Will The DOJ's Interpretation Of Email Privacy Make It Difficult To Prosecute Palin Email Hacker?
from the we-said-what-now? dept
While plenty of folks are talking about the cracking of Sarah Palin's personal email account, the EFF is noting that the Justice Department's own interpretation of email privacy laws may actually make it difficult to prosecute the hacker under the most obvious statute, the Stored Communications Act. You see, since the DOJ would prefer that your email not be considered private, it has interpreted emails that you've opened, but not deleted, as not being subject to the SCA. That's thanks to a somewhat contorted reading of the law that suggests that an opened email is no longer considered either in temporary or intermediate storage -- nor is it considered saved for backup purposes. Those happen to be the two requirements under the law. Thus, if the hacker accessed emails that Palin had already read, the DOJ may have trouble using the SCA, since its own statements (though, thankfully, not the courts) seem to believe that hacking in and reading already read emails is not covered by the law.
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Filed Under: email, hacking, justice department, sarah palin, stored communications
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2. Want to Eat It
3. No Cake For You!
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And yes, it's still against the law to break into a webmail account and swipe messages, even if they've been read. The CFAA, 18 USC 1030, among other laws, makes it a crime.
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Crazy
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Re: Crazy
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Re: Re: Crazy
If the govt. e-mail system wasn't right, then maybe (just maaaaybeeeee) as leader of the entire state the governor do something bizarre and actually *lead*.
Whiners and wannabes cry about the systems, rules and processes that they control be broken. Leaders initiate the changes to fix what's broken.
Also unlike the military systems, the *people* have elected the bimbo... er... "fine vice presidential pick" to represent them and the *people* have passed laws saying "we want to know what you're doing with our money and how you are behaving".
She's just another sleazy politician circumventing the law whenever it's convenient for her to do so.
If ordinary people so much as don't pay parking tickets, their cars get towed away and impounded. Politicians get away with blatantly violating any and every law they choose and they face no consequences. The *people* wanted the open government law, the VP-to-be is giving the *people* the finger.
Welcome to America where the powerful have privileges the people will never experience and the idiots not only vote for them but also give them a free pass to violate any laws they feel like.
Let's just pray to the FSM that she doesn't have some lackey go down on her while she's sitting at the VP desk because *then* we'd have to hold to the absolute letter of the law on "moral grounds".
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Re: Re: Re: Crazy
There is a huge double standard here. I'm sure that he will be made an example. Meanwhile Mr Foley walks .....
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Re: Crazy
There are certainly issues to be discussed about Palin. Her decision to maintain a personal email address is not one of them. If, and only if, someone can provide evidence, rather than baseless accusations, to say that she is using the address for government business and covering stuff up, I will be happy to listen. When it is just mudslinging, I don't see the point.
James: Do you have, or have you seen posted, evidence that Palin used this account for government business? I have tried to find an article that actually gets down to specifics, but all I can seem to find is, "she has a Yahoo account, so she must be doing something bad." I have a Yahoo account, too. It's where I send my junkmail.
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Re: Crazy
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IM OUTRAGED
VOTE McCain 2008 - Because hes really running outta time.
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Re: IM OUTRAGED
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Re: IM OUTRAGED
P.S. Take your religiofascism and cram it up your ass... or... well... go ahead cram it up Obama supporters asses... but could you do us all a favor and leave the politically independent sites like TechDirt THE FUCK ALONE. Thanks, I'm getting bored by morons flaming around their sexual desires and telling us all how much they enjoy the ass pounding the bureaucrats like to dish out so much. Keep your preferences to yourself. You can suck McCain on your own time.
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Hacked? Nah.
She's using a yahoo email account and has virtually all of her private information around the internets, and her secret question ("where did you meet your husband" or something, if I recall) was ridiculously easy to guess.
Someone used some basic guess work to get into the vice presidential candidate's private email account. *Extremely* basic. That should be the issue here. Not that she was "hacked" or "hurt" or anything.
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Re: Hacked? Nah.
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Re: Re: Hacked? Nah.
What I'm saying is, if you leave your yard unfenced and I stroll on to it, you can charge me with trespassing, but you can't claim I'm committing armed robbery or that I'm breaking and entering.
The email account wasn't "hacked". Someone reset the password because the data required to do that is all over the net, and she picked a stupidly easy security question.
This kind of thing happens constantly on the interwebs, to anyone who has annoyed certain groups of individuals. It never makes the news until Palin gets hit because she's stupid, and suddenly it's everywhere and the internet is full of "dangerous hackers".
If anything, her account was "cracked", but even that is somewhat pushing it. In any case, we're not talking about someone sitting behind 4 monitors glowing bright green as he fights his way through firewalls, routers and guys throwing glowing frisbees.
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Re: Re: Re: Hacked? Nah.
Hacking
Cracking
It seems people have different definitions for these words, which makes a reasonable conversation using them pretty much impossible.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Hacked? Nah.
In the computing community, a hacker is someone who is very good at doing things that are unusual or elegant; the term does not imply good ("white hat") or bad ("black hat") in this context, nor does it specifically refer to circumventing anything. This meaning is fading in the computing community, due to public (journalistic) misuse of the term. The proper usage for this article would be "black hat hacker".
A better term in the context of this article would be "cracker". A "cracker" is someone who circumvents computer security illegally. There is no need for a cracker to be good at it; the current topic is a good example.
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Re: Re: Hacked? Nah.
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I work in State Government IT
This is why you dont you these services for government business.
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It wouldn't surprise me (since they seemed to just go out of their way to state 'nothing incriminating was found') if it's just a big PR stunt all around.
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misguided hackers
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Obama emails leaked
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People are getting hacked every day and noone gives a rip about it.
Why should someone be prosecuted for something thousands of other people do on a daily basis?
Just because she is a governor and runs for vice chief of morons?
Too bad God didn't account for anti-hacking measures or harder to guess passwords during his infallible creationism.
Meh...
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This kid is done for
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Palin was not a smart one though...
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Why use personal email when have gov't email?
* She may not be able to use it from home.
* She may have given up on trying to memorize a new password every 60-120 days (depending upon policies), much less memorize a small pile of passwords, which is more likely. How many people have perfect memory?
* As someone else has suggested, her work email may be lacking in some feature that she feels that she needs.
I seem to recall that she lives an hour away from her office. If she is conscientious about her job, she will want to keep on top of things, and get some work done, without being stuck at work long after normal hours.
Even being at the top of the totem pole in her state doesn't mean that she can have things changed to improve convenience without significantly sacrificing security; there may be decades of precedent and law that cannot be changed readily; or there may be Federal rules which apply and which are not easily worked around; or she may have asked her IT people for something that they are unfamiliar with, and therefore they would (rightly) refuse to do until they have a chance to become familiar with it... and if they are like most IT departments, they're just plain too busy to have time; or the new software and implementation may cost more than she can justify allocating.
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Re: Why use personal email when have gov't email?
Is this really a valid excuse ?
If you are uncapable or unwilling to deal with passwords, then maybe you shouldn't consider running for the position.
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Re: Why use personal email when have gov't email?
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Re: Re: Why use personal email when have gov't email?
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Re: Why use personal email when have gov't email?
Familiarity with computers is pretty much a necessity nowadays. I can tell you from experience that it's extremely aggravating trying to explain computer things to someone who doesn't know anything about it, or worse, "knows" the wrong things and assumes that you're feeding them a load of BS when you try to tell them how it really works. Modern society is computer-dependent.
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