Hackers are getting into top US officials’ emails and reading them
Aug 12, 2015, 7:31 AM | Updated: 7:39 am
We heard that last month hackers in Russia managed to break into the unclassified email system of top Pentagon staff. Then we heard that Chinese hackers got into the private email accounts of many top Obama administration officials.
And now, Secretary of State John Kerry has acknowledged that even his emails have become international best-sellers.
But could there be something else going on here?
Kerry is the latest official to admit his email account was hacked. He made the admission to CBS’s Scott Pelley.
“The answer is, it is very likely [that the Chinese and Russians are reading my emails],” Kerry said. “It’s not outside the realm of possibility and we know they have attacked a number of American interest over the course of the last few days.”
“I certainly write things with that awareness,” he said.
So he writes his emails aware that other governments are going to read them.
I wonder if he meant to disclose that little nugget. Because if you’re writing your e-mails knowing that a foreign government is going to read them, you would logically fill them with things you want that government to believe.
In which case the hack, and the protest against the hack, is all part of the plan.
Because otherwise, we’re being asked to believe that the United States, which is home to multiple giant computer companies, and makes most of the basic software that controls the computer, and serves as the switchboard for most of the world’s Internet service, is somehow totally helpless to prevent this hacking.
What if it turns out that, in fact, the Internet is actually becoming a repository of the information that someone wants foreign governments to discover. While the real information is exchanged elsewhere.
But I may have already said too much.