Pence used personal email for state business /— and was hacked

Vice President Mike Pence reportedly used a private email account to conduct public business, including homeland security matters, while he was governor of Indiana. Records of the emails were obtained by IndyStar through a public records request. Dwight Adams/IndyStar

Vice President Mike Pence routinely used a private email account to conduct public business as governor of Indiana, at times discussing sensitive matters and homeland security issues.

Emails released to IndyStar in response to a public records request show Pence communicated via his personal AOL account with top advisers on topics ranging from security gates at the governor’s residence to the state’s response to terror attacks across the globe. In one email, Pence’s top state homeland security adviser relayed an update from the FBI regarding the arrests of several men on federal terror-related charges.

Cyber-security experts say the emails raise concerns about whether such sensitive information was adequately protected from hackers, given that personal accounts like Pence's are typically less secure than government email accounts. In fact, Pence's personal account was hacked last summer.

Vice President-elect Mike Pence speaks to members of the media while meeting with House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wis., on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2016.(Photo: Andrew Harnik/AP)

Furthermore, advocates for open government expressed concerns about transparency because personal emails aren't immediately captured on state servers that are searched in response to public records requests.

Pence's office in Washington said in a written statement Thursday: "Similar to previous governors, during his time as Governor of Indiana, Mike Pence maintained a state email account and a personal email account. As Governor, Mr. Pence fully complied with Indiana law regarding email use and retention. Government emails involving his state and personal accounts are being archived by the state consistent with Indiana law, and are being managed according to Indiana’s Access to Public Records Act.”

Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft and YouTube will share terror content info

The move comes after concern that the companies weren’t taking down terrorist content fast enough

A municipal display panel provides contact information for victims of the terrorist attacks in Paris in November 2015. Credit: Peter Sayer

Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft and Google’s YouTube have agreed to share with one another identifying digital information of violent terror content that they find on their platforms.

When they remove “violent terrorist imagery or terrorist recruitment videos or images” from their platforms, the companies will include in a shared industry database the hashes, or unique digital fingerprints, of the content.

Other participants can use the shared hashes to help identify matching content on their hosted consumer platforms, review against their respective policies and definitions, and remove the content when appropriate, according to a statement by the companies on Monday.

“There is no place for content that promotes terrorism on our hosted consumer services. When alerted, we take swift action against this kind of content in accordance with our respective policies,” the companies said.

Man Who Hacked Celebrities' Email Accounts Gets 5 Years in Prison

A Bahamian man who hacked into the email accounts of celebrities and athletes and later wrote in a jailhouse email that after his release he would “shake up hollywood for real!” was sentenced to five years in prison on Tuesday.

The sentence was roughly double the number of years suggested under federal sentencing guidelines.

The man, Alonzo Knowles, 24, had used his illicit access to the celebrity accounts to obtain unreleased movie and television scripts and personal information, which he then tried to sell for thousands of dollars, prosecutors said. Mr. Knowles had also stolen unreleased music, financial documents, and nude and intimate images and videos, the government said.

Kristy J. Greenberg, a prosecutor, said in Federal District Court in Manhattan that Mr. Knowles’s motivation had been greed. “He had a singular focus on becoming rich and famous,” she said, “by disseminating personal information of celebrities and exploiting them.”

Several victims had submitted statements to the judge. Naturi Naughton, an actress in the Starz drama “Power,” said in a video statement that Mr. Knowles had hacked her personal emails and stolen six scripts of the show, and then “tried to extort me, the producer, 50 Cent and my showrunner.”

Wikileaks Leaks 90GB Of Documents Linking NSA And German BND

Wikileaks has released 90 gigabytes of information in a torrent relating to the German inquiry into the surveillance activities of Germany’s foreign intelligence agency Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) and its cooperation with the United States’ National Security Agency (NSA).

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Leah Remini claims Tom Cruise tried to use her to stop CBS report on Scientology

Leah Remini claims that Tom Cruise asked her to use her influence at CBS to bully the network out of airing a negative story about the Church of Scientology.

“I got pressure to call Les Moonves at CBS to try and get a ‘60 Minutes’ report squashed,” Remini, a former Scientologist, said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “I got a call from the church and Tom to call Les Moonves and use my influence to squash the story.”