Sarah Palin and her Monty Python email policy
By Davey Winder
Thursday, 18 September 2008 21:23
Personal emails are not part of the public record. That's the general state of play when it comes to politics in the good ol' USA. It is why there are official public email accounts which are designed for official business use and which become part of the official public record.
Those are the questions being asked of Sarah Palin after a group of hackers managed to compromise her Yahoo! webmail account, and published a selection of her emails online for all to see.
Just a few days ago the press was speculating about Sarah Palin "routinely using a private Yahoo e-mail account to conduct state business."
Now the hackers within the 'Anonymous' group would appear to have found the proof.
Of course, as expected given that the Presidential elections are now only weeks away, the Republican campaign machine has gone into defence through offence mode.
McCain's campaign manager Rick Davis huffing and puffing about the "shocking invasion of the Governor's privacy and a violation of law."
It is, indeed, both of these things. The fact that the gov.sarah@yahoo.com address was being used for official business though, is a lot more serious than that violation of privacy.
The fact that someone who could, quite easily, become not only Vice-President of the United States but also President if anything happened to veteran John McCain, sees fit to use Yahoo! for such official emails is suitable for a Monty Python sketch.
As the BBC reports "US law dictates that all messages connected to official business as state governor must be preserved." Yahoo-based messages, touted as personal email, do not...
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