Sarah Palin and her Monty Python email policy

Davey Winder
Thursday, 18 September 2008 22:23

IT Policy - Government Tech Policy

Cue marching band music and a big cartoon foot. US Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin, hackers have revealed, has used a Yahoo! free webmail account to talk government business with aides. Arguments over whether this was pure stupidity or a clever attempt to avoid those emails becoming public record rage. One thing is for sure, the hackers have made the Palin campaign a little more 'open and transparent' than she might have wanted...

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.

But what if a leading politician tried to avoid sensitive business emails becoming part of that public record by sending them via a personal email service? What if that leading politician had promised to run an open and transparent political campaign?

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 This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it 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...