Palin must save her Yahoo mails, says judge

Anchorage (Alaska), Oct.13 : An Anchorage judge has ordered Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to preserve e-mails from private accounts she has used to conduct state business.

Superior Court Judge Craig Stowers on Friday also ordered Alaska's attorney general to recover messages from a Yahoo.com account of Palin's that was breached by hackers last month.

That break-in prompted Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign to order closed at least one additional private account Palin maintained.

The judge issued the orders at the request of Andree McLeod, an Anchorage activist whose pursuit of Palin's e-mails revealed that the governor did considerable state business from a Yahoo e-mail address -- an arrangement that avoided the safeguards and accountability of the state's secure e-mail system.

Last month a second Yahoo account maintained by Palin was hacked and images of its inbox were posted publicly online. The inbox included e-mails with subject lines that seemed clearly to relate to legislation.

Judge Stowers called the effort to recover and preserve Palin e-mails relating to state business "important" and noted that Alaska's public record law was last updated before the rise of the Internet.

ANI