Sarah Palin Uses Yahoo? Really?

I know that I’m behind on my posts, but I couldn’t just pass this topic by without a word or two. Unlike some people, I actually realize that Alaska has technology just like the rest of the contiguous states, so it kind of bothers me that the governor uses a free e-mail service for messages to conduct government business oh say, once in a while.

Now, I could give her the benefit of the doubt and say that in her wide-eyed innocence, Palin didn’t realize that setting up an account under the name of gov.palin@yahoo.com (which has been disabled) was just not a good idea, especially because as an elected official, all of her official correspondence must be preserved as public records. Bush administration officials such as Karl Rove have been roundly criticized for doing the same thing, and god knows Rove is no neophyte. Correspondence sent via non-government channels is easier to hide and easier to delete, but it is illegal for government officials.

But as we all know, I just don’t buy Palin’s wide-eyed innocent act. The gee-golly, hockey mom who cannot even elaborate on one point of the Bush doctrine is following the Cheney model for vice president as opposed to the Dan Quayle potatoe model, and that makes me squeamish all over. So I happen to believe that Palin knew exactly what she was doing when she set up her three different yahoo accounts and sent out various state-related missives to Alaskan government officials, including the Lt. Governor and the Department of Public Safety.

So why was anyone surprised that these yahoo accounts were hacked into once Palin became a national name? It was only a matter of time. Yahoo accounts are not fail safe. You don’t put anything into a free e-mail account that you really want kept secret, and you certainly wouldn’t put a state secret into a yahoo account. But that’s exactly what Governor Palin did, and her accounts were hacked. Now the hackers were caught and are going to be prosecuted, which they should be. I am not on the side of the hackers. There is such a thing as right to privacy, and she is the governor of a state, albeit not a techno-savvy governor.

But let us pause one moment here: If Palin is foolish enough (which she is) to think that she can hide things in a yahoo account that she doesn’t want on the record, is this really someone who we want to give information that is vital to national security? I mean, will she let old Todder-boy put it on his MySpace account (just assuming he has one with that ego of his; put a tie on for god’s sake) given that he has access to pretty much everything? Just a thought . . .