Gibbs discusses reader feedback to last week’s column about the break-in of Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s e-mail account and the heady intersection of IT and politics.
You had some interesting responses to last week’s Backspin on Palin’s e-mail woes.
Quick recap: Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin had her Yahoo e-mail account broken into using some basic social engineering techniques, and some of the contents were subsequently published.
What I didn’t have space to go into last week was why these idiots broke into her account in the first place: According to Wikileaks, where the news broke on Sept.16, the attackers are from an Internet activist group called “anonymous” (how creative is that?) and they did it because they believed media comments that Palin had used “pseudo-private e-mail accounts to avoid Alaskan freedom of information laws.”
Regarding my charge that Palin was naive when it came to e-mail, reader George Holowko said, “I don’t feel this demonstrates naivety, but, rather, it places Palin in the same league as most Americans, and NOT some kind of elitest group that expects or requires special treatment.”
I was using “naive” in the literal sense of “not knowing,” but I find it surprising that apparently the entire Republican Party couldn’t think through these kinds of issues. And isn’t it the case that running for the post of vice president is, de facto, elitist?
Reader Matthew Lazarow said, “given the position that Palin is trying to obtain you would definitely think she would have access to someone in the ‘Czech Republic’ to tell her which mushrooms are good and which ones are not.” Indeed. Why is there no equivalent of Karl Rove managing their technology strategy? If there isn’t then isn’t that a serious oversight?
Reader Bailey Edward agreed that breaking into Palin’s e-mail was wrong and commented that, “I would have loved to have seen what someone would have done if a Democrat’s e-mail was cracked and stuff was leaked. I bet there would be a huge investigation and it would have been labeled a ‘hack.’ “
This was, in fact, labeled by most of the press as a hack. I didn’t think it deserved that label because it was so simplistic. But let’s not assume the powers that be didn’t step in because the issue did, after all, quickly sink out of sight. Given the leaked messages indicate Palin was, in fact, using private e-mail services to avoid Alaska’s freedom of information act, having the issue disappear like the Cheshire Cat is a very good outcome.
But hold hard, my friends! I can hear some of you muttering, “He’s getting political. Again. How dare he! This is a technology publication.”
When will you people get it? IT is the foundation of all American business and it is therefore intrinsically political! You doubt this?
As an example, consider last March Representative Tim Couch (R) from Kentucky attempted to get a bill passed, HB775, in Kentucky that would “require registration prior to posting information to these interactive services; identify persons, businesses, or entities that post information to these interactive services [and] establish penalty provisions.”
The penalties proposed were $500 for the first offense and $1,000 for each subsequent offense. Honestly. I am not making this up.
It doesn’t take a legal genius to figure out that this bill would have violated the First Amendment — indeed, would have stomped all over it in jackboots. Couch even admitted that the bill was “probably unconstitutional” (“probably”!), claimed he had proposed it to raise awareness about Internet bullying, and said “The state can try to pass some rules, but I don’t really think it would do anything.” (I love his implying “the state” was driving the bill and not him!)
If that isn’t a great example of the politicizing of information technology I don’t know what is. Couch unscrupulously used IT and the political process to further his own agenda knowing from the outset that the bill was a non-starter!
There are no end of examples of the politicization of information technology, and IT will only become a more central part of the issues that face us over the next four years and beyond.
You and I, we’re going to have lot to talk about.
