If you're new to DBKP, you may want to subscribe to the DBKP.com RSS feed. Thanks for stopping by!

“Hacker” a Lone Wolf

UPDATES to follow at end of story.

Did the group known only as “Anonymous” hack Sarah Palin’s email account?

If not, who did?

DBKP has learned that the Anonymous hacker was neither a hacker–at least, in this instance–nor representing the group known as “Anonymous”. Anonymous is most famous for its fight against the Church of Scientology and its worldwide protests over the last year.

The “hacker”, who is a 20-year-old male, actually didn’t hack Palin’s email. He guessed the password question on the Yahoo account (Where did you meet your partner?) and changed Palin’s password to one that allowed him access.

So was Palin’s hacker acting alone?

The “hacker” is NOT an active Anonymous member and describes himself as a “lurker”. He’s posted his reports of ‘phishing’ on various sites and “is probably thinking he can make anon his personal army for his partisan purposes,” according to one source.

Anonymous has no partisan purposes, other than the portion of the group that has declared “war on the Church of Scientology”.

No one ’speaks for Anonymous’ might be a good way to describe the non-organization of the group.

Anonymous doesn’t issue press releases because “they want complete anonymity, no press releases or counter statements, or anything that smacks of organization or leaderfagging.”

DBKP will have more on this later today, with a in-depth report later this evening.

UPDATE #1: 1155 EDT

Michelle Malkin reports that the AP is refusing to cooperate with an investigation and blames Sarah Palin for her personal emails being published.

The AP’s response:

If Gov. Palin hadn’t been using a consumer-level Yahoo! account (more than one, actually) this crime wouldn’t have happened because the hacker exploited the service’s “forgot-my-password” mechanism, which is inherently insecure.

Previously disclosed e-mails indicate her administration embraced Yahoo! Accounts, among other reasons, because of questions over whether personal e-mail accounts are covered under Alaska’s Open Records Act. Palin’s critics in Alaska were poring over records they had obtained from the governor’s office of official internal e-mail communications and causing political hay.

The issues are inextricably linked.

Two words for the “investigative journalism” being practiced by the AP: John Edwards.

When much, much more was disclosed in December during the John Edwards’ scandal, the AP stuck its collective head in the ground–actually, they stuck their heads another place where the “sun doesn’t shine”.

But that’s another story.

As MM points out, “The issues are inextricably linked, to borrow a phrase, and raise questions about the propriety of AP’s continued flacking for Barack Obama under the guise of objective journalism.”

Ace is even more succint:
“Even by the hacker’s account, and AP’s, there is no official business hidden in the emails. So what the f*** are they doing claiming that if she hadn’t illegally used private emails to hide state communications, the crime wouldn’t have happened?”

Exactly.

Ace quotes Glenn Reynolds:
As Instapundit says: AP doesn’t seem interested in protecting the privacy of anyone who is not a terrorist.

The AP will protect a hacker, but not a Republican VP’s personal email account.

One wonders what the AP’s position would be if hackers started publishing the contents of AP’s reporters on the Internet? If Sarah Palin had planned to blow up the Bridge to Nowhere–and was on the Democrat ticket–the AP would be shooting out press releases “reports” so fast, their reports would be catching fire from the air friction.

UPDATE#2 1210 EDT

David Kernell, son of Mike Kernell (D) is reportedly the subject of the feds.

David Kernell, the 20-year-old son of Memphis state Representative Mike Kernell, a longtime Democratic legislator, is rumored to be the subject of a federal investigation into the hacking of an email account belonging to Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin.

That would corroborate our source.

by Mondo