A couple of days ago, word came around that Governor Sarah Palin’s personal email at Yahoo! had been infiltrated by hackers who post on the internet website 4chan. Through some methodology, they had been able to compromise her email, take screenshots, and then post them before a conscientious objector to the activity changed the password back.
The invasion of the Governor’s privacy has raised a number of questions about the privacy & security of public email providers, furthering concern and speculation that such use by government officials to conduct official government business would fall outside the realms of disclosure.
Months ago, Governor Palin admitted openly to routinely having used public email, even prided herself on the choice. Now that the email has been compromised, people on all sides were given a clear, if momentary, glimpse into what amounts to, essentially, very little: nothing untoward was revealed whatsoever. Quite the contrary: it bolstered confidences of people who supported Governor Palin, both sympathetically and contextually, for using public email in her practice as governor of Alaska.
Meanwhile, the CIA and the FBI appear to have become directly involved in tracking down the people (or persons) who infiltrated the governor’s privacy, a completely appropriate action in light of who, and what, was being tampered with. Blame has been placed on someone who, in the eyes of some, must clearly be an Obama supporter — someone who wanted to blow the whistle on some form of corruption. It has stimulated response from both Republicans and Democrats, denouncing the fiendish motivations behind such actions, creating increased finger-pointing by people who were already looking for reasons to chastise one side or the other.
The media has wondered, publicly, how such an attack could have occurred. But in the media’s coverage of this debacle, a series of critical reasoning flaws and motives have been overlooked.
Chief among these logic problems, to this writer, seems simple: what if it was merely an “inside job” by the McCain camp meant to discredit Obama supporters and create a firestorm of controversy?
Readers of this piece may not be familiar with the website 4chan and “Anonymous”, the default name given to anyone who posts on the 4chan website if they choose not to include a name. The “Anonymous” moniker was connected to controversy earlier this year in a rallied effort to discredit the Church of Scientology, known as “Project Chanology”. An inflammatory video was posted to YouTube, one which features Tom Cruise in the midst of a scientology presentation. Various protests and denial-of-service atacks were organized against the Church of Scientology in extensive ambiguity by the disconnected minions of both the project and of 4chan.
The philosophy behind this anonymity and ambiguity is culled from a character called V, the central character in the comic book and subsequent film V for Vendetta. V is known to be an “anarchist revolutionary dressed in a Guy Fawkes mask” who begins an “elaborate, violent and theatrical campaign to bring down the government”. Through association, the 4chan version of “Anonymous” has attempted to adopt the theology and philosophy of V, representing both everyman and no man at the same time. By being everywhere and nowhere at the same time, it is believed, the ability to find and conquer one’s target is always close at hand.
It is not known how many members there are of the 4chan community — no concrete numbers save those of their Alexa ranking (1,039 out of all the internet as of this writing). It is not known, even, who frequents the website itself. What is known by those who have visited the site’s adult section (or /b/), by chance or otherwise, is their insistence on disconnecting themselves from the content presented by participants. The disclaimer states the obvious: “The stories and information posted here are artistic works of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact.”
The content warrants such a disclaimer: while the site is well-known as a way to quickly spread internet meme’s (such as Tay Zonday’s now-notorious “Chocolate Rain”), the site is perhaps better known as a catch-all for the posting of disgusting pictures (including mutilations, cutting, various body piercings, suicide photos and other atrocities), hideous imagery (people ingesting their own and each others feces for example) and (it is widely reported) even child pornography, or “CP”. It would appear to the untrained visitor that it is a haunt for the internet society’s lowest common denominators. However, a closer look will reveal simply this: a bunch of bored kids seeking any form of shock value.
What better group of people, it would seem, to take an inside job to and utilize for your own means — those with a reputation for illegitimate, shady behavior and the trafficking of illegal art, a group who have already been connected to protests and whose inherited kinship with anarchist behavior is widely known?
The media has purposefully overlooked what 4chan is and what it contains precisely because they do not want to promote the promoters. But is it not possible, in the grand scheme of things, that someone in the McCain/Palin camp said to themselves, “Hey, here’s an idea: we’ll clean up the governor’s inbox to make sure there’s nothing incriminating, we’ll ‘leak’ the password and a series of photos proving that Governor Palin’s account was hacked using 4chan, and create a shit storm. The content of the leak will prove what we’ve been saying all along, discrediting pundits who claim that the Governor is using public email to conduct important government business and bring further attention to this hotbed of anarchistic activity on the internet?”
While far from being “The Perfect Storm”, an investigation may lead directly to someone within Palin’s own camp, a trusted confidant or, perhaps, someone with a bone to pick. Only time will tell. However, as much as I would like to believe that this is all a grand scheme to discredit Governor Palin, it only seems to me, at this point, like a desperate attempt to sweep together soundbites that paint the Governor in a more palatable light. In light of recent allegations of corruption by the Governor and attempts to cover up that corruption by the McCain camp, what better time to unleash a simple, yet powerful, public relations tool?
