Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is a lightning rod for controversy, but a recent attempt to keep a low profile might just result in, well, more press. The onetime vice presidential hopeful Palin, who stepped down from the governorship this summer, will be speaking at a Right to Life event in Milwaukee, Wis., on Friday evening, and her team has mandated that there are no reporters allowed--or gadgets.
According to CNN, laptops, cell phones, cameras, and anything else that could potentially be used as a recording device will not be allowed into the auditorium. Tickets to the event were $30.
It's not an unprecedented move by any means. Advance screenings of movies, for instance, regularly have a no-cell-phones policy now that just about any phone can be used as a recording device. And Palin is hardly the only high-profile politician to put a no-press, no-recording rule in place for a speech: Former Vice President Al Gore did just that for a keynote address at the RSA security conference in early 2008.
But the funny part is that banning the press will generally do very little good, since anyone with a notebook or a good memory could easily post quotes or a synopsis to a blog or Twitter account within minutes of the event ending. In this case, as with Gore's press ban at RSA, it's likely that Palin's move will just end up stirring up more buzz.
Considering her book "Going Rogue: An American Life" is coming out in a matter of days, that might ultimately turn out well--or not.
Sarah Palin
(Credit: Alaska governor's office)Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin must save any e-mails she sent from private accounts regarding state business, an Anchorage judge ordered Friday.
The e-mails must be preserved until a lawsuit requesting that the e-mails be made public is resolved, Anchorage Superior Court Judge Craig Stowers said. The judge also said e-mails from private accounts belonging to Palin's staff must be preserved.
Palin and her staff used about a dozen private e-mail accounts for state business, and a Yahoo account belonging to Palin was hacked earlier this year.
State officials should work with Yahoo and other e-mail service providers to preserve the e-mails, including those from accounts that have already been deleted, the judge ordered.
Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee, is no longer using private e-mail accounts for state business, Assistant Attorney General Mike Mitchell said.
A 20-year-old college student suspected of hacking into one of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's e-mail accounts was indicted Tuesday, a district court has announced.
David Kernell, a University of Tennessee student and son of Democratic Tennessee state representative Mike Kernell, turned himself into federal authorities and will be arraigned Wednesday before Judge C. Clifford Shirley in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee.
The indictment, unsealed Wednesday, charges that on September 16 Kernell intentionally accessed the vice presidential candidate's Yahoo e-mail account without authorization. According to the charges, Kernell is the individual responsible for posting screenshots of the account's content to a public Web site. He allegedly gained access to Palin's account by answering a set of security questions and changing the password. He then allegedly posted the new password online, enabling others to access the account.
Kernell faces a maximum of five years in prison if convicted, along with a $250,000 fine and a three-year term of supervised release. The case is being investigated by the FBI's Anchorage and Knoxville field offices. No trial date is scheduled yet.
The sole vice presidential debate of the 2008 election season takes place Thursday night, pitting Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin against Sen. Joe Biden.
The debate kicks off at 9:00 p.m. EDT, and you can follow it live online at the CBS News Debate Webcast site. Immediately after the debate, stay with the site for Web-only analysis and commentary with Katie Couric, the CBS News political team, and guests.
You can also submit your own questions, now or during the event, at the Debate Webcast site.
The 90-minute debate will take place at Washington University in St. Louis and is set to be moderated by Gwen Ifill of PBS.
You can check out the post-debate Webcast from the first presidential debate, between John McCain and Barack Obama, here: CBS Webcast: Examining McCain-Obama debate No. 1.
We'll do the same for the final two presidential debates, on October 7 and on October 15.
Federal authorities are ramping up an investigation of a 20-year-old college student for allegedly hacking into Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's e-mail account.
Sarah Palin
(Credit: Alaska governor's office)The FBI searched the apartment of alleged hacker David Kernell on Sunday morning, and three of Kernell's roommates could testify this week about the case before a grand jury in Chattanooga, according to local news reports.
After it was discovered that the Republican vice presidential candidate's personal Yahoo e-mail account was hacked into, reports began circulating that the hack could be traced back to Kernell, a University of Tennessee student and son of Democratic Tennessee state representative Mike Kernell.
Witnesses told a local television station that the FBI served a search warrant at Kernell's Knoxville, Tenn., apartment early Sunday morning, interrupting a party, and spent more than an hour taking pictures of the apartment. Kernell's three roommates were subpoenaed to testify this week, a witness also said.
The hacker gained access to Palin's account by guessing certain personal details about the governor's life and then resetting her password to "popcorn." ZIP files with content from Palin's account were posted on the Internet.
Laura Sweeney, a Justice Department public-affairs specialist, confirmed that there was investigatory activity relating to the Palin hack in Knoxville over the weekend but said no criminal charges have been filed against anyone.
John McCain and Sarah Palin on the final evening of the Republican convention.
(Credit: Declan McCullagh/CNET News)Now we know the real reason why John McCain doesn't use e-mail.
Hackers have broken into the Yahoo e-mail account of Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin. And, as you might expect, some snippets have appeared on Wikileaks.org in a convenient ZIP file.
"This is a shocking invasion of the governor's privacy and a violation of law. The matter has been turned over to the appropriate authorities and we hope that anyone in possession of these e-mails will destroy them," the McCain campaign said in a statement on Wednesday.
It's still unclear exactly what happened, who was responsible, or how they obtained access to Palin's personal e-mail. Wikileaks attributed the break-in to the hacker group Anonymous, which has tangled with Scientology in the past.
In terms of embarrassing personal information, there wasn't much made public, save some silly family photographs. But there was some evidence that Gov. Palin conducted work business via personal e-mail--perhaps as a way to avoid divulging data in response to a subpoena or request made under Alaska's open government laws.
Though that wasn't exactly a revelation. The New York Times published an article on Sunday saying:
Her inner circle discussed the benefit of using private e-mail addresses. An assistant told her it appeared that such e-mail messages sent to a private address on a "personal device" like a BlackBerry "would be confidential and not subject to subpoena." Ms. Palin and aides use their private e-mail addresses for state business. A campaign spokesman said the governor copied e-mail messages to her state account "when there was significant state business."
On Feb. 7, Frank Bailey, a high-level aide, wrote to Ms. Palin's state e-mail address to discuss appointments. Another aide fired back: "Frank, this is not the governor's personal account." Mr. Bailey responded: "Whoops~!"
As of Wednesday morning, the gov.palin@yahoo.com was canceled and e-mail to it bounced (apparently Palin had another account, too, called gov.sarah@yahoo.com).
Probably the more interesting question is the legal fallout. The U.S. Secret Service is investigating the intrusion, which violated federal computer crime law.
Count on subpoenas already being sent to Yahoo for information about what Internet addresses were used to connect to the Palin account in the last few days. It may be a difficult legal task to force Wikileaks to delete the info, assuming the McCain-Palin camp even wanted to, but in legal terms would be a lot easier to try to get the site to divulge its source.
In the absence of a federal shield law, journalists enjoy scant protection when trying to protect the confidentiality of their sources. Ironically, perhaps, both Barack Obama (at least in the past) and John McCain (as of this spring) say they support enacting one.
Sarah Palin's Wikipedia page underwent thousands of edits the day her vice presidential candidacy was announced--and it received an equally overwhelming number of hits, unsurprisingly.
Nearly 1.2 million people read Palin's Wikipedia page in the first 36 hours after Republican presidential candidate John McCain announced she was his VP choice, according to Web analytics company Compete.com. Palin's page was the most popular Wikipedia page for all of August, even though her candidacy was only announced August 29. The Alaska governor even outshined Michael Phelps on Wikipedia, whose page was the second-most popular the month his career gold medal tally hit 14.
Palin's online popularity might also be fueling the higher number of female Web surfers visiting JohnMcCain.com. Prior to the addition of Palin to the Republican ticket, 48 percent of visitors to McCain's site were female; since the Palin announcement, female visitors account for 52 percent of traffic.
The increased female presence on McCain's Web site mirrors the gains in polls McCain has made with women since choosing Palin as a running mate--but it could also add to the momentum of his popularity with that key demographic. The campaigns are using Web ads to drive news cycles and discussions regarding the election--and hopefully win over voters without spending money on television ads.
The McCain campaign received quite a bit of attention for running a Web ad, later removed that implied Barack Obama is sexist.
The Democrats, not willing to cede Internet discussion to the Republicans, launched a "Count the Lies" Web site on Monday. On that site, modeled after Wikipedia, the Democratic National Committee responds to what it calls "lies and distortions" McCain has made on the campaign trail.
John McCain's announcement last week that he has chosen Sarah Palin as his running mate left the public thirsting for information about the Alaska governor-- and inspired hundreds of commentators, entrepreneurs, and Palin imitators to try to fill in the gaps.
A would-be Palin shares her inner-most thoughts on "The PalinDrome: Sarah Palin's Blog". A faux Levi Johnston (that'd be Palin's soon-to-be son-in-law, for those of you out of the loop) can also be found online.
You can join one of the hundreds of new Facebook groups passing judgment about Palin-- ranging from "Sarah Palin has more Executive experience than Obama and Biden combined" to "I have more Foreign Policy Experience than Sarah Palin." There is even a Governor Palin Facebook application... that doesn't seem to have any sort of application.
There are plenty of crude references to Palin online--on the less offensive side, one can buy merchandise calling Palin a "Babe-raham Lincoln."
If Palin doesn't suffice as your VP pick, one site recommends you try her out as your new Segway.
It's also interesting to note what you can't find on Palin on the Internet. As pointed out on Versionista, the Palin for Governor site disappeared the morning she was announced as McCain's running mate.
There could be a lot to glean about Palin's views and policy positions from her churchgoing history, the Huffington Post pointed out Tuesday. However, the archived sermons cited in the article are now inaccessible.
And, of course, the most authoritative site on the Internet--Wikipedia--has changed the story of Palin numerous times.
Of course, one could always turn to Palin's official biography for more information--but what fun would that be?
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