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Palin Email Snoop Found Guilty On 2 Charges
netbuzz writes "A federal jury in Knoxville today has convicted David Kernell, 22, of two charges — misdemeanor computer fraud and felony obstruction of justice — in connection with the 2008 episode where he accessed the personal Yahoo email account of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and then initiated a worldwide rummaging of its contents. The obstruction charge carries a maximum prison term of 20 years."
About as stupid as Obama?
"A Frenchman who police say hacked Twitter accounts belonging to US President Barack Obama and celebrities could face jail."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8586269.stm
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
The obstruction of justice charge stems from an allegation by the FBI that Kernell attempted to erase evidence of the crime from his hard drive
Do you seriously think Palin will be held responsible for anything?
She's a master at evading responsiblity. She even supposedly got her daughter off scot-free for $20K in damages to someone else's house during a party. See here and here.
As long as there is corrupt cronyism, the guilty can do whatever they want.
No, that's not it. As long as the person is not working as an "agent of the state", anything they do is admissible. This came up when a hacker kept hacking into pedophiles' computers and turning them into the police. The courts ruled he was not working as an agent of the state, since the police had no control over him.
Two years only happens in extenuating circumstances (say, a woman kills her rapist after the fact; it's murder, but it's really hard to apply a tough sentence). Murder is rarely punished with a mere two years. That said, sentencing guidelines are fscked up, because it's always easier to appear "tough on crime" than it is to establish just guidelines.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
You can kill a guy and never go to jail, like Laura Bush, or a woman and never go to jail like Ted Kennedy.
The court determined that she wasn't in violation. Take it up with the court if you disagree.
http://www.ktuu.com/Global/story.asp?S=11867946
He ran away from the feds when they came knocking, and apparently formatted his hard drive to erase evidence (the wikipedia page says deleted, but I'm guessing that's what he did).
Erasing his hard drive would have been perfectly fine if he did it before he realized he was the subject of an investigation.
An Alaska judge has sided with former Gov. Sarah Palin in a lawsuit over e-mail, finding that state law doesn't forbid the use of private e-mail accounts to conduct state business.
Just because you want it to be illegal doesn't make it illegal; i.e. laws have to be passed by legislature first.
That article does a horrible job and totally misses the point of the ruling by focusing on the emotional side. It turns out, the public records law was really lax, so it was up to Palin to decide what was official business and what wasn't. As well, she could call any message "transitory" and it didn't need to be preserved either. The ruling could apply to e-mailed not handed over from state computers just as well.
Except it wasn't the 'obvious password' which did them in, it was the lame drop-box security questions. Make it so all security questions are chosen when the account is created, and not selected from some stupid list, and your problem is solved.
An Alaska judge has sided with former Gov. Sarah Palin in a lawsuit over e-mail, finding that state law doesn't forbid the use of private e-mail accounts to conduct state business.
By the way, that was from back in January. Didn't your copt of Palin Haters Weekly include that news? Gee, I wonder why not?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
it's not worth that much to keep a man behind bars for guessing a password.
Up to one year for guessing a password. 20 years for lying about it.
But the crux of their obstruction case came from testimony by McFall, a computer expert so skilled he was tapped to help organize the FBI's elite Computer Analysis and Response Team, or CART.
McFall said his probe was stymied by a series of steps authorities allege Kernell took to cover his tracks, including deleting from the computer material gleaned from Palin's account, clearing his Internet history on one Web browser, uninstalling another browser and running a Windows tool designed to speed a computer up by overwriting space occupied by deleted files.
Even safer, is to use a safe to store the passwords.
Safest: safety deposit box :)
not so much...
Many years ago, a friend of mine worked in a bank and told me that they were actually cataloging all items in safety deposit boxs! Having worked at a bank and been blown away but so many lapses of security issues, this didn't surprise me. He gleefully went over various items they encountered - including womens underwear! Mostly papers, not as much jewelry one would expect and some cash.
So, if you really want to be safe, encrypt a file on a storage medium that requires a password and that'll only work on your host at home? Nah I'll just carry my ATM PIN on the back of the card! (That way I can find it in case I forget it!)
My abilities are only limited by my imagination
The courts have decided that what Palin did was not a crime. So I'd say a crime is more significant than a non-crime.
sig? uhh, umm, ok
If there had been anything that could have even remotely made even the most shaky, thin case against Palin in the emails, you don't think it would have been the subject of a special Congressional committee and/or special prosecutor? You don't think that was *exactly* the intent behind the account cracking?
Actually, I was on ebaumsworld when the account was "hacked" and the first screenshots were posted and I can assure you it was done for the lulz and not some some diabolical political purpose.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
Too lazy to look up the details, though, so no "informative" mods for me.
You think that proof is required to get modded up as informative here on /.? You must be new here.
Somehow, I missed the original story. Must have been on travels at the time. Would someone help me with these basic questions? (I can't help being interested in the trivia. I love Sarah Palin stories. US politics would be so dull without her...)
- How did he hack the account? Guess the password? Do we know what the password was?
- Were funny email bits published on the net? Are they still available somewhere?
- How did the guy actually get caught?
-Guessed the password (or the password reset questions, forget which)
-Posted screenshots of the inbox, I do not recall any funny bits
-Posted to 4chan.
Smoke, maybe, not fire.
Amen. And wasn't Kernell's dad a bigwig in the local Democratic party? Wonder if he was put up to it and hung out to dry afterwards. "No problem, if he's caught, they'll just let him go because he's a kid.." Going through other folk's emails is dirty business - I know, I had to do it as a sysadmin many moons ago and about barfed on what I found.
Organization? You must be joking..
Palin only said that you could see Russia from Alaska
"They're our next door neighbors and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska." The actual quote, and an actual fact.
she was trying to claim that as a reason for why she has experience in international politics
In context, that is not her claim. However, it should be noted that Palin engaged in international treaty negotiations, as a representative of the United States as well as Alaska, with Canada. The topic was a natural gas pipeline. In the 2008 Presidential elections, she was the only one of the four Presidential or Vice Presidential candidates with international negotiation experience.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.