Over the past couple of days, reports have started top filter out about a group of people successfully hacking Gov. Sarah Palin’s email. The report raises lots of interesting questions and requires a little background.

Major media outlets didn’t have a lot of information about Gov. Palin when it was announced that she would be Sen. John McCain’s running mate. As people dug in, one story that received some attention was the $100,000 investigation into alleged abuse of power by Gov. Palin in actions to get her sister’s ex-husband fired from the State Police. This investigation has led to the subpoenaing of Gov. Palin’s emails.

As a general rule, emails of elected officials are considered part of the public record and are subject to Freedom of Information requests. However, many people have separate email accounts that they use for personal business, or perhaps sometimes, to keep sensitive work related messages off of the work servers.

In the case of Gov. Palin, it was her personal Yahoo! Account that hackers claim to have compromised. A small amount of information has been released from the claimed attack, and none of it appears particularly incriminating.

So, what do we make of the claimed attack? One question is whether or not people believe that the attack actually happened, or if this was a carefully created hoax. Everything released so far looks probable, but it is unlikely that we will ever know for sure.

Another question is who did the attack and why. Reports are that the group ‘anonymous’ is claiming to have done the attack. The group first came to fame for obtaining and releasing information about the Church of Scientology. Given their propensity to attack notorious groups with extreme religious beliefs, it is easy to see how they might target Gov. Palin. However others claim that the group anonymous is also known for attacks on high profile women. This might provide a different motivation for the attack.

What are the privacy issues involved with the attack? First, I think it is fair to say that anyone who uses email, especially email service like Yahoo or Google needs to keep privacy issues in mind. Whether or not the attack actually happened and whatever the legalities or justifications of the attacks, email remains fairly susceptible to being read by people other than the intended recipient.

How do we understand the privacy issues? To the extent that the emails in Gov. Palin’s Yahoo Account is considered part of the public record, it may be an inappropriate method of gathering public information, which might even raise issues about whether or not the information can be used in an investigation or legal proceeding. This could also explain why the only information released so far is not particularly incriminating.

Yet what are the larger aspects of this? Will it get more people focusing on the privacy issues around email, or what emails by Government officials should be considered part of the public record? Will it get more people looking at the issues of whether or not Gov. Palin abused her power in her efforts to get her sister’s ex-husband fired? Given the geeky nature of the latest developments, it may catch a lot of attention of technology oriented sites, but we’ll see if it goes beyond that.