Hackers claim to have hijacked a private e-mail account belonging to Alaska Gov. and Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.
Palin has faced charges from critics that she uses private email accounts to conduct official state business in a bid to circumvent public information laws. According to reports, activists affiliated with the group “Anonymous” hacked Palin’s Yahoo e-mail account gov.palin@yahoo.com around midnight Eastern standard time Sept. 16 and passed the information on to Wikileaks.
“Governor Palin has come under criticism for using private e-mail accounts to conduct government business and in the process avoid transparency laws,” according to a posting on the Wikileaks site. “The zip archive made available by Wikileaks contains screen shots of Palin’s inbox, two example e-mails, address book and a couple of family photos.”
“Following the release of this story, both Sarah Palin’s better known account gov.sarah@yahoo.com and the gov.palin@yahoo.com account have been suspended or deleted as revealed by a test e-mail sent to these addresses by Wikileaks,” the post continues.