US VP hopeful Sarah Palin has private email hacked

Public correspondence published from personal account

19 September 2008 17:24 GMT / By Katie Scott

Don't you just love the thrills and spills of US politics?

At the moment, the Republican hopeful for the US vice presidential position is being investigated by the bipartisan investigation committee over allegations that she dismissed one Walter Monegan, a public safety commissioner, because he refused to take action against her brother-in-law (who she had obviously had a falling out with).

So what - you may ask - well - it seems that the emails released to the committee where only from Palin's official "work" account.

But now a Republican activist in Alaska, where Palin is governor, is trying to force her to release 1100 Yahoo emails that she withheld from a public records request in June.

It seems that Palin has been using her Yahoo account to send "work" related emails, as revealed when hackers, calling themselves "Anonymous", broke into her accounts and published some of the correspondence online.

According to US state law, all messages relating to Palin's official functions of governor must be archived and not destroyed (and therefore there's need to be a diffrentiation between the public and the private).

Among the emails posted on the Internet is a message sent from Palin to the vice-governor of Alaska and an email called "Draft letter to Governor Schwarzenegger".

Only last month Palin faced questions when The Washington Post revealed that some of her aides were told off for using her official email address instead of her two Yahoo accounts.

The FBI and Secret Service are investigating the hack whilst the Republican Party has termed it "...a shocking invasion of the governor’s privacy and a violation of law".