Slashdot Mirror
Palin E-mail Hacker Indicted
doomsdaywire writes "A University of Tennessee student who is the son of a Memphis legislator has been indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of hacking Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's personal e-mail. [...] If convicted, [David C.] Kernell faces a maximum of five years in prison, a $250,000 fine and a three-year term of supervised release. A trial date has not been set."
Close your eyes; it's not illegal.
The freedom of information act would disagree.
Completely incorrect. Fruit of the poisoness tree ONLY applies to searches done by police. As is the same with most other evidence law precedents. There may be another reason why it isn't admissable, but that is not it.
Actually, Alaska Public Records Act. FOIA is a Federal law, not a state law.
As I understand, the archive didn't make it; just a few screenshots before the guy freaked out and asked 4chan to glom it for him, which is when/where someone changed the password and alerted Palin. (The screenshots are also supposedly what made it possibly to backtrack him through his weak-sauce anonymizer.)
In short, epic fail for Palin and this cracker schmuck. But a quarter million $ and 3 years? Not going to happen. This kind of thing happens hundreds of times a week, if not day. How many times a day in the US, does someone steal a piece of physical mail (a Federal crime)? Probably in the thousands.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
I don't know from where you post, but in the USA very few (actually, I can't think of any) professions have a legal salary cap.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
Why should she be indicted? None of her emails were very inappropriate.
Government officials have record and reporting requirements. By using an external E-mail provider, she avoided those.
even though her personal emails have been exposed and cleared as appropriate
The account was called "gov.palin" and contained messages like this:
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Sarah_Palin_Yahoo_inbox_2008
Let it go--she obviously wasn't, and we know that thanks to the idiot who accessed her emails.
She was using the account inappropriately, that much is clear. One can argue about whether this should be a big deal, given that there was no obviously incriminating information she was trying to hide.
I'd usually say this shouldn't be a big deal. But given her apparent history of abuse of power, this is quite relevant.
Wikileaks hasn't posted the full e-mail archive to the general public.
The Guardian looked through them, and found e-mails related to a draft letter to Gov. Schwarzenegger, discussion of nominations to the state court of appeals, and emails from "DPS" - the department at the center of Troopergate.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/deadlineusa/2008/sep/17/uselections2008.sarahpalin
"Incorporation" concerns the Bill of Rights and various other rights. FOIA is an act of congress that applies to certain documents of certain federal agencies. FOIA is not a right, and thus is not incorporated.
-Loyal
I aim to misbehave.
The only one I can think of are professional sports. Even then it's a series of rules to limit team salary, and not a hard cap on how much an individual can make.
Incorporation applies via the 14th amendment to rights guaranteed by the bill of rights and other constitutional mechanisms. The Constitution does not grant a right to our government's communication to the public, which is why we have the FOIA. It also doesn't prohibit them, since it's not even discussed in the Constitution in the detail that's covered by the FOIA and related state laws, therefore it falls under the purview of the 10th amendment, which leaves the matter to the states and their residents to decide.
The FOIA act does not grant a new right under the Constitution, and Congress does not have the authority, even under the expanded Interstate Commerce Clause rulings, to force open such communications. Therefore it is not incorporated by precedent into state laws and actions. It is thus functionally invisible to the 14th amendment.
That said, she's probably fair game under Alaska state law, as it should be, since she's only accountable to Alaskans at this point given the only elected office she holds.
Comment removed based on user account deletion