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FF4m3
@rr.com

FF4m3

Anon

Read My Lips: No New Hacks... Oh Wait

George Bush's family emails, pics ransacked - and spewed online:

A hacker put personal photos of George H W Bush online this week after reportedly breaking into the former US president's family email accounts.

One of the leaked snaps shows the 88-year-old Republican recovering from a serious illness in a hospital bed in December last year. His relatives' emails and contact details were also disclosed by the hacker as well as a personal note from President Barack Obama.

Other swiped photos show his son George W Bush, also a former US president, posing next to a cardboard cutout of himself with a moustache and an amusing beret. More seriously, the leaked material includes a confidential list of home addresses, mobile numbers and emails addresses for dozens of Bush family members, including both ex-presidents, their siblings and their children. The information is dated October 2012.

A Bush family spokesman said the breach is being probed by the authorities.

The Smoking Gun website reports that the Bush family's email accounts were raided by a hacker who uses the handle Guccifer.

At least six separate inboxes were reportedly compromised, one being the AOL account of Bush Snr's daughter Dorothy Bush Koch. The other hacked accounts belong to George H. W.'s brother-in-law, sister-in-law and friends such as CBS sportscaster Jim Nantz. The photos - watermarked by Guccifer - and emails dating from 2009 to 2012 were uploaded to the internet on Thursday.

Guccifer claimed that “the Feds” began investigating him a "long time ago" and that he had hacked into "hundreds of accounts" over an extended period.

The motive for the attack and how it was carried out are unclear.

George H W Bush served as the CIA's director before becoming a one-term president between 1989 and 1993, and was famous for the promise: "Read my lips, no new taxes".


goalieskates
Premium Member
join:2004-09-12
land of big

2 recommendations

goalieskates

Premium Member

Publication of hacked George W. Bush e-mails raises journalism ethics questions (Washington Post)
quote:
But ethics experts took a dimmer view. Even prominent people “enjoy some right of privacy,” said Richard Wald, a professor at Columbia University’s school of journalism and the former president of NBC News. “If the hack had revealed malefaction of a great nature, you’d say ‘Thank God they published it.’ But if it’s just [trivial], it injures the notion of civility.”

The Washington Post reported the story but dispensed with its usual practice of linking to the original article and did not reprint the hacked photos. While the hack is newsworthy, Executive Editor Martin Baron said, “I don’t see a reason to display those photos. This is all private to the Bush family. There are no public policy implications here whatsoever.”

Baron drew a distinction between publishing important documents taken without authorization — such as the Pentagon Papers and the WikiLeaks cables — and personal materials taken from a private source. The former reveal the conduct of government actions, he said, while the latter do not.
Most of the people quoted in the WP article are categorized as liberal. It appears we've concentrated so hard on teaching tech we've forgotten to teach basic ethics and good judgment. This is a hard reminder that just because you can doesn't mean you should.

Computers don't know right from wrong, and increasingly people who rely on them don't either.

jaykaykay
4 Ever Young
MVM
join:2000-04-13
USA

jaykaykay

MVM

"Most of the people quoted in the WP article are categorized as liberal. It appears we've concentrated so hard on teaching tech we've forgotten to teach basic ethics and good judgment. This is a hard reminder that just because you can doesn't mean you should.

Computers don't know right from wrong, and increasingly people who rely on them don't either."

This sings loudly of what has gone wrong with today in a huge, general way. So sad and so unnecessary to have happened. Given a chance to show itself for what it is at any given point, only those that are old enough to remember how it used to be civil will be in every way.
Mele20
Premium Member
join:2001-06-05
Hilo, HI

1 recommendation

Mele20 to FF4m3

Premium Member

to FF4m3
What did the Bush family expect? Email is like sending a snail mail post card or even less private than that! DO NOT USE EMAIL UNLESS ENCRYPTED for anything.

Only when enough folks get embarrassed will email crap stop. I no longer use email except for registering at a new forum site, allowing a business to send a confirmation of a purchase, that sort of thing. I avoid internet purchases, if I can, because the emails sent are not encrypted.