Sarah Palin's Yahoo email address, gov.palin@yahoo.com, was hacked and screen captures were posted on wikileaks.org, the anonymous whistleblower website, which was taken offline apparently by U.S. authorities in a censorship effort. Currently, the site is still down, for yet unknown reasons. Rick Davis, campaign manager for John McCain, indirectly confirmed the hack by issuing a statement which blasts the intrusion as “shocking invasion” of Sarah Palin's privacy.

Meanwhile, the FBI and Secret Service have launched a joint investigation to detect those responsible for hacking the VP candidate who may well become President should McCain gets elected. The government apparently tries to force all the websites displaying the screenshots of Palin's account to take them down, according to allegations by some of those who deleted the pictures.

Several prominent websites such as Gawker refused to yield to censorship. Palin and/or the government has taken down the mailbox and now Yahoo reports it is deleted, several news sources pointed out, with some alleging that Sarah Palin destroyed evidence of her wrongdoings.

While no real dirt was found in Palin's mailbox, it is clear that she was using her private account to do government business, a common way of evading accountability inherent with using official email addresses. However, circumventing the message retention features of the government network, she also circumvented the security features which would not have enabled a hacker to gain access so easily to her stuff.

Sarah Palin and her aides are already under fire for using their private email accounts to do government business. A local Republican activist is trying to get Palin to release more than 1,100 e-mails she withheld from a public records request.

Using a Yahoo email address was just dumb for Sarah Palin and indeed highlights her utter disregard for common security practices. Yahoo features a password reset feature which makes use of personal data to gain access to an account (smart...). This means that a public figure could be easily targeted should he use real information in his Yahoo account.

Meanwhile, it is appalling to see how the government apparently managed to censor the images of Palin's account. It is appalling that they even dared to force people to take the snapshots off. Not to mention the siege on wikileaks.org. What do they hope to obtain? The site does not keep logs. It looks like Republican retaliation.