Slashdot Mirror
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."
They also hung on the count of Identity Theft; The DA can retry that later if he so chooses.
There are two stupid people at the heart of this story, David Kernell and Sarah Palin. Stupid knows no political boundaries.
Anyone suggesting otherwise is just politically naive or blinded by (D) or (R) labels
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
My question is: Why is going through someone else's email different than going through their regular mail? What makes the addition of a computer so special?
I understand (and agree) that the guy should be punished for hacking this account, but how come nothing ever happend about Palin conducting official State business using her personal email account? Is it because the information was technically obtained illegaly? Or did something happen and I just missed it...?
Living With a Nerd
Go Airwolf!
This guy will charged with hacking Sarah Palin's account which is crime.
Where is Sarah Palin's trial for using a non-government account for state business(which is also a crime)?
but you do this, and you get 20 years on average.
it seems like u.s. justice system is so fucked up.
Read radical news here
What did he do that qualifies as obstruction of justice?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
...find him some work, and deny the Palins a scalp.
They just wanted revenge and Tennessee obliged.
I understand computer fraud, but obstruction of justice? Exactly how was justice obstructed?
Can't be real. Please tell me (but don't lie) I am reading this wrong. I guess that's what he deserves eh? One has to wonder if that e-mail account contained "sensitive data" concerning your US "national security" hahah. Oh boy...
if he's a first time offender I hope he doesn't do prison time, but rather gets put on probation with any violation resulting in a long sentence.
If you're going to do this, at least become a telecom company first. When they pull this kind of shit, they get a pat on the back.
...that Palin will ask the judge and the prosecutor to not give the guy any jail time, but maybe a few years probation and some community service.
I doubt throwing the guy in jail was a goal in this action.
Mark my words on this.
Joe Dougherty, Florida, USA
The words I thought I brought, I left behind. So, never mind.
Things like this make me sad. Not just because I feel bad for the person, but also because frankly I don't want my taxes spent on keeping this man imprisoned for up to twenty years. Cost of imprisonment is on average 22,650 per year, at 20 years that's $453,000. In my opinion it's not worth that much to keep a man behind bars for guessing a password.
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.
Then there would be two of her running around!
From the article:
You can't retry a deadlocked kernel. The only way out is a hard reset.
What is it with people who post this stuff and can't be arsed to find out on their own? Its not even news anymore that the judge in alaska found in palin's favor 3 months ago! But that doesn't fit the narrative because palin is an EEEVVILL STOOPID CONSERVATIVE. All the media and established politicians are scared to death of her and tried to pin whatever they can on her. It was front page news when the lawsuit over her using yahoo email was filed, she wins and its back news and all the liberal slashdotters "*waits for replies*" because they're only listening to the talking points from the drive by media.
/end rant
/end troll.
are upheld in Court. Personal email really IS private, and people should be held accountable if they cross the line. Jail time sounds a bit extreme, given the youthful age of the accused, but I'm glad the legal precedents are being followed correctly.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
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
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?
What's a "worldwide rummage" when it's at home??
I believe a lot of those are insensitive to case, so does that mean that are stored as text and not as a hash (is hash the right word)? If so, would typing your password in those fields make your password more vulnerable?
While I think he should be punished, online account hacking happens all the time (probably hundreds or thousands of times per day).
And even with moderately higher profile hacking, not one normally gets charged.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
It is still considered theft if someone enters my house and takes some of my belongings even if I leave my door is unlocked. Ditto for leaving the keys in my car and someone takes it or leaving the car running unattended while I go into a store or something.
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.
Personally, I lock my doors, don't leave my keys in my car, set up a RADIUS server for my wireless authentication, etc. I'd rather my stuff not get stolen or my network get broken into in the first place. There was a time when people respected other people's privacy and property. That doesn't seem to happen any more.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
First off, it should be known that the answers (and god help us if the jury wasn't told this) to Sarah Palin's secret questions were publicly search-able on Google. Yes, all he did was google the questions and he found the answers. He didn't break in to anything. Maybe Sarah should have had to take a test to be able to get online.
This is just for vengeance, not for making a better society - but then such is the legal system of US - hence a greater and greater percentage of the population go to jail. In a hundred years the entire country will have locked itself up.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
While the focus here seems to be the cracker, what's sadly ignored is the fact she shouldn't have been USING the account in the first place.
No punishment for corrupt officials, instead shine the focus on the cracker.
There wouldn't be emails in the first place if Palin didn't BREAK THE LAW!
Come on...
If only someone would hack her Facebook account too. She's so annoying and she just won't go away.
I'm starting to think Rush is going to be the new Godwin law.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
Actually in Rehberg v. Paulk, the Eleventh Circuit held that sending “emails to third parties constitute[s] a voluntary relinquishment of the right to privacy in that information.” In this case, the investigators subpoenaed the emails directly from the Internet Service Provider (ISP) through which Rehberg transmitted his messages. The Court held that he did not have a valid expectation of privacy in the email information, so he failed to state a Fourth Amendment violation.
Here is a link to the brief: http://www.georgiafederalcriminallawyerblog.com/Rehberg.pdf
Plus how can covering up a misdemeanor be a felony? I could understand the obstruction being a felony if he hurt or killed someone to cover up the crime. But non-violent resisting arrest and formatting your personal hard drive are hardly felonies. Guess I should read the case...
The perp here is the son of Mike Kernell, a long-serving Democrat in the Tennessee state legislature.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Kernell
Young David wasn't just looking around for any old account to break into, he was actively working on the account of a political opponent of his father's.
This also implies that David, despite claims that it was for "lulz", was almost certainly conducting a targeted search of her email. There would be no other reason for the son of a prominent Democrat to do what he did.
This is Watergate. The only difference is the desire of the American media to tar and feather those involved.
..to this story was that it was originally reported that the FBI was investigating Palin's use of yahoo mail for conducting governmental business. But hey, she got "hacked" and there was nothing there right? Why should we care about government officials using third-party email and with easy to recover password options rather than secure government-run communications?
see: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/09/AR2008090903044.html
Funny that, huh. A judge lets a rich powerful person off by saying the law wasn't broken.
that most of you are acting like he's the victim and that this is no big deal. Probably because you don't like Palin. Now if some "fascist conservative" had done the same to Obama we'd never hear the end of it and how the guy should be locked away for years.
They believe Palin is an idiot. Period.
They believe what they have been fed according to their beliefs.
Any amount of factual evidence will not change this.
Especially when the evidence shows that they themselves are the idiots.