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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."
This is the dumbest crime ever. If he really did it, I just wish he would say, "Yeah I did it, I'm an idiot - just look at my goofy hair." Then they could cite him with a $200 fine for disorderly conduct and we could all move on with our lives. But the fact that he's pleading not guilty is going to give this whole thing legs both in the court and in the media.
I'm a big tall mofo.
When this whole thing came out, I learned that Sarah Palin was illegally using personal email accounts for business email, supposedly to avoid leaving the electronic trail. THAT was eye opening.
She changed her password to 0ldGuY=Mepr3z!!
My understanding was that illegally wiretapping American citizens carried neither fine nor penalty.
Yahoo! Pipes are awesome. How awesome? http://pipes.yahoo.com/jesdynf/slashdot
Obviously, the perpetrator was not entitled to any of the information contained within that Yahoo! email account and should be punished for breaking the law. What sucks is that he not really being punished for breaking the law, rather he's being punished for making Sarah Palin and thus the GOP look bad.
The only reason this is even news is because of the target. If there's no government communication on the account, why are the FBI and Secret Service involved?
How many times a day do bitter exs break into each others accounts? Nothing ever comes of those incidents.
"liberty and justice for all those who can afford it"
Is it just me, or does that sound a bit excessive for guessing the answers to her all-too-obvious "forgot password" questions? I'm not saying he shouldn't be punished, but no actual harm was done. How does this compare to what the punishment would be for, say, hacking into an ISP's mail server and obtaining root access? Or defacing a company's web site?
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
If you do something illegal, STFU!
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
For some reason the uber-parent failed to mention this, but the TN State legislator is a Democrat. May or may not mean anything, but odd to not mention it, isn't it?
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
I seem to see dozens of posters who have decided that Palin was conducting government business over her email. I thought I'd read all the email that had been made public. Did I miss some? Where is this idea coming from? Is it just a meme that everyone believes because someone asserted it? Has anyone actually SEEN an email that was "conducting government business"? If so, can you please post the content?
Enough with this.
I can't believe how many blindly partisan people simply ignore the violation of her privacy.
Would you have the same attitude if you had been the victim?
You'd be OK with someone hacking into your email, or perhaps browsing around your home to look for something that *might* indicate that you've done something wrong?
Would you say, "I guess I had it coming"?
I think it's sad that this (eternal) election has divided American citizens into Republicans or Democrats and not much else.
Damn.
Not really relevant, since old persons don't use email. Just ask John McCain.
John McCain can't type because his arms were repeatedly broken by the Vietnamese while he was a POW. Why do you insult disabled veterans?
You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. - Winston Churchill
What strikes me about Obama, Biden and McCain is that whilst they may have some level of corruption I think to be fair on them all they do genuinely believe they can better the country if they become president.
Palin is the only one out the 4 who strikes me as only seeming to care about increasing her power rather than improving the country.
Unfortunately the example it makes is that you can get away with crimes as long as the victim isn't important.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
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.
Gosh, why is the system failing. What could possible have happened to the US and democracy in general. Could there be some clue. Maybe something in your post. Geez, lets see.
Personally I forgot it happened
The powers that be thank you, dear consumer with the attention span of a kitten in a chicken plucking factory.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Why should she be indicted? None of her emails were very inappropriate.
What we have is some people who thought that Palin was conducting official state business on her personal account, and for some reason, even though her personal emails have been exposed and cleared as appropriate, they still can't drop their belief that she was/is conducting state business on her personal account.
Let it go--she obviously wasn't, and we know that thanks to the idiot who accessed her emails.
This author takes full ownership and responsibility for the unpopular opinions outlined above.
John McCain can't type because his arms were repeatedly broken by the Vietnamese while he was a POW. Why do you insult disabled veterans?
Well, that's what his campaign claims when the embarrassing topic of his technological ignorance comes up. On the other hand, here you can see him firmly holding a pad in one hand, while signing his name with the other hand, standing up, with no awkwardness that I can observe. He's hardly an invalid. If he can do that, he can type on a keyboard.
While I respect McCain's sacrifice 35 years ago as a single data point, unfortunately he's also proved himself to be a dishonorable liar since then.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
She's no more a separatist than any other Alaskan. There is not a functioning separatist movement in Alaska any more than there is in Texas (which has it's groups claiming that the state is a republic not a state and there-fore should stand on its own). Efforts to create one in order to paint Palin in a bad light are simplistic and misinformed.
As for being an idiot, I disagree. She's managed to leap herself onto the national stage in a relatively short time period. I don't think it has been a carefully planned assault, but certainly she has managed to accomplish some quirky set of actions that have enabled her to reach this point. I've no doubt there are thousands of other budding politicians out there on city/county and state levels who are trying to do the same and yet there she is.
However, that being said, I don't think she's really the type we want in the VP role right now. Nothing to do with her experience, imho, but perhaps more to do with her social/moralistic convictions.
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.
...encapsulated in one, simplistic know-it-all sentence.
The so-called Terrorist Surveillance Program (TSP) no longer exists, and hasn't since 17 January 2007.
All surveillance was happening under the guise of the Protect America Act, which was designed exclusively to allow foreign intelligence collection without a warrant when the traffic travelled through the United States, whether incidentally or by design. Foreign intelligence collection is always allowed without court oversight; the changes explicitly allowed such collection on US soil as long as the target was reasonably believed to be a non-US person physically outside of the United States, regardless of the other end of the conversation.
Now the Protect America Act has expired with its automatic sunset, and all surveillance must again happen only via FISA, as amended.
Also, TSP, in its entirety, was never as clear cut as being simply "legal" or "illegal" (court decisions on individual aspects aside). Those who claimed that it was "illegal" did so largely for political reasons. The other mistake is equating "traffic that *could be* listened to" with "traffic that *is* listened to" -- unfortunately, they are not at all the same. This also ignores that to even determine whether traffic is subject to legal collection, it must -- to be blunt -- actually be able to be collected. Thus the things like "secret rooms" at telecom facilities.
Having the capability to instantaneously examine traffic of international origin, where one or both endpoints of a communication are international, necessitates such wholesale monitoring capability. However, such capability being present does not imply its use for all traffic.
There are two issues here:
1. Monitoring the contents of a communication
2. Monitoring the metadata or "envelope" (source and destination information) of a communication
The first is allowable without a warrant or court oversight when one or both endpoints of the communication are international, and when the target of such monitoring is a non-US Person outside of the United States. Such foreign signals intelligence collection does not require a warrant or court oversight.
The second point above has multiple functions. One is using advanced data mining techniques to look for troubling patterns in communications.
Such collection has been found to be legal without a warrant or court oversight by the US Supreme Court:
Source: Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735 (1979)
Courts have subsequently found that pen register statutes apply similarly to computer network addresses known as IP addresses, lists of web sites visited, and the "envelope" of an email message -- its To: and From: addresses and related information. The NSA itself has long understood that while the capture of the "metadata" of communications is fair game, the capture of the *contents* of the conversations of US Persons is not, without a warrant:
Do you always write like a trailer for Steven Seagal movie?
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.
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