The hacker group 'Anonymous' claims it broke into Sarah Palin's private Yahoo! email account and published it on the Web to WikiLeaks early Wednesday. The Wikileaks postings include screen shots that show lists of e-mail subject lines, specific messages, and photographs of Palin's family as evidence of the validity of the hack. Accounts suggest Anonymous was acting in response to reports that Palin took a page from Karl Rove and illegally used her personal e-mail account(s) to keep state business out of the public record.
According to Wired News, Amy McCorkell, author of one of the messages to Governor Palin and a member of the Governor's Advisory Board on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse, confirmed that her message was authentic. In a statement released by the McCain-Palin campaign, Rick Davis, the campaign manager, called the incident "a shocking invasion of the Governor's privacy." The FBI also acknowledged that the hacked account and its contents were Palin's.
The Yahoo! account has since been deleted -- or at least removed from use -- either as part of the investigation or in attempt to protect the account. At the time this article was published, Yahoo! spokespeople had not yet responded to an interview request. No information has been released yet as to who else might have had access to the e-mail account or how Anonymous hacked the password. E-mail shown in the Wikileaks screen shots also included a message sent to Alaska Lieutenant Governor Sean Parnell, suggesting Palin was conducting government correspondence.
Although it has been public knowledge that Gov. Palin used private e-mail accounts to conduct state business since before her nomination as Republican vice presidential candidate, the hacked e-mail account, the revealed contents of its correspondences and the possible public records violations they represent are the latest surprise visited upon the GOP presidential campaign in the three short weeks since McCain announced his running mate.
The McCain campaign has been slammed twice in the past week, including on Monday for comments by Senior Policy Adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who said that Senator McCain "helped create" "the premier innovation in the past 15 years" (holding up his Blackberry.) Jokes passed quickly Tuesday via Twitter, blogs, and articles about how McCain "invented" the Blackberry, in reference to Al Gore and the Internet. Friday McCain was hit by the Obama campaign ad going after his self-proclaimed computer illiteracy.
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