Where are the privacy absolutists now?

[beautydigger]

“The Gawker smear machine has posted private family photos of Palin’s children that were apparently stolen from the e-mail account.”
There still is a thread on page 1 here at merb about posting personal pictures. It is quite ironic that nobody here has the same opinions when a conservative is the victim.

 

[korbel]

“The Gawker smear machine has posted private family photos of Palin’s children that were apparently stolen from the e-mail account.”
There still is a thread on page 1 here at merb about posting personal pictures. It is quite ironic that nobody here has the same opinions when a conservative is the victim.

Hey BD,

Has anybody on this board even heard of this photo posting? You make this condemnation before we even know what went on with these photos. Yeah, well that's fair huh.

lol,

Korbel

 

[beautydigger]

Hey BD,

Has anybody on this board even heard of this photo posting?

You mean it hasn't made it to the HuffPo or DailyKos?

 

[korbel]

You mean it hasn't made it to the HuffPo or DailyKos?

Hell BD,

I have no idea what Huffpo is, and was unaware of the Kos until a week or two ago. Since you did not provide any source for your assertion that the photos have been published why should we believe it happened at all?

Really,

Korbel

 

[beautydigger]

Hell BD,

I have no idea what Huffpo is, and was unaware of the Kos until a week or two ago. Since you did not provide any source for your assertion that the photos have been published why should we believe it happened at all?

Really,

Korbel

I don't teach Google 101

 

[korbel]

I don't teach Google 101

Hey BD,

It seems you are far more interested in these photos than anyone else here.

Cheers,

Korbel

 

[beautydigger]

Hey BD,

It seems you are far more interested in these photos than anyone else.

Cheers,

Korbel

Brilliant!!!! Yeah, that must be it Korbie

 

[Ben Dover]

This was a lead story on all the major US news outlets for the last 2 days. It was the front page of the NY Times and WSJ. What rock are you living under that you have not heard of this?

Her e-mail account was hacked and all of her private photos and e-mails were taken.

To me this is quite different than taking photos of people in public. People are allowed to take pictures of Sara Palin in public, so why not streetwalkers?

People are not allowed to break into an SW's home and steal from them... This is what happened to Sara Palin.

Clearly it was a major violation of her privacy and clearly it was wrong. To me, however, it really illustrates just how inexperienced she is and how big of a threat she could be in the VP position. How could a state governor trust a simple Yahoo e-mail account to guard her privacy?? I mean really... Do you think Obama goes home and e-mails his private thoughts through hotmail or yahoo, or gmail?? Come on people... She should be using the most secure technology available with encrypted VPNs, not the same e-mail platform as a nine-year-old schoolgirl.

BD

 

[beautydigger]

A number of issues where raised throughout the thread among them was this:

I'd like to clarify something:

When I started the thread, the intent was not to start a debate on the protection of personal information. My issue with the pictures had nothing to do with the fact the person might be identified. My issue was that it was disrespectful to post pictures like that with such descriptions, period.

Maxima Merb Rules: 1. Cannot infer anything from threads on the same page. This has never been done and never can be done, especially if you’re a conservative. 2. If a conservative attempts this, make up some cockamamie analogy to make him look stupid.

 

[beautydigger]

She should be using the most secure technology available with encrypted VPNs, not the same e-mail platform as a nine-year-old schoolgirl.

BD

Should that be state funded or out of her own pocket? Are you insinuating that everybody with a yahoo email account is a nine-year-old schoolgirl?

 

[Ben Dover]

Should that be state funded or out of her own pocket?

For the governor, ummm I think it could be state funded. Then again, after giving out 815Billion to nationalize failing businesses (where did they get this idea from, Canada?), pilling another 180 billion into Iraq, and just flushing countless billions down the trade deficit drain, maybe the US gov't is telling people to use yahoo e-mail to save a few bucks.

Are you insinuating that everybody with a yahoo email account is a nine-year-old schoolgirl

Yes. I am. You are every bit as astute as they say! Every single user is exactly nine years old, female and enrolled in school. When you turn 10 you get a gmail account.

on another note...

I heard that Sara Palin is also upset that she has high levels of radium emitting from her TV set. Apparently the hat made out of tin foil that she's been wearing at home has also not afforded her the adequate protections.


BD

 

[beautydigger]

Yes. I am. You are every bit as astute as they say! Every single user is exactly nine years old, female and enrolled in school. When you turn 10 you get a gmail account.
BD

You mean like [email protected] ?

 

[Techman]

“The Gawker smear machine has posted private family photos of Palin’s children that were apparently stolen from the e-mail account.”
There still is a thread on page 1 here at merb about posting personal pictures. It is quite ironic that nobody here has the same opinions when a conservative is the victim.

Hey BD, the thread on merb is about pictures posted here, not pics posted on other sites on the web. What the hell do we care about what happens on other sites? Let them take care of themselves and let the mods take care of merb.

 

[korbel]

I fail to understand the issue being raised here. If, for instance, a merbite decided to start a thread to discuss a robbery of an SP on Merb, it did not imply that he/she has to start a discussion every single time there was a robbery in Montreal or in the world for that matter...in order not to be reproached.

If you want to start a thread about the invasion of Palin's privacy, then you are welcome to do it. No need to criticize the people who start a thread about the posting of a picture of a sex worker...for not doing the same thing for the Palin's case.

Hello Maxima,

You would think the originator of this thread would pose an issue and give everyone a chance to react instead of preemptively accusing everyone of being part of the "The Gawker smear machine" in the first four words of the thread. But not Beautydigger...no sir. Obviously, it's wrong to break into someone else's email and post it. That's so wrong it's bewildering that anyone would think others could possibly disagree. Good manners and logic might have given us the chance to say so. But then, who got that before being preempted.

cheers,

Korbel

 

[korbel]

Criminal Break In of Dumb Choice.

Hello all,


http://www.slate.com/id/2200359/?GT1=38001

Hacking Sarah Palin Why it's not a good idea for politicians to use personal e-mail accounts.

By Farhad Manjoo
Posted Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2008, at 7:31 PM ET Sometime on Tuesday, an unknown hacker gained access to [email protected], an e-mail account that Sarah Palin has used for personal and possibly also state business in Alaska. The hacker posted the e-mail password to the /b/ group of 4Chan, a discussion site known as a haven for Web "trolls," and for a brief while, Palin was an open book. 4Chan readers trudged through her inbox, saving screen shots of her correspondence with friends and supporters, a list of her frequent contacts, and pictures of her family. Then, a good Samaritan reset Palin's password, triggering a Yahoo security measure that alerted Palin to the breach. Soon after, [email protected] and another account Palin has reportedly used to conduct official business—[email protected]—were deleted from Yahoo.

Gawker has posted a few screen shots of the messages found in Palin's account; they reveal nothing damaging about Palin, other than that she has a penchant for typing in ALL CAPS when exercised. ("Does he want someone OPPOSED to the life issue in Congress?" Palin wrote to Lieutenant Gov. Sean Parnell.) In a statement sent to reporters on Wednesday, the McCain campaign called the incident "a shocking invasion of the Governor's privacy and a violation of law."

The Yahoo breach does raise a few questions about Palin's e-mail habits. Why was she using Yahoo? Critics say she was taking a page from Karl Rove, who cooked up the idea of using an off-site e-mail address to confound investigations of his activities in the Bush administration. (In 2007, the White House admitted that Rove and other officials used Republican National Committee addresses for some of their correspondence; as a result, the White House said it couldn't track down a trove of e-mail messages requested by congressional investigators looking into those fishy U.S. attorney firings.)

Palin's e-mail policies do show a certain Rovian or perhaps Cheney-esque partiality for secrecy. The New York Times reported Sunday that shortly after she took office, Palin's aides discussed the benefits of using private e-mail accounts, with one assistant noting that messages sent to Palin's BlackBerry "would be confidential and not subject to subpoena." In June, Andrée McLeod, a Republican activist in Alaska, filed a public-records request for copies of all e-mails sent between two of Palin's aides, Ivy Frye and Frank Bailey. (McLeod had suspected the aides of various ethical violations.) Palin's office parted with four boxes of e-mail, but it refused to disclose more than 1,000 other messages, claiming executive privilege.

Rovian tactics aside, Wednesday's hacking episode proves that it's rather boneheaded to put state business on Yahoo. True, all e-mail addresses are vulnerable to hacking. But Yahoo is a big target—lots of people spend a lot of time trying to crack Yahoo accounts. Do a quick search for "hack yahoo," and you'll be presented with myriad methods of attack. Alaska's private e-mail system probably does not include a "Did you forget your password?" function. Yahoo, of course, does—and that function presents a key method of entry for hackers. The forgotten-password system is all the more vulnerable for addresses belonging to public figures like Palin. When you forget your e-mail address, Yahoo asks you a "challenge question" to verify your identity before giving you your password; because we know a great deal about Palin (her kids' names, her husband's favorite sport, her date of birth), the challenge question might not have been much of a challenge for the hacker. Indeed, that was the case in the other celebrity e-mail theft of recent memory: Paris Hilton's cell phone was hacked because the thief knew that her pet Chihuahua was named Tinkerbell.

Palin likely won't be the last politician whose e-mail gets hacked. Until now, this has been rare mainly because big-time pols don't e-mail—despite inventing the BlackBerry, McCain abstains from e-mail, as do George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, who sent just two messages during his time in the White House (and one was a test e-mail).

But other politicians are addicted to e-mail: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Mitt Romney, and Al Gore are always on their BlackBerrys. The BlackBerry is known to be tough to hack; that is, it's shown no major tech vulnerabilities that would allow easy access by intruders. But keeping all devices safe from attackers takes work—choosing strong passwords, changing them often, making sure you haven't left them lying around somewhere.

Politicians are probably no better at that than you or I. And we know all their pets' names.

Korbel

 

[Red Paul]

A If a conservative attempts this, make up some cockamamie analogy to make him look stupid.

Which isn't exactly difficult.

By the way, Alaska does provide its governor with a secure, state-funded email account. But emails sent over that account are vulnerable to subpoena. Gov. Palin is very nervous about subpoenas.