I think the implication here is that people might have signed up with the same username and password as they use for other things (e.g., their work email).
One of them is "|-cat vomit $|--", password hints maybe?
Yeah - my point is that this password hint is basically telling you that the user uses the same password for other things.
Not likely - the higher up you go in government, the more stringent they are with passwords for government provided services such as email. The NSA is probably the highest up there with that.