The Associated Press reports:
David Kernell, 20, of Knoxville, Tenn. entered the plea in federal court in Knoxville, the same day prosecutors unsealed an indictment charging him with intentionally accessing Palin’s e-mail account without authorization. Kernell, an economics student at the University of Tennessee, was brought into court wearing handcuffs and shackles on his ankles.
He was released without posting bond, but the court forbade him from owning a computer and limited his Internet use to checking e-mail and doing class work.
The hearing follows a massive deployment of FBI and Secret Service agents and prosecutors to identify the culprit who hacked into Palin’s email account, removed a series of her communications and published them on the internet.
As Orin Kerr explains here, hacking someone’s email account and making use of the information gained is a crime; it may either be a felony or a misdemeanor, depending upon the hacker’s intentions. And here’s the rub. In order to dramatize the case and get a felony indictment, the prosecutors needed to allege that it was “committed in furtherance of a criminal or tortuous” act.
The other big flag is that the hacker actually uncovered some violations by Palin:
The Justice Department seems to be setting one of its amazing new rules. When a Republican political figure is damaged in her expectation of being elected to office, it is telling us, that’s a felony. And why is that the case here? Because the hacker helped establish something important: Sarah Palin has been systematically violating the Open Records Act. As David Corn has noted at Mother Jones, Palin relied heavily on private email accounts for improper purposes. As governor of Alaska, she was obligated to maintain as public records her communications with respect to her discharge of official duties.
Palin skirted this obligation by turning to private email accounts for government related dealings. In fact, the hacker in question helped flush out Palin’s violations. The hacker also helped establish a motive for the illegal conduct: Palin regularly involved her husband in official business, and it’s easy to understand why she did not want to leave behind evidence of her husband’s involvement.
Kernell's father is a Democratic state representative in Tennessee.
2 comments:
can anyone say Hatch Act. Now let's see Sarah violated the Hatch Act and this case will bring charges against her if this continues. Yes the young man was wrong but he wasn't doing and indictible offense. This is made to hurt him because he's the child of a Democrat.
Hmmm, if she was conducting public business using private e-mail, then doesn't that make the private e-mail then public, and if it is public, is it still considered hacking or not?
That's kind of a joke.
We are on our own for this one--the Rugby Man is busy listening to Rezko sing like a canary to get his jail sentence lightened and maybe to put Baloneybitch in the pokey instead.
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