Arnold gets hacked!

The Los Angeles Times reported (Sept 2006) that in a private meeting, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Republican Governor of California, said that a fellow Republican of Puerto Rican descent, Assemblywoman Bonnie Garcia, was passionate because of her ethnicity. The conversation was recorded by one of his staff people.

Arnold said, “I mean Cuban, Puerto Rican, they are all very hot. They have the, you know, part of the black blood in them and part of the Latino blood in them that together makes it.” He was comparing her to a fellow bodybuilder.

These comments caused a huge uproar even thought Ms Garcia said she was not at all offended. Race is such a sensitive area of American society that the remarks were sure to be hot.

But how did the LA Times get this story since the conversation took place in a private meeting?

The campaign organization of Democratic candidate for governor, Phil Angelides, who was running against Schwarzenegger said that it was the source of audio files.

Ah ha! So this is all part of a political war; Dirty politics; Anything goes campaigning in America.

The files had been put on a governor'sweb site. The California Highway Patrol launched an investigating to see if the files were illegally purloines by the Angelides campaign. Schwarzenegger’s communications director, Adam Mendelsohn, said the Web site from which the files were downloaded was not supposed to be publicly accessible. But he agreed that it "... was not as secure as it ought to be .." No Duh!

The Angelides campaign said they had gotten a link to some audio files in a press release from the governors office. They then just started working backwards by eliminating slashes on the address line on the browser and hit the sensitive spot with the confidential files. YIKES! That's way too easy!

My question is "Why the heck did the Gov's people put any files but especially private and confidential (and sensitive) discussion like this on a WEB SITE?! Might as well film these meetings and upload them to YouTube!

The digital age is great and the Internet has become a huge tool for politics - campaigning, fund raising, signing up volunteers, "Meeting Up" people for campaigns, etc. BUT, many campaign or political people are really not ready for "prime Internet time" and the security issues is probably the single most critical part. What's missing is properly managing the security part of information technology in politics.

Arnold, you need to spank your staff!