Clueless in Cyberland

I am not going to play politics with this subject, this is too serious a matter.

It seems some black hats donned their cyber-gloves and did an invasive examination of Gov. Sarah Palin's private Yahoo email account. And then decided to fling out onto the Internet some juicy tid-bits to Gawkers and Wikileaks, things like personal photos and Bristol's phone number.

First off, what was done is a Federal crime similar to stealing your neighbor's mail from their mailbox. Does invasion of privacy ring any bells? Or perhaps this analogy will help;, its akin to having a stranger crack open your skull, scoop out your thoughts, and then broadcast them to everyone. Not a civil or nice thing. And once the FBI and Secret Service find the culprits, prosecution will happen. Uh hello.. a VP candidate with Secret Service protection, the heat will be on.

Okay one political bleating - if these hackers have any linkage to a campaign, like employed as a senior staffer or related to such, then that campaign might as well close the doors for they are done. American voters loathe politicians who stoop to such reprehensible tactics or associated with such thugs. Watergate anyone?

As for the fig leaf these black hats are using to justify their hack, to find out if Gov. Palin is using her private email account for state business; how did this serve furthering that objective? This data is legally tainted and will be thrown out of any court in the land. Why is it tainted? This data was lifted and then stored without any of the safeguards demanded by the courts to prove data was not altered or tampered - this is called chain of evidence. Also we do not know if they sent offensive emails while in Gov. Palin's account. Giving the supposed wealth of data stolen, forged emails could be created easily also. If anyone tries to use this suspect information to prosecute Gov. Palin, they will have to prove to the court that this data was not tampered with. Remember it took the combined efforts of Interpol and the US to prove the FARC laptops were not tampered with and they were using the original hard drives from those laptops. That is the technological and legal hurdle those witchfinders have to surmount to use this information.

All these black hats have done is stage a 'look at me' publicity stunt aimed at Gov. Sarah Palin. Whoever did this is probably hoping, if they are caught and prosecuted, once they are out some Internet security outfit will hire them. It has been done in the past, even Kevin Mitnick keeps fleecing people into hiring him for advice. But I really don't see anyone who wants US government business hiring a hacker who's claim to fame is hacking Gov. Palin's email.

These dorks are noobs and they need to be nailed for it. Stupidity should be painful.