youll look on some of the screenshits that I took and other fellow anon have so graciously put on photobucket you will see the google search for “palin eloped” or some such in one of the tabs.
I found out later though more research that they met at high school, so I did variations of that, high, high school, eventually hit on “Wasilla high” I promptly changed the password to popcorn and took a cold shower…
>> rubico 09/17/08(Wed)12:58:04 No.85782727
this is all verifiable if some anal /b/tard wants to think Im a troll, and there isn’t any hard proof to the contrary, but anyone who had followed the thread from the beginning to the 404 will know I probably am not, the picture I posted this topic with is the same one as the original thread.
I read though the emails… ALL OF THEM… before I posted, and what I concluded was anticlimactic, there was nothing there, nothing incriminating, nothing that would derail her campaign as I had hoped, all I saw was personal stuff, some clerical stuff from when she was governor…. And pictures of her family
I then started a topic on /b/, peeps asked for pics or gtfo and I obliged, then it started to get big
Earlier it was just some prank to me, I really wanted to get something incriminating which I was sure there would be, just like all of you anon out there that you think there was some missed opportunity of glory, well there WAS NOTHING, I read everything, every little blackberry confirmation… all the pictures, and there was nothing, and it finally set in, THIS internet was serious business, yes I was behind a proxy, only one, if this shit ever got to the FBI I was fucked, I panicked, i still wanted the stuff out there but I didn’t know how to rapidshit all that stuff, so I posted the pass on /b/, and then promptly deleted everything, and unplugged my internet and just sat there in a comatose state
Then the white knight fucker came along, and did it in for everyone, I trusted /b/ with that email password, I had gotten done what I could do well, then passed the torch , all to be let down by the douchebaggery, good job /b/, this is why we cant have nice things
On the other hand, I understand that Gawker justifies its actions on the basis of allegations (not necessarily confirmed) that Governor Palin was using her Yahoo and other non-official accounts to discuss public business and to conduct affairs in a way intended to avoid Alaska open records laws and thus public scrutiny. If this is true -- and again, it has not been confirmed by generally reliable sources, as far as I can see -- then the hacking might be justified politically and morally, at least, though probably not legally.
This raises a difficult Catch-22 problem. Obviously, it would be easy to make such an allegation about ANY public official, so accepting the 'avoiding public scrutiny' argument would (politically and morally) justify hacking any public official's private e-mail.
Yet, the allegations might well be true, and the only real way to find out is to view the contents of the account. After all, the owner of the account WERE using it to avoid scrutiny, she would have every reason to dissemble about the contents of its e-mails, and could be relied on to reveal them.
One could ask a court to intervene, but again, the crucial evidence would itself remain unavailable until access was forced (though it might be reviewed by a judge, at this point, who could decide if it did indeed violate public records laws, and should thus properly become public).
In any event, it would require criminal allegations, or at least a plausible civil case, for a judge to act, and such action could be long delayed (as, for example, the recent White House's use of RNC and non-government e-mail systems in clear violation of official policy, which has not yet resulted in any such emails becoming available to Congressional investigators, quite apart from any privilege claims, as they would be if they had been sent using government accounts).
BTW, I wonder what are the ordinary consequences for lower-level government employees who store official government correspondence on their private accounts, especially if the accounts are hacked. The incident makes it clear, for example, that Ms. Palin cannot be trusted with a security clearance.
His fighting you reveals some evil stuff going on with him
or
remember how he said it all only really matters on matters like LIFE, honesty, ability, etc…all those things you are (as opposed to attributes of your opponents)?
The guy she's writing to is LIFE? It all only really matters on matters? It's time for good grammar in The White House again.
Orin, you did link to it, didn't you? Is that all that different from posting it in the first place?
That's swell, but Bartnicki pretty clearly stands for the proposition that the media can't be held liable for publishing true information even if the third party that obtained it broke the law. At least parts of what Gawker posted are pretty clearly of "public concern." And awesome.
The level of intellectual dishonesty is astounding.
>Finding the guy is a piece of cake
Methinks that's not his real email address. Only noobs give their real email address on 4chan. Doing is an invitation to get spammed with furry porn.
While you are conducting the search, serve the principals with subpoenas to appear before a criminal grand jury asking them who provided them with the materials. Jail them if they refuse to answer. These geeks are not built to survive in a big city lockup and they will crack quickly.
Follow the evidence. It would be very interesting to see if there are Dem party or Obama campaign oppo researchers involved here.
But wait, no one actually said..... Oh, I see what you're doing.
Wow. Some of you need to divorce yourself from the campaign season. If this had been Joe Biden's email, you'd be screaming about the right wing fantatics. And you'd be right. And just to be clear, there are people on the right who would rationalize the conduct in the same way. But the key is that it is rationalization.
There are clear lines. This one was transgressed. Don't hide from it. Don't rationalize. Preserve your intellectual honesty and disown it.
Fullerene, you did refer readers to my link, didn't you? Is that all that different from linking to it?
Just to be fair, we should see 0bama's emails to his felon cronies like Ayers, huh?
Anyway, I suppose an argument could be made that if you use your yahoo email address for state business, you should expect something like this. I doubt anyone would have been hacking her email if the idea hadn't been planted with the "uses personal email for government work" stories.
Regardless, I really hope the perpetrators are caught, and I have every reason to believe they will. I'm sure Yahoo keeps track of all of this information, and I doubt it'll be too hard to track the guy down. 4chan is a lot of things, but "smart criminals" they aren't. They're just juvenile anarchists.
Your pleas will fall on deaf ears, because the Obama campaign is like a cult. His supporters can do no wrong. They are really deranged. At this point, I predict that they will turn violent very soon.
Yes, I'm sure it's a leap to assume that PQuincy, who said that the hacking could be justified politically and morally, condemned the interrogration techniques used by the Bush Administration. Want to take odds on that leap?
At least one is related to her office.
I can, I think, disown the act of hacking her e-mail and admit to being intrigued by the results. Not the pictures -- I couldn't care less about those -- but the emails. The way a person writes tells me a lot.
As for Gawker's publication of the materials, I'd defend it on free press grounds regardless of who was the victim of the hacking.
Speaking of crimes, oughtn't storing government documents on a public server be a crime as well?
PS: The problem with "waterboarding terrorists" is not with the first word, but with the second. As to waterboarding, it's generally agreed that there are circumstances where it's useful and appropriate to torture terrorists. On the other hand, this argument ceases to be relevant once you start labelling every prisoner a "terrorist" -- the current US policy. They are not aruging that it's ok to waterboard terrorists. They are arguing that its ok to waterboard any person whatsoever for any reason whatsoever, as long as the president approves.
People who take documents home or fail to properly lock their offices get disciplined all the time. Shouldn't Gov. Palin be disciplined for storing official government communications on Yahoo!'s servers?
Wha? You linked to Gawker without the slightest hint of criticism of its activities. Later on you argued that Gawker behaved odiously by posting the information. These seem like inconsistent positions to me.
I only referred to your link to argue that you were being inconsistent. Readers who followed my advice to examine your post would have only been exposed to this inconsistency. Not sure how this is at all the same as what you did.
Not all of Obama's supporters are as delusional as some who post here. The fact is, there are idiots on both side of the political aisle. What happens when one party is out of power is that they start to adopt a "by any means necessary attitude" toward the other side. Republican frustration with Clinton's victories in 1992 and 1996 fueled the Lewinsky hearings, as most Republicans now divorced from that period would freely admit. But they couldn't admit it during that time because the wounds from other political battles were too fresh.
I see the same phenomenon happening with some of the Obamabots on the net. They feast on any mischaracterization or lie by McCain, while denying that their candidate has engaged in any negative campaigning or deceptive conduct (like, for instance, today's episode involving selected quotations from Limbaugh). You literally could change the names of the person involved in the daily mini-scandal and the reaction would change from savage attack to zealous defender.
The woman's email was stolen. It was wrong. And several commenters here are already trying to minimize the illegal behavior. And you wonder why we can't talk about issues. If we can't reach a fundamental agreement about what is right and wrong, how can we debate what kind of regulation is needed on Wall Street, how the tax system should be structured, and what is the best way to deal with terrorism? We never get to the issues because we have people so blinded by hatred for the other side that they can't even stop to condemn what any reasonable person would acknowledge is outrageous behavior. If this happened to your family memger instead of a political candidate you hate, you wouldn't hesitate to condemn it. The conclusion shouldn't change just because the victim of this particular crime is someone with whom hou happen to disagree as to a number of political issues.
but i think your right that the greater problem with prosecuting the reproducer is that there is no statute prohibiting it in terms of federal law at least.
i think saying its "rather unseemly and perhaps nasty" is the understatement of the year.
lets hope they nail this hacker himself. if he used some public computer for the whole thing or if at a private one he bounced it off a zillion proxies its going to be hard.
I didn't say that we should waterborad terrorists or suspected terrorists. But just as "assault" is a more serious crime, storing emails in a personal account that could contain incriminating evidence about misconduct in office is hardly of the magnitude to justify illegal behavior. At least the person waterboarding a suspected terrorist is trying to prevent mass catastrophe. Does that justify the interrogation technique? I'll leave that to others to decide. But if the choice is to violate the rule of law in order to protect some greater good, I'm pretty sure what the greater good is in that scenario.
The infuriating part is the selective appreciation for the rule of law. Either the rule of law is paramount or it is not.
Unless strict liability attaches to information acquired through unauthorized access of a protected computer, I don't think Gawker can be held liable.
Even if their servers are located in the US, by the time subpoenas are issued, it would be too late. 4chan /b/ has a very high turnover rate; most threads only live for a matter of minutes, and even popular ones only last a couple of hours. When threads die, no record of them is kept; their disk space is re-used to make room for new threads.
The whole affair was spurred on by the shoddy WaPo story about Palin using personal email rather the state gov email for political business. As if this were a bad thing--omitting that its illegal to use government supplied email accounts for political business. But this has become the Democrats' whipping boy over Bush secrecy. So reason is out the door.
I don't believe the investigation will focus on 4chan at all. It'll focus on yahoo, and the records they keep. It's entirely possible the actual culprit doesn't even know what 4chan is, and called his buddy with the password (unlikely as that may be). Posting the password isn't as important as who originally accessed the material, and it's not usually that hard to unwind that sort of thing given a subpoena. You better believe yahoo keeps good logs, as do most ISPs and telephone companies. If these guys were professionals there would be less problem getting away with it, but as should be apparent from the posting, they're probably not. Do a google search for "Jake Brahm" for a shining example of the master criminals we're most likely dealing with here.
Maybe there is an internal policy that forbids the use of private email, but otherwise, using a communication facility to transmit communications doesn't strike me as particularly problematic.
I assume that Gawker would say the same thing in its defense. Personally, I see nothing wrong with what you did, but I also don't seem anything wrong with posting the emails (stealing them is another matter).
Shoddy? It seems like WaPo got it right. What constitutes state business or political business is a fine line. Is pressuring a state employee to fire your brother-in-law state business or is it personal? Hard to tell.
I agree with you completely. This tribalism is seriously very, very disturbing. But I think that this reaches a new level of maliciousness than the Clinton-Lewinsky years. Trig is an innocent child, and the left would have had him killed. The bloodlust over that baby is seriously disturbing. All because he's got an extra chromosome and thus he's not worthy of life.
The stage has already been set. I hope that baby has a very good Secret Service protector.
Seriously? Could you provide some examples that aren't anecdotal or posted anonymously in a comment thread?
As a government employee, I could and did take home all sorts of 'government documents'. Things like pay stubs, administrative notices, speeches by gov't employees, volumes of federal regulations. When they became available electronically, I could download most of them to my home PC from publicly accessible website.
Often, too, the office network could go down while important things needed to be done. I and my Washington colleagues would certainly use private e-mail accounts to transmit official documents--not classified mind you--because the alternative was to wait too long. I would also use personal e-mail to query about things that did not need to be in the system for permanent archiving. Consider them 'work product' if you will.
If I had something really sensitive to address--while still not classified--I would use a phone. There's no record requirement for phone calls and the only information available to be gleaned without a tap was the time and numbers of the call.
If still more sensitive--and still not classified--I could use an encrypted phone. Still a minimal record of the call and none on the contents.
Of course, face-to-face leaves no searchable record, either, unless you've got lip-readers or a bugged room.
But if you start with the assumption that all communication between government officials must be insidious, I can see why you'd like to have records to pore through.
But in this case Gawker acted like a fence. The payoff for the criminals was the publication of the emails that they stole. No publication, no profit. By publishing these Gawker essentially "fenced" the crime.
Start here.
Then right here.
And then there's this friend of Bill Mahr's statement on Trig.
Then there's the dehumanization of Trig.
5 kids, one retard.
Then, of course, read Sullivan for your daily dose of dementia and baby hating. Truly, the Infanticide Candidate's supporters would never dehumanize an innocent baby!
He could pull a lot of independents over by strongly condemning this, something like "This is an assault on our democratic system. When I'm President, I will direct the Justice Department to vigorously pursue anyone involved."
He hasn't, and I don't think he will. He's too beholden to the far left who're applauding this.
I believe they are the same group posting all over against Scientology and Tom Crazy.
....oh and the Trig baby thingy, think Peter Singer - Princeton - look him up on wiki - should cover it.
As "His fighting you" serves as the subject of reveals, it is grammatically correct.
Re: Bartnicki, it's not clear precedent against liability if this situation involved a wiretap (which it doesn't seem like it does). The Bartnicki tapes involved conversations arguably related to matters of public concern, namely whether teachers' union members were plotting to commit violence in connection with a dispute with the school board. I haven't seen these emails but Bartnicki is not carte blanche for redistributing wiretaps of public figures.
The fact that the hacker admits he didn't find anything completely takes Palin off the hook. She didn't conduct any sensitive business on her private email account. Sending or receiving a document covered by sunshine laws is not a security breach or evidence of incompetence.
posting the emailspicking up stolen property that I saw the thief drop on the ground (stealing them is another matter)."There. Fixed that for you.
Love sleight of hand.
Oh come on. This thread is starting to get ridiculous.
Why does Gawker need permission for the publication to be lawful? Many celebrity sex tapes have been published lawfully notwithstanding a celebrity's refusal to grant permission. How is this any different from a legal standpoint?
Dr. Guest: I'm surprised that there's any discussion whether this was a crime. Obviously this is a crime. But the I think the relevant point to most of us is not whether breaking into the e-mail account was a crime, but whether it is appropriate for a governor to conduct official business on a Yahoo! account.
A zealot steals a person's email, completely blinded by any sense of right and wrong in order to tear down a political opponent. And what is relevant is whether it is appropriate for the governor to conduct "official business" on a Yahoo account? Wow. I haven't seen a single communication cited that is alleged to be inappropriate, and yet notwithstanding that fact, we are supposed to presume that there is an issue that needs to be explored?
Shameless.
I believe his spokesman indicated that Obama will be reviewing some poll data tomorrow. If it comes out favorably, he'll follow your advice.
Sure it's a cheap shot but it's a good deal better than breaking into his home because there might be evidence of a Rezko home-buying scheme there... which appears to be the preferred course of some of his supporters.
Says the "Dog"
Shoddy because they neglected to discuss that such a line exists, neglected to discuss that political and personal discourse on state systems is an ethical no-no. It left a slanted impression by omitting the most reasonable explanation. Since you admit its a fine line, its hardly a story, but they played it as it were one.
I think mostly because one of the parties sold them or because it had been acquired lawfully. That Pam and Tommy sex tape it was learned they had signed away the rights but still sued for copyright and invasion of privacy which they won in court.
Bruce, I would love to be wrong.
It only took Obama a couple of hours to respond to Amir Taheri's article about Obama conducting his own backchanel negotiations with the Iraqi government. This has been the top story for about 10 hours, his campaign hasn't said a word.
If I find such information, it will be of great public interest and concern.
You okay with that? (Not that I need to ask, of course.)
I think most people consider the Wall Street meltdown and the fundamental change in how it operates to be a bit more important than a few emails hacked by someone who is not on Obama's staff.
This isn't to condone the actions, but in the grand scheme of things, this is small potatos.
Now please let me get back to cleaning off the blood off my knife so I can go kill more babies. Thanks!
Former CBS 3 anchor Larry Mendte entered a guilty plea in Federal Court Friday after being charged with a felony count of intentionally accessing the private e-mail accounts of former co-anchor Alycia Lane hundreds of times.
Oh, wonderful. Just wait -- clandestine locker room photos of Sarah Palin in next month's issue of Hustler ...
Hmm. Is Helen Thomas a public figure?
Also, I didn't mean to suggest that Obama's supporters were above such things (although that's certainly a plausible inference from my post). In fact, it's quite clear that people populating the left and right tails of the political bell curve really don't consider anything to be below them. Two (standard) deviations, indeed.
This wasn't deliberate irony, was it?
No apologies necessary. The left would've preferred Trig to have been aborted. But also, if Obama loses, I am seriously concerned that one of his supporters might try to attack Trig at some point, or another member of Palin's family. They're that deranged. So they both wanted Trig to be killed, and are so messed up that I fear for his safety in the future.
Saracasm can be funny, but it backfires when you don't know what you're talking about. Of course the person who accessed the e-mail account without authorization is guilty of a crime: 18 U.S.C. 1030, as I explained in the update (and as Mendte pled). But Section 1030 is a different offense than the Wiretap Act, and hacking into an e-mail account is not a Wiretap Act offense, as the Steiger case I linked to concludes. If you're interested in learning more, I recommend my casebook on Computer Crime Law, Chapter 6.
In view of the fact that Obama spent last night at a Streisand concert lining his own pockets, I find it difficult to conclude that he is so busy that he was unable to address this in any way.
Right now the campaign is speaking with Alter and the like to see if there is anything juicy so that they can press the "governor was committing a crime" angle. If/when there's nothing there, then he'll condemn the act. If there is something there, he'll condemn the act while scoring political points about the corrupt governor.
I vehemently oppose McCain-Palin, but I will not go to that site and read her emails. I think that the hacking is despicable and Gawkers' posting of it is similarly disturbing.
Even though I don't like them, I hope that nothing damaging comes out of these emails because this kind of behavior should not be rewarded.
Could you please move the discussion of your fears that someone is plotting to kill Trig Palin to another blog? You have a tendency to bring up the topic of physical assault in threads that have nothing whatsoever to do with physical assault (as you did when you suggested that people should physically assault Justice Kennedy in response to one of his decisions), and such discussions strike me as both inappropriate and irrelevant to our threads.
What, he didn't argue there was "great public concern" behind his actions? /s
I view Dick Tuck as having opened the door for Nixon's plumbers.
(Orin's post has driven me to research.)
1. Evidently the "hacker" used a proxy server where the admin recognized the URL in the browser screenshots.
2. It's not really hacking. The guy basically did some research and took over a Yahoo email account.
3. If you're doing anything serious with Yahoo email, have your head examined. Please.
4. Unless the "hacker" really did cover his tracks with more than that one proxy then he's toast.
5. Personally I'd do my best to confirm that it wasn't an employee of Yahoo engaged in this first.
I find it hard to believe that writers of such poor English are non-American.
No, let's not. She's not very able (knowing how to communicate is part of ability, though), and she's disturbingly dishonest. But it's unfortunate that her e-mail's been hacked - though I don't think Obama needs to say anything about it or that this reflects in any way on him or his supporters.
Anonymous is the same group that protested Scientology, raids tweener game boards and generally cause mischief and mayhem across the internet. Of course Anonymous isn't a formal group, it's more of a standalone complex.
It appears this "hack" wasn't even done by Anonymous, it was some random person that managed to reset the password to the account using publicly available information (/huge/ security hole in Yahoo! mail). The info was posted on a *chan board and it snowballed from there causing lulz for many, but if you saw any of the threads they were about as apolitical as an internet thread can be.
As to any accusations about the "left" being involved in this, lrn2internets (not safe for sanity).
Would you think there was something wrong with the governor conducting official business on her home telephone?
It depends. Is the governor in your scenario a Democrat or a Republican?
And yes, I did look at the Gawker link.
The best thing about it? Absolutely nothing of interest in these e-mails. Nothing. You'd think that the hacker might've kept this to himself, having hacked into her account only to discover absolutely nothing of interest there. Let's hope that makes it easier to prosecute him.
But I will anyway.
A person's private e-mail accounts are just that--PRIVATE. I am astounded that Obama partisans, supposedly the party of privacy, somehow thinks this is just hunky dory because Governor Palin may have (GASP) somehow conducted state business on her personal e-mail account. This is despicable sophistry--and an attempt to make excuses for the inexcusible.
And yes, I would feel the same way if the hacked e-mails were Senator Obama's or Senator Biden's.
Orin, I think you have some comic relief for the next edition of your book.
Someone mentioned upthread that 4chan files are overwritten within a short period of time. The question now is, who provided Gawker with copies of the files? Did they attempt to shop them to any other news outlets and what is their relationship, if any, to the Obama campaign?
If you think it's OK to lower your ethical bar to the behavior of the worst miscreant who says he agrees with your opponent, you might as well just do whatever you want to and skip the middle man. It's a good bet that in a country of 300 million people, there's someone in the half you don't belong to who's doing whatever you'll come up with.
Another lesson might be that using even a medium-strength password can be helpful in defeating simple cracking attempts.
2) In the long term, what is more worrisome is that tens of millions of people in this country can't distinguish between guessing someone's Yahoo password recovery questions and Van Eck Phreaking. What does that say about our society's computer knowledge?
as well just do whatever you want to and skip the middle man.
I don't think it's OK — that was my point.
But if I don't approve of something, that doesn't mean it isn't going to happen.
It's a good bet that in a country of 300 million people, there's someone
in the half you don't belong to who's doing whatever you'll come up with.
It's not the fact that someone does it so much as the fact that so many others on the same side approve of it — or minimize its implications.
u
Still not getting it. If this had been an Obama supporting cracker and he didn't find anything, why would he risk exposing himself to show nothing? Like most /b/ "hackers" he wanted some e-cred and he did it for the lulz.
RW Rogers: The question now is, who provided Gawker with copies of the files? Did they attempt to shop them to any other news outlets and what is their relationship, if any, to the Obama campaign?
I haven't seen the exact timeline, but this was popping up on reddit, ycombinator and Digg this morning. The files were released to Wikileaks and Rapid Share, then posted to various torrent sites. Gawker could have pulled the files from any of those sources or someone could have sent Gawker the files from one of those sources.
The guy is probably going to a Fed prison in short order, as he should.
People going to 4chan are always getting screenshots and saving stuff to their own computers, which they can email to others or post somewhere else, which is surely what happened here.
I assume your reference to Obama was simply some kind of trolling attempt. "Hey, what better way to help our candidate than to provide stolen emails to websites, which have virtually no intrinsic interest and whose content does nothing to help our campaign?" Right.
As to conducting government business, yeah, there's a point to be made here. However, I'll bet that the most likely reason is that the sender typed 'sarah palin' in their mailer, and having two addresses for her picked the wrong one. Many mailers hide the actual address after choosing, so this is an easy mistake to make. The governor could have at that point chosen to scold the sender, but instead she just replied. The former would have been the pedantically correct thing to do - whether the latter was inexcusable or pragmatic is a matter of perspective.
The important thing to do here to implicate Gov. Palin would be to establish a pattern of certain types of mails, certain correspondents, certain policies, specific projects that she only used her Yahoo! account for. This doesn't seem to exist - the contents appear to be random and mundane. Even the guy who broke into her account and read all of her mails looking for something 'juicy' concurs. So, the conspiracy hypothesis fails, leaving random technology farts as the likely cause.
There's still a technical case to be made here, but good luck getting anybody who has a work and home account themselves to actually care.
Orin, I think you have some comic relief for the next edition of your book.
Actually, some hackers have been known to keep personal diaries of exactly how they committed their offenses. Talk about proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
Under 18 U.S.C. § 2701, an offense is committed by anyone who: “(1) intentionally accesses without authorization a facility through which an electronic communication service is provided;” or “(2) intentionally exceeds an authorization to access that facility; and thereby obtains...[an] electronic communication while it is in electronic storage in such system.” 18 U.S.C. § 2701(a)(1)-(2).
The SCA provides that any “person or entity providing an electronic communication service to the public shall not knowingly divulge to any person or entity the contents of a communication while in electronic storage by that service,” with limited exceptions. 18 U.S.C. § 2702
Hackers moved protected communications from Yahoo over to Gawker, who then acted as an agent on behalf of the hackers to divulged the protected contents to other persons from the new storage location found on Gawkers server.
Gawker probably faces civil copyright and invasion of privacy complaints from 3rd parties.
/b/ subculture is really, really interesting. I spent 3 or so hours on ED a few weeks ago. Here's a good start. Anonymous.
It's not the fact that someone does it so much as the fact that so many others on the same side approve of it — or minimize its implications.
Yes, that's low, but "Hacking" has come to be far too broad a term. What should be reported as "Internet anarchist troublemaker guesses the password of poorly-secured account of public figure, which anyone with 20 minutes to spare could have done" becomes "ZOMG political partisan infiltrates enemy's private communications secret-agent style." No recognition that this is about as far from what the Chinese have been doing to the DoD and the Russian cyberattacks on Estonia as the two candidates' abortion positions.
Cases like this show the callousness of a few political partisans, and the utter ignorance of everyone else. The latter is what troubles me most.
There isn't much point in serving a warrant on 4chan, as the earlier comment re thread life, anonymity, and retention are accurate- they don't keep anything.
<i>4chan is a lot of things, but "smart criminals" they aren't. They're just juvenile anarchists.</i>
QFT.
So the feds can take all their servers for forensic analysis. As well as the home computers of their admins.
That should only take a year or two.
Regarding § 2702, even if Gawker provides an electronic communication service, Gawker did not divulge Palin's e-mails (electronic communications) while the e-mails were in Gawker's electronic storage. The e-mails were in Yahoo!'s electronic storage, divulged by a third party, ... , then posted on Gawker.
There is no agency relationship unless the "hackers" authorized Gawker to act as their agent. The authorization must have been explicit. There is no evidence of that here.
I haven't actually looked at the e-mails but the few quotes I've seen here suggest that the merger doctrine might preclude liability for copyright infringement.
You mean like this?
Daily Dish
Obama better make damned sure none of his people did this.
As for the legal analysis up there, you guys are forgetting state law on the subject. I don’t know which states are involved, so I can’t say anything on that subject, but that would be implicated, too.
Nikolay
You don’t prove that Mr. Excitable is a nice guy in general by picking out one nice thing he said. Let’s not forget that he has claimed that McCain lied about the cross in the dirt story, and that he also circulated rumors that Sarah’s latest child was not her own.
Sully was once a respectable and balanced commenter. But around when Bush came out in favor of an anti-gay-marriage amendment, he first just became another anti-bush guy, and quickly descended into full-on derangement.
Exactly. I used to read him. He was always excitable, but still worth reading. Then, ironically, just as the gay marriage debate seemed to be dying down, San Francisco started conducting illegal gay marriages, prompting the right to return to the fight and float the gay marriage amendment. Sullivan has never been the same since.
I have been returning to his blog of late, much like one can't tear one's eyes away from a train wreck. I find gems like this:
Self-rationalization
Awesome self-rationalization, no?
Sullivan may have crossed the bounds of sanity re:Palin, but to accuse him of baby hating and wanting to kill Trig the way Dangermouse is doing is a totally outrageous slander.
We need to blame this on Obama now!
I am really pretty sure I saw the exact moment he turned against bush. Bush announced he was for an amendment against gay marriage, and Sully wrote a very angry post about how he loves the constitution, and now suddenly the constitution is going to discriminate against people like him, if Bush wins that debate and so on.
I remember thinking, really, Andrew? You think those evangelicals who wrote the Fourteenth Amendment were cool with gay marriage?
The Fourteenth Amendment is more “liberal” on equality of opportunity than a lot of people give it credit for being, but I can assure you they did not support gay rights. You can think whatever you want about that, but that is just the fact of the matter.
I'm not.
Liberals will say anything to justify their behavior, even if it contradicts a previously held political position.
These same people will lecture endlessly on "privacy" until you take a political position that contradicts thier own.
Would the private liability sections of the SCA be implicated by gawker? I did some work on this in the past but don't have it in front of me now, but I assume that those who actually hacked in would be liable for at least statutory damages, since they accessed without authorization data held in electronic storage.
But then maybe that doesn't extend to gawker for posting it? Also, what about a privacy tort? I guess the reasonable expectation of privacy analysis could draw from the 4th amendment jurisprudence on this stuff. And it's an interesting question. My sense is that the internet is fair game so no expectation of privacy, but maybe I'm harsh -- it was a private email account.
I leave open the question of what the damages for the tort would be.
Indeed, some random basement dweller infiltrating a poorly secured free email service is just like the federal government doing broad based vacuuming of internet traffic using cutting edge technology.
It's like totally the same.
If you think encryption is your solution, you don't understand your problem.
I'm not talking about the action. I'm talking about the reaction.
Dummy.
These are the same people who complain about Bushitler's privacy invasions, the Patriot Act, the wiretapping of foreign terrorists on foreign soil, etc.
What a bunch of hippo-critters.
And yet, it looks like the left and the media are going to be successful in destroying her. Whatever the outcome of this election, we are going to get what we deserve.
Heck, it's good enough for everyone to vote for her, and if not everyone does, it's 'cause the media destroyed her!
Amateur.
There are already headlines about her various lies. Although not too many (yet) about this one. Or these.
Links please. As to the issue of whether there were documents or not, the only people who read the actual e-mails other than the handful that have been posted online were the hackers themselves. With that lit