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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."
They also hung on the count of Identity Theft; The DA can retry that later if he so chooses.
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
One is a felony Mail tampering, one is computer tampering. Email is not considered the same as regular Mail.
And while my mailbox has a lock on it, it is simple and easy to bypass, I'd hate to see people make the same excuses for someone lifting mail from my box as they do for people lifting email from Hotmail (or whatever).
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
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
What did he do that qualifies as obstruction of justice?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
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
"He gained access to Twitter accounts by simply working out the answers to password reminder questions on targets' e-mail accounts, according to investigators. " Seriously, I hate those things. When it used to be allowed, I always just retyped my password into the answers for those security questions. It's always really easy stuff to socially engineer or, in the case of a public figure, look up on google... Did he figure out the name of Obama's first pet, where he went to school, his first job, his mother's maiden name, or what? All of those things have got to be fairly easy to work out.
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.
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 mean, people put honest answers in those fields??? [boggles]
Similar to the upcoming US election results
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.
Why bother picking a lock when there's so many other easier ways to get into the average house? Breaking a window is trivial, drilling out a lock isn't hard, etc. To someone even mildly determined to get in, the average house lock is less of a issue than a weak password is for an email account.
While it's certainly smarter to have a strong password than a weak one, to say that having a weak password should mean that you take on some of the legal responsibility for a crime committed against you by someone else is ridiculous.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
From the article:
You can't retry a deadlocked kernel. The only way out is a hard reset.
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
I wonder if wiping your fingerprints after a robbery constitutes obstruction of justice?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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 was not his fault, it was a Kernell Panic.
There are two stupid people at the heart of this story, David Kernell and Sarah Palin.
Huh? How was Palin stupid in the context of this incident? Was she stupid to use email, as she should have known the extremists on the Left would hack it? Or just stupid because she disagrees with your views?
Apparently, Palin must not have used that account in any way that seriously violated any ethics rules and/or laws in any meaningful way or she would have been tarred, feathered, pilloried, and publicly horse-whipped on the Senate and/or House floors before being jailed by those who were (and still are) out to personally destroy the woman.
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?
I don't care about "R" or "D", as both have been for larger government & larger national debt, but this was a really sleazy dirty trick and those behind anything like it, regardless of party/ideology, should be aggressively prosecuted and sentenced severely if found guilty.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
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
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.
Please answer your security question: "What country were you born in ?"
> "Kenya"
*ducks*
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
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.
i'll one better you.. wearing gloves to prevent fingerprints from being left is obstruction!
Hah! Not committing robbery in the first place is obstruction since that would leave them without anything with which to charge you!
Was she stupid to use email, as she should have known the extremists on the Left would hack it?
Umm... what?
This guy wasn't an extremist anything, I was there reading the thread when he posted it, he mentioned in his thread that there wasn't anything interesting in it. [Apparently this somehow gets construed as him being an evil liberal socialist hippie extremist out to overthrow the government...] Then some whiteknight went and changed the password so that nobody could access the account.
The dude was just doing what any average person in his position would be doing if they got to look at Obama's emails or Dick Cheney's emails or Bush's emails.
As a Canadian, I've got to say, this Republican vs Democrat stuff is really really getting out of hand. Are you people children or adults, FFS.
As popular as it is to bash Palin, this isn't about Slashdots users estimate of her acumen, but about David Kernell breaking the law. Seems pretty cut and dry to me.