Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Comment by McCain campaign on Palin email hacker theft (Pictures)

From Fox News: In the latest of a series of invasions into Sarah Palin’s personal life, hackers have broken into the Republican vice presidential candidate’s private e-mail account, and a widely read Web site has published screen grabs from it.

An article Wednesday in Gawker.com posts family photos and snapshots of e-mail exchanges the Alaska governor had with colleagues. Gawker says the-email account has since been shut down, but it will leave the images up on its site for all to see.

“Here are the screenshots of the emails saved before the account went dark, along with the contact list. It’s newsworthy and we will not be taking it down!” the site declares.

Rick Davis, campaign manager for John McCain, released a statement calling the publication a “shocking invasion of the governor’s privacy and a violation of law.”

“The matter has been turned over to the appropriate authorities and we hope that anyone in possession of these e-mails will destroy them. We will have no further comment,” Davis said.

The article boasts about the lengths to which the reporter went to verify the account, saying he or she even called a phone number listed for Palin’s teenage daughter, Bristol, which apparently went to her voicemail. The site also listed dozens of contact e-mails from the account.

Both WIRED and Gawker reported that members claiming to be with a group known as Anonymous took credit for hacking into Palin’s account. Screen grabs were published on other Web sites and then deleted, Gawker reported.

They reportedly came from a Yahoo e-mail account Palin uses — one separate from another private account that was publicized in The Washington Post last week.

Gawker complained that Palin has since “deleted” the account, and suggested she was trying to “destroy evidence.”

Palin has faced scrutiny for using her private account to do government business. The Washington Post reported last week that a local Republican activist is trying to get Palin to release more than 1,100 e-mails she withheld from a public records request. The appeal reportedly questions why Palin and her aides shift between public and private e-mail accounts.

A spokeswoman in the governor’s office in Alaska declined to comment Wednesday, referring questions from FOXNews.com to the McCain-Palin campaign.

“Primarily we’re referring people to the campaign because honestly people wouldn’t be asking these questions if she wasn’t a candidate for [vice president],” spokeswoman Kate Morgan said.

The Palin family was subjected to intense scrutiny after she was selected as John McCain’s running mate on Aug. 29. Reporters descended on her home town of Wasilla, Alaska, as the media focused on her unwed teenage daughter’s pregnancy.

Screen shots of Palin email.

1 comment:

Chus said...

This is what I think: Sarah Palin's E-Mail Hacked