About this article Wednesday morning, the phone started ringing here at ZATZ HQ and it didn't stop for the next two days. Members of the media were feeding on the news that Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin's Yahoo email account may have been hacked, and since our own David Gewirtz is one of the nation's leading experts on the issue of Presidential email, he was being asked to comment. The following article by John Oram of the IT Examiner is the result of one such interview. John and his publisher Mike Magee have graciously granted us permission to reprint John's article, which we do, unedited by us, in its original form.

The alleged hacking of governor Sarah Palin's Yahoo email account has sparked a media feeding frenzy. Rick Davis, lobbyist in chief for the John McCain campaign for U.S. President, has described it as a "shocking invasion" of her privacy, and the FBI has confirmed that it is looking into the matter. But Sarah Palin cannot do much about the media speculation, because it appears that, when governor of Alaska, she conducted official state business using her private Yahoo email account.

We decided to ask an acknowledged expert for help in understanding what the facts are behind the rumours and sensationalised articles about the hacked emails of Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska and Republican Party vice-presidential nominee.

We telephoned David Gewirtz, who started off in April 2007 to write a short article about some email messages that had gone missing from the White House offices of the US presidential staff. Instead, after an in-depth forensic investigation, he ended up becoming the author of the award-winning book "Where Have All the Emails Gone?" and is now an acknowledged expert on forensic investigative analysis procedures regarding email.

David said that simply stated, his views on governor Palin's emails are that, first, there is no actual verification that this incident happened. He's not saying it didn't, but says they always look at these things from a questioning point of view. And if Palin's emails really were taken, he says, there are a few issues: how it happened; whether it should have happened; whether there was any wrongdoing; and, what the truth really is about the previous Alaskan requests for her email records?