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."

Comments

Re:Two Stupid People

[GameMaster]

Her stupidity has nothing to do with the e-mail issue any more than it has to do with her political positions. I may disagree with most Republican positions, but I can acknowledge that there are some very smart people on their side (I may think some of those people are evil, but that doesn't make them less intelligent). There's a famous quote that I've heard attributed to many famous, historical, Americans including Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain, it goes something like "it is better to remain seated and be thought a fool than to stand up and remove all doubt". Sarah Palin has made a point of standing up and removing all doubt numerous times since she was chosen as McCain's running mate. Whether it is the interview where she, clearly, had no clue about any of the foreign policy topics she was asked about; her attempt to use the fact that you can see part of Russia from part of Alaska (yes, I know the difference between what she really said and the Tina Fey quote, the ironic part about the two is that they aren't significantly different from each other when it comes to how idiotic they are but only one was intended as comedy).as proof that she has experience with international politics; or any one of the many, many, other examples of her saying things that, clearly, show her ignorance, I believe that she has, more than, earned her position among the ranks of the "stupid people".

Re:Two Stupid People

[dbIII]

Did you notice that she resigned as Governor to avoid scandals?
I'm amazed that people still hold her up as a good example when there are a lot of more honest Republicans out there.
You should have noticed now that there are a lot of people that get away with a variety of crimes because of the extra effort required to convict, for instance (outside politics but within influence) Madden got away with a lot until it was very easy to drag him into court. Who is going to destroy their career to drag Palin into court on some petty charge of abusing procedure when they know they are going to be opposed by every Republican and vilified in the press? Nobody is going to do that so she got away with it. Even if she was caught stealing she would get away with it. It's only when someone in politics gets caught stealing to use the money for an immoral purpose that there is enough outrage for someone to bring charges without destroying their career.

Re:Actually...

[evilviper]

For some reason a lot of /. people seem to think that not securing your property suddenly makes it fair game for anyone who wants to take it. The crime occurs when someone takes something that doesn't belong to them regardless of how well or how poorly it is secured.

I WOULD like to see the laws changed so that punishment is relative to the difficulty of the crime, rather than the value of the object. A professional criminal with the tools to disarm the alarm, pick the door locks, etc., shouldn't be equivalent to some stupid kid who saw a car with the keys in the ignition and decided to go on a drunken joy ride in the middle of nowhere...

Yeah, if you leave your jewelry box on the street, and someone steals it, you deserved it...