Palin's Private emails Turn Out to Be Boring

By DemocracyRules

h/t Michele Malkin

"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..."

Pro Patria

Comments

[Andrew Boylston]

Still, the ease with which her Yahoo account was hacked suggests that she's not very up on security. (and why was she even using Yahoo for some government related mails?)

Whoever did this though, was very foolish, and will be in big trouble, and rightly so.

[Gina Cobb]

Andrew, please rethink your attempt to score political points out of Democratic Party lawbreaking.

Blaming Sarah Palin for not being "up" on security is like blaming a purse snatching victim for having her purse stolen or blaming a man for having his credit card used by thieves. It is beneath you.

Sarah Palin reasonably assumed that Democrats would not go so far as to COMMIT FELONIES in an attempt to win an election.

[Andrew Boylston]

This was committed by the Democratic Party? Really? I haven't read that anywhere yet. I've read that the hacker was possibly the son of a Democratic Tennessee Lawmaker, but the Democratic Party? How sinister. Also, how foolish to reveal themselves after achieving their goal.

What a bomb that would be. Please post your link to that.

As for the "hack", as someone who is an electrical engineer, worked for HP, and knows a thing or two about computers (including having built several of my own Windows based, OS X based, and Linux systems). I don't even really think this qualified as a hack, it was more just good guesswork on some very easy questions.

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/09/palin-e-mail-ha.html

I think it's pretty obvious to just about anyone that Yahoo mail is not the most secure mail server around. I only use it as a blog/message board sign up mail account. Mail sent to it is then forwarded through to my real mail account. Keeps me free of Spam.

Additionally, my password reset questions are never correct answers about my personal information. They are, in themselves, secure passwords (which should always be a combination of uppercase, lowercase, numeric, and characters, at least 8 characters long, and preferably longer.)

_________________________________

[From DR -- Andrew, you're being abrasive, and you're rambling again. Smarten up.

Either add information to the data stream, or don't be in the data stream! Don't just add random one's and zero's to the data stream! Some people actually try to read your stuff. Show them some respect. Write better! ]

[Gina Cobb]

Andrew, it just seems odd to me that a self-professed strict fiscal conservative Republican consistently races to the defense of Democrats and the Democratic Party.

It seems way, way over the top to defend a federal crime possibly committed by the son of a Democratic Party lawmaker on grounds that he's not the Democratic Party itself -- and on grounds that someone with computer knowledge can hack into anything.

Could you please kindly point me to some of your numerous comments you said you published at leftist websites -- the comments where you raced to the defense of Republicans? You mentioned that those other websites don't censor you.

If you are indeed a fair and balanced, equal-opportunity skeptic, I shall be genuinely pleased to learn that.

Please forgive me my skepticism. Perhaps I've only seen one side of you. I will truly be fascinated to see this.

[Andrew Boylston]

Gina,

You seem to be very confused about who I am, and what I am doing here. Let's get this straightened out.

I am a "strict fiscal conservative", which used to be a hallmark of the Republican party, but is not any longer. I am a "Moderate Republican" - we used to be called Rockefeller Republicans back in the 60's and 70's and earlier.

I have already defined these terms on other blog posts here, but I thought I would just reiterate them. I am NOT a Conservative Republican, or Neo-Con, or Right Winger. So I will not just automatically accept any right wing propaganda without testing it's truth and validity.

You seem to think I am racing to the defense of the Democratic party, but I am actually just trying to add some levity and fairness to your website. Many of the blog posts here are so far to the right, or so out of context, that it seems to me that adding a little bit of balance is needed.

For example, you said "please rethink your attempt to score political points out of Democratic Party lawbreaking."

...but you have zero evidence that the Democratic Party was behind the break in of Palin's e-mail. You're trying a guilt by association tactic because the suspect happens to be the son of a Democratic state senator in Tennessee. That's like if the Democrats had said that the Republican Party was nothing but a bunch of law breaking alcoholics when Jenna Bush was caught for illegal underage drinking. You're a lawyer, you know that sort of argument wouldn't hold water in the court room, so I don't know why you try it here.

Until you have solid evidence that the Democratic Party was involved in this, you're just arguing wild and speculative conjecture.

You also seem to have misunderstood me. I'm not defending this kid at all. If you look up at the top I said:

"Whoever did this though, was very foolish, and will be in big trouble, and rightly so."

He violated the law. He will go to jail, and deservedly so.

When I said "I don't even really think this qualified as a hack, it was more just good guesswork on some very easy questions", I am addressing the semantics here. As a person with a computer background, it's always slightly irritating to see the media confuse their computer terms.

People are going around calling him the "Palin Hacker" but this is rather insulting to hackers (who all tend to be geniuses, albeit misguided ones). A hacker would have exploited a technical security flaw in the Yahoo system (for example their well known buffer overflow script error which one could use to gain access to a person's e-mail account info before they patched it.)

This is, instead, just some dumb kid who did a little research and some guesswork and got into her e-mail account.

It's still illegal though.

-----------------------------------------

As for pointing you to the left wing blog I have participated in, I might be willing to do that, however, I am still waiting for you to ante up on our last exchange. As far as I know, you never read and responded to the three Moderate Republican columns I suggested for you, though I went in and answered your question about the comparatives of the Obama/Biden and McCain/Palin economic plans at great length.

It can't all be one way traffic, so for the moment I am disinclined to acquiesce to your request.