September 18, 2008
On That "Palin-Hacking" Case.
This. Is. Where. I.
Get off the bus.
God bless you all, but we went after the media pretty hard for messing with a minor in the case of Sarah Palin's 17-year-old daughter. If this kid is, indeed, 15 years old and troubled, I think he should be prosecuted. But I'm taking the spotlight off of him, and anyone with basic morals should do the same.
And, yes: his mental illness and his age should be taken into account when it's time for sentencing, which must be lenient.
And, yes: what was Sarah thinking? Yahoo? Wasilla High? For a Vice-Presidential candidate? The kid committed a felony, and he stepped over a big line. But Palin should have circled her wagons better than that. (I hope she did, and that she hasn't been actively using the Yahoo account; it could be that this is simply an old account she hadn't had time to delete. We know that there wasn't anything "juicy" on it, so it might be that she just ran out of time.)
UPDATE: Okay. Make that a 20-year-old, mentally unstable chess fanatic. I've been there myself, except for the chess. And the felony.
But, really—can we get away from the "lynch mob" mentality, here?
Posted by: Attila Girl at
02:44 PM
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The infrastructure required is that everyone (and I mean everyone) has digital certs. Bloody expensive if you buy 'em from Verisign, you can (or could) get 'em at no cost from Thawte, but it's not as if you get them automatically.
Now, why would you go and do a fool thing like that? this is precisely what PGP was developed for. You can find additional reading at http://pki-page.org/#PGP .
The downside? no one will use it, it is still too cumbersome and inconvenient. Besides, you'll still have
lusers using
weak passwords, or providing
obvious hints.
Yes, Sarah, I
am looking at you.
Posted by: I R A Darth Aggie at September 19, 2008 08:58 AM (1hM1d)
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Public Key Cryptography. Indeed. PGP. Indeed.
For those who are wondering what IRADA and I are talking about, PubKeyCrypt is an asymmetric encryption framework, where the 'key' (actually a very large prime) used to encrypt the message is different from the key to decrypt it. The encrypting key is your private key, which you keep on a thumbdrive that goes everywhere with you, and the decrypting key you put out into teh intarwebs - the more widespread the better.
The whole issue with any PKI has always been that of authentication, trust and verification of identity. PGP wouldn't help you there at all - you still need either a web of trust system, which is all but impractical for any kind of large-scale communications medium such as email, or rely on the current CA scheme. Hence, digital certificates from VeriSign, or Thawte, or the Hong Kong Post Office. Or, in my case, the IRS. Yes, they issue digital certs for online tax filing.
Posted by: Gregory at September 19, 2008 09:51 AM (6EETi)
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Turns out the hacker's dad is a democrat state representative from Memphis. Anybody remember a two-bit burglary in DC in 1972? Water...something, I think.
Posted by: Dan Smith at September 19, 2008 10:23 AM (hzVhf)
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Dan, we don't know whether or not papa put him up to it.
Let's keep our powder dry.
Gregory, I'll re-read your latest comment tonight. Somehow here at the auto shop it made my eyes glaze over, big-time.
Posted by: Attila Girl at September 19, 2008 11:31 AM (BVHlL)
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