Was Sarah Palin a (gasp) HACKER!!??
p2pnet news view | Politics:- As the whole world knows, the other US presidential candidate John McCain, has named Alaska governor Sarah Palin as the next (potential) vice president of American.
She’s an ex-beauty queen (she’ll never live that down). But she’s also a reformist governor, a hunter, a mother of five, a physical fitness nut, and a lover of caribou burgers, says Dan Tynan.
But is she more?
Could be, he reveals.
She might also be a (shudder) HACKER !!!
A front page Anchorage Daily News story from September 2004, the ADN, “describes Palin thusly,” says Tynan, going on »»»
Sarah Palin never thought of herself as an investigator…..Yet there she was, hacking uncomfortably into Randy Ruedrich’s computer, looking for evidence that the state Republican Party boss had broken the state ethics law while a member of the Alaska Oil & Gas Conservation Commission.
In the great north, where political corruption vies with oil and gas for the state’s primary export, it seems Palin was asked to rummage around former state GOP leader Ruedrich’s hard drive.
… The next week, when Palin went back to work at the AOGCC, she noticed that Ruedrich had removed his pictures from the walls and the personal effects from his desk. But as she and an AOGCC technician worked their way around his computer password at the behest of an assistant attorney general in Fairbanks, they found his cleanup had not extended to his electronic files.
The technician “said it looked like he tried to delete this, but she knew a way to go around and get some of the deleted stuff,” Palin said in an interview. “I didn’t know what I was looking for, but I was there.”
Palin found dozens of e-mail messages and documents stacked up in trash folders, many showing work Ruedrich had been doing for the Republican Party and others showing how closely he worked with at least one company he was supposed to be regulating.
Obviously they don’t see a lot of hackers up in polar bear country, because it doesn’t look like Palin did more than some basic electronic dumpster diving in Ruedrich’s trash can. But it is reassuring to note that at least someone on the Elephant ticket knows something about computers, after McCain’s admission to complete and utter ignorance of all things digital [video].
We don’t yet know what Obama’s geek cred is. But I’ll bet $50 he’s a Mac and not a PC.
Meanwhile, another kerfuffle has arisen over Palin’s Wikipedia entry, which got edited over a thousand times since last week, starting just before she got the surprise nod from Daddy Mc. At least one of the editors admits to being a McCain volunteer, but it’s been a free-for-all ever since with both sides weighing in heavily. The page is now “semi-protected,” which in Wikpedia-speak means you can’t edit it anonymously.
A key point of contention: ongoing ethics investigations of Palin herself, which some predict could bring her historic candidacy to a rapid Thomas Eagleton-like demise.
And if it does, I have three words of advice to the McCain camp: Draft Paris Hilton. She’s tanned, she’s rested, she’s ready, and she could teach his campaign a thing or two about manipulating the Internet for fame and fortune.
Definitely stay tuned 
Dan Tynan – Tynan on Technology (beta)
[Tynan slugs his personal blog 'Tech talk without the usual BS.' He's been writing and editing stories about technology and its discontents for more than 20 years. During that time he's been an editor in chief and an executive editor for national magazines, written for more than 50 publications, and taken home a closet full of awards. He's also the author of Computer Privacy Annoyances, soon to be a major motion picture starring Ashton Kutcher.]
Dan Tynan – Is would-be VP Sarah Palin a hacker?, September 1, 2008
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September 2nd, 2008 at 2:35 pm
YA some hacker she gets caught.
September 3rd, 2008 at 5:38 pm
This is the typical political puff piece. You will see this on nearly every candidate in one form or another till the election is over with. I seriously doubt she was a hacker. Also in the news is that her teenage daughter is pregnant and unwed (so what?) and that her husband had a DUI 20 years ago (again so what? that was 20 years ago, we all make mistakes. I didn’t hear of anything newer happening and it would have been splattered all over the net if it was.)
I can’t put much credence in this. It’s part of the political posturing going on from now till election day is over with.
September 6th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
We can’t afford 4 more years of the same. Grampie McSame and Caribu Barbie have got to go!
September 8th, 2008 at 4:18 am
Don’t vote