A college student is facing over twenty years in jail and massive fines after
he guessed the password to the Yahoo email account of then vice-presidential
candidate Sarah Palin.
David Kernell was convicted of unauthorised access to obtain information from
a computer and obstruction of justice, which comes with a maximum term of 20
years in jail. He was found innocent of wire fraud and a charge of identity
theft was dismissed after a retrial.
Kernell used publicly information to guess the password to Palin's Yahoo
account, namely where she met her husband. At the time Palin was reportedly
under fire for using a private email account for government business and Kernell
uploaded certain emails to Wikileaks showing this to be the case.
