Sarah Palin's Great Yahoo Purge of '08 has left a few dangling questions, and not just the identity of the "Anonymous" who cracked her inbox. Now that we've seen the screenshots, it appears as though Palin might have been using her personal account for crossover business-type communication. But most people have more than one email account, right? And sometimes depending on what's handiest or easily web-accessible, you might switch back and forth. Do the rules on personal email accounts change if you're a public official?
Though the emails weren't found to contain anything too damaging (or interesting really) critics are now locking sites on the fact that she was using a Yahoo account to begin with, saying that the move is somewhat Rovian (as in Karl) in nature. In 2007 the White House admitted that Rove and some of the higher ups used RNC email addresses for their correspondence, and because of this, some emails were hard to find when needed for various inquiries. Apparently right after Palin took office, her aides discussed the benefit of private email accounts, noting that messages sent to Palin's Blackberry "would be confidential and not subject to subpoena." With the confidential nature of the missives coupled with the notoriously hackable platform, should public officials shun private email altogether — or do they have a right to offers from Nigerian businessmen offering them great financial gains in private, too?
Korres
Some claimed she used personal email to due official business so that it could not be subpoenaed and used against her.. who knows.
Now that she is not cooperating with an investigation she claimed she wanted and welcomed.. they have turned this into a bigger circus than need be which is probably what unfortunately made her a target of Anonymous..
Of course people should be allowed private email.. but it only stays private if not used to conduct business.
1I think that as a public official, one should follow whatever ethics rules are in place. Just don't use personal email accounts for policy-related or business-type matters if you're not supposed to, and be careful what you're putting in writing. How hard can that be?
2i would never use my personal email for work related things. It's unprofessional. I wouldn't want the governor of my state conducting important business under yahoo.
3As long as she doesn't use her personal email for business - that seems to be common sense.
4What Jude C said.
5Everyone should be entitled to have their own personal privacy and she needs to use common sense and keep them separate as much as possible.
6It's not rocket science.
7I don't understand why a personal email account would be safe from subpoenas...I think I missed something there.
If the emails contain information relevant to the investigation, why can't they be subpoenaed?
8I think it's very shady if she used Yahoo to conduct government business. (Don't even get me started on how her password was "popcorn" and it took the hacker about 10 minutes to crack.) Aside from the fact that Yahoo wouldn't have the security features that government email would have, it seems that she was intentionally trying to avoid scrutiny of some of her government-related activities. Very, very shady.
9As far as I know, personal emails are not safe from subpoena. We are told that if we use personal email to conduct government business then our personal computers could be siezed if there is ever any litigation on the topic discussed via personal email. Council members are definitely told this too. So if she's ever sued, then by all means subpeona her personal emails to see if what she's written. But hacking someone's email is wrong. Public figure or no public figure. You're entitled to your privacy.
10There's also a very fine line between what is considered official state business and what is not. Any correspondence she had about campaigns, etc. should be kept out of the public e-mail system. It is illegal to use federal government e-mail to conduct any such business.
11They shouldn't be hacked, but they should be subject to subpoena - otherwise, you just guarantee public business will be handled on private Blackberries.
12She should have multiple accounts for the multiple things and type of people she is contacting.
13I think that her and her staffers not cooperating in the investigation has just led to more attention than if she'd said, ok, have at it...
Exactly.
It also has to do with the particular narrative the campaign is pushing for her: the folksy reformer storyline. Whatever you declare yourself to be, you can bet that any actions that seem to contradict that will be scrutinized in extra detail.
14Has it been proven she actually conducted business?
15Ahh! Isn't the problem that this wasn't a personal but gov.palin@yahoo.
16How does that make it not a personal account?
17Gov. Palin as opposed to Sarah.Palin or SPalin. When she added teh "gov" then it tells us this email is business related.
18My boyfriend was reading some book on national security and laughed when one of the major higher ups gave his email out as something@yahoo.com. It's not just an ethical issue, it's a security issue.
And I don't think anyone here stands behind hacking. I think it's completely inappropriate.
I don't think Palin did anything wrong really.
If she becomes VP, I do think she'll need to be more careful though.
19I agree w/ lilkimbo that I don't think adding that prefix makes it a business acct.
20I definitely disagree. I have a friend who is a doctor and his personal e-mail is dr.hisfirstname.hislastname@gmail.com. Putting the word governor in it does not in any way make it business related.
21I am not fast enough!
Anyway, pop, I agree with 19 and 20. She should probably be more careful, but this is not a huge deal.
22And my disagreement in 21 was with 18.
23I really think the gov can be construed as a business email. Sarah Palin, wife and hockey mom is different Gov. Palin in a way. If she has a personal acct and business email account, I would think it ought to be differentiated. Just my opinion and she can do whatever the hell she wants, but I think common sense would say to make sure they're different.
24Public servants work for us and just like our employers have the right to investigate our email accounts public servant email accounts are just as accountable.
25I'm pretty sure the @yahoo.com would be an instant indication that it obviously wasn't her government issued e-mail.
26Good point.
27lil, Bingo!
28If you or I put 'gov' or even 'viceprez' in the email address name, I'd agree that wouldn't make it business-related.
29But since she IS the governor, a real world standard applies. How would someone given that address know that it was personal and not business? Do people often use your job title in personal email addresses?
They would know it wasn't her government e-mail because it's a yahoo account. I would think anyone with a 2nd grade education would know that the government of Alaska doesn't use yahoo as its provider of official e-mail accounts.
30And business related is completely different from public/government related. It could have been an account related to campaigning, etc, but not to official government business.
31lol, steph, I do.
32On a different but related note, my work email is a Yahoo.
33I think a lot of people use their job titles in their personal e-mail address, especially if it's something you are referred to by. I mean, people wouldn't call me PAC manager Kim, so it's not in mine, but I see doctors having dr.so-and-so or accountants having so-and-socpa.
34Interesting Jude, I've never heard of a business using yahoo. Regardless, obviously the government wouldn't use yahoo to provide e-mails.
35Yeah, I know, lil (that the government wouldn't use Yahoo to provide emails).
I don't actually know why my work email is Yahoo. It was that way when I started here. Maybe I'll ask, just to satisfy my own curiosity
36Oh yeah, I didn't mean that in a rude way, Jude. I just wasn't sure how I phrased it at first and thought I might have said something about workplaces in general not using yahoo.
Does everyone at your work have a yahoo e-mail?
37I'm the only one at my work besides my boss. He doesn't have Yahoo; his email is on our domain.
I think it might have happened because Outlook was never installed on the computer in my office, and it just seemed easier to whoever set up the email to just do a free webmail.
A lot of the other synagogues in our "network," so to speak, use gmail and other free webmail services as well.
38Ah, I see. It makes sense if you're somewhere without a lot of employees.
39Yep.
I do stuff from home a lot as well, so it does make it easier for me to be able to check my work email at home.
40I hate outlook. That's what we have here and it goes down all the time. Which is why some government stuff ends up in my yahoo inbox.
41I have a yahoo account for business and so do a number of our clients. Also, lots of aol accounts, gmail and some hotmail - and they all are international business people.
42An ethical elected official would understand that the appearance of the job title in the address will not scream 'private' to the average person.
You have one for BUSINESS, not for OFFICIAL GOVERNMENT BUSINESS. There's a huge difference there. I meant private in the way that it is not public/government related, which would be obvious to just about anyone.
43Any moron on the street would understand that the fact that it's a yahoo account does not scream "government related" to the average person.
44Just as a barely on topic aside, I absolutely hate when businesses don't use their own email. Like, I hate to see a business list its contact email as EconomyPlumbing@aol.com or something.
45Isn't the whole point that people were supposedly upset because she was conducting government business from this account? Again, it would be obvious to any moron on the street that a yahoo account is not an official government account. If she was conducting campaign-related business from this account, why would that upset people?
46I think the issue is not that she had a personal yahoo account - of course she's allowed to have personal email, and of course she has the right to privacy for her personal emails. The problem is that she used her yahoo account, not her government account, to conduct government-related business, potentially to hide whatever business she was doing by keeping it out of her official email account. Putting "gov" in her yahoo name does not make it official - anyone could do that. What makes an email address officially government is that it's issued by the government (not yahoo.com) and that it's a .gov address.
47And whether or not she used the yahoo account to conduct any shady deals that wouldn't necessarily be legal and needed to be hidden in a non-government account, the fact is she had this yahoo account at all, which shows an intent to hide what she was doing from potential investigators. THAT's the problem.
48Right suzy, that's what I'm trying to say. Colleen said it wasn't personal because it was gov.palin, but my point is that it is in fact a personal account, which is obvious by the fact that it's a yahoo account. (personal as in not government related, not personal as in not business related) And the thing is that there is absolutely no proof of the allegation that she used her yahoo account to conduct government-related business. The screen shots do absolutely nothing to prove or even hint at that assertion.
49How does having the account show intent to hide what she's doing? As I have stated several times, she shouldn't have been conducting any personal or campaign related business from her state-issued account, so she would obviously need a private account.
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