Did A Prank Domain Registration Open Up The Administration's Email Secrets?

Email

from the questions-questions dept

Not being a political blog, we’re not so interested in the latest political scandal brewing from the administration, which supposedly involves a leaked email that highlights some more potentially illegal actions out of our Justice Department. However, what is interesting is what David Cassel pointed us to about how those emails were leaked. The details aren’t entirely clear from this interview with the reporter who has the emails, but it looks as though some web pranksters who registered domains like whitehouse.org and georgewbush.org have been collecting emails that are sent to those domains. Occasionally, people who think they’re emailing someone at whitehouse.gov or georgewbush.com address their emails to the .orgs instead. In the latest example, it involves an email from Tim Griffin on the subject of “caging” (which apparently is the practice of kicking voters off the voting rolls through questionable and illegal means). Unfortunately for Griffin, it appears he sent a somewhat incriminating email to a bunch of people — including one email address at georgewbush.org. Oops. The reporter later asked administration officials about the emails, the administration didn’t deny the content — but just took issue with the interpretation, effectively admitting that the emails were real. Again, we have no clue about the political issues involved — but find it amusing that the email leaks were due to someone typing in the wrong top level domain and having the emails go to some pranksters. The reporter in question claims to have about 500 such emails.