E-mail and the Republicans: a Portrait in Incompetence, Irresponsibility, and Injustice [ by James Linkin] [News You Can Abuse]
September 18, 2008Governor Palin should be impeached for using Yahoo e-mail for official Alaska state business.
As the global economy and the presidential election continue to unravel at light speed, it’s instructive to look at how Sarah Palin has handled the communications logistics in her 21-month term as Alaska governor.
Earlier this week, Governor Palin’s Yahoo e-mail accounts were hacked, which as an IT professional, I can tell you was almost inevitable. Everyone has physical access to her Yahoo e-mail as there is no firewall intervening to protect the mail servers; it is by design a public service. All that remained for hackers was to guess the passwords, which, given the cavalier carelessness of the Palins, was only a matter of time.
It is for exactly this reason that every major corporation on the planet, without exception, has a strict policy on the protection of e-mail and their contents. Personal, public e-mail accounts like Yahoo and Gmail must never be used for company business. The accounts are easily hacked, their contents live on Yahoo or Gmail servers indefinitely, out of the control of the corporation, and there is no corporate controlling authority that can keep custody of the correspondence, thus exposing the company to liability lawsuits, not to mention espionage. As a matter of law, the contents of all e-mail transmitted on the job belongs to the company, not the employee.
In the case of state and Federal government, the employer is we, the voters and taxpayers. That correspondence, that e-mail, belongs to us. If Governor Palin hides it vulnerable public e-mail accounts for the purpose of evading subpoenas, there can only be one reason: official corruption. Hiding e-mail correspondence from the government you run is stealing. It is cynical, it is irresponsible, and it is incredibly, breathtakingly stupid.
If Governor Palin worked at a major corporation and conducted business in this way, she would be warned, demoted, or summarily fired.
Couple Governor Palin’s official corruption with John McCain’s belligerent computer illiteracy at the top of the ticket and Bush’s years of lost e-mail backups at the White House, and you have a portrait of cynicism, elitism, incompetence, and corruption that should offend every voter and taxpayer in America. Is Governor Palin so special that her official correspondence should be immune from the prying eyes of the voters who pay her salary (and expenses) when there is cause? Oh, now we’re claiming that the Troopergate investigation is politicized? Where have I heard that before? Oh yeah, didn’t the Clintons use that line ten years ago? Hey Governor, didn’t you say “Hold me accountable”? Didn’t you promise to cooperate with the investigation? Oh, but all that was before McCain showed off his executive decision bona fides by nominating you for VP.
Where, where is the accountability? How is the Republican claim of “reform” remotely possible without it? Just from this one issue, I can genuinely say that 90% of the people blogging about Governor Palin are more qualified to be president than she.
(4) Comments •
So which is it, James, is Gov. Palin guilty for using Yahoo! email for some government business which could be hacked and the contents made public, or is she guilty for not using the state email system where the emails can be retrieved and made public?
Since there was nothing salacious or sensitive in those hacked emails, I guess the left has to pick on the victim of the invasion of privacy rather than the criminal hacker whom, it seems, may be the son of a Democrat representative in a state legislature.
Furthermore, maybe Gov. Palin should fire the state IT guy for not preventing this affair.
And speaking of potential vice-presidents, fast and loose-talking Joe Biden seems to have ticked off a good chunk of the 45 million Catholic voters in this nation with his defense of abortion by way of St. Thomas Aquinas.
One has to feel sorry for Sen. Obama. From everything going so well at the beginning, it has certainly turned sour the last few months.
Posted by on 09/19 at 01:53 PMHow has leading in all the major polls (except tied in Rasmussen) equate to Obama’s race turning “sour”. The advantage all week has been to Obama because McCain has nothing to offer on the issues and he keeps flailing around like some doddering old fool. Palin is an albatross with a daily story coming out about how inept or creepy she is.
Yes I used the word creepy. The woman creeps me out. The convention bounce is long over and I hope we send her back to Mooseville soon enough.Even worse, Gov. Palin’s pattern of behavior betrays a small town mentality (oops elitist talk coming) that ignorance is bliss. Well ignorance makes people think abstinence only education is appropriate. And we know how that turns out.
McCain may still win based on the fact that he’s the white guy “maverick” war hero. But that does not change the fact that Palin was an idiotic, dangerous choice that has managed only to create a huge sense of excitement in middle aged male Republican voters. Hmmm… I wonder why.
Posted by on 09/19 at 02:07 PMElliott, once again you evade the central question. As an IT professional for 22 years, and business equipment engineer for 14 years before that, I have never encountered a public or private entity of any significant size that did not exert jealous custody over the official correspondence of its employees as a matter of policy. Can you cite a single counterexample?
I have worked with institutions in both the public and private sector: the City of New York, New York’s MTA, AICPA, the Ford Foundation, Ernst & Young, 3M, Eastman Kodak, AIG, and Ampex Corporation to name a few. As a network integration consultant, I used to write these policies on behalf of clients. The reaction of executives in these concerns was not whether these policies should exist, but how to make them work and make them as tough, restrictive, and enforceable as possible.
There are very sound reasons for this policy: governance, accountability, legal liability.
As a public official, your work for the taxpayers is work for hire; it belongs to the taxpayers. If you don’t want it ever to be made public for the purpose of enforcing accountability and the law, find another line of work.The kind of lame secrecy sought by Governor Palin and her cronies is more suited to an amateur crystal meth dealership, not to the governor of one of the 50 states, or even that of a small-town mayor, even of a town whose population is a fraction of the size of Barack Obama’s State Senate district.
Posted by James Linkin on 09/19 at 03:31 PMJames, your response would be more impressive if weekly we weren’t made aware that some large entity had been hacked and it’s credit card customers, or employees Social Security Numbers and compensation had been posted on the web.
Fifteen years ago companies were losing lawsuits because of copies of confidential internal documents. Now it’s computer hacking of business files and emails.
The more things change, the more things stay the same.
And, Michael, as for Sarah Palin, her dynamic has changed. She is no longer McCain’s “It” girl. She’s a rural governor far removed from Washington and it aparachniks.
I pray that she is getting a speed course in current events and is really, really smart. We will see. She has to maintain the down-home values while showing the brains for the job. If she does, Biden remains the albatross around Obama’s neck.
Elliott
Posted by on 09/26 at 12:28 PM
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