Accused Palin Hacker Says Stolen E-Mails Were Public Record

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/05/palin-hack

By Kim Zetter
Threat Level
Wired.com
May 20, 2009

A surprise legal maneuver by the defense in the Sarah Palin hacking case 
could undermine key charges carrying the stiffest potential penalties.

A lawyer for the Tennessee college student charged with hacking into the 
Alaska governor’s Yahoo e-mail account last year says his client 
couldn’t have violated Palin’s privacy because a judge had already 
declared her e-mails a matter of public record.

“He’s not suggesting that e-mail can’t be private,” says Mark Rasch, a 
former Justice Department cybercrime prosecutor. “He’s saying this 
particular e-mail was not private or personal because of who she is and 
because it wasn’t intimate communication. ”

Additionally, photos that 20-year-old David Kernell allegedly obtained 
of Palin and her family were not private since the Palins are “the 
subjects of untold numbers of photo-ops,” the lawyer argued last week, 
in one of a slew of motions and memorandums attacking the government’s 
four-count federal indictment against Kernell.

[...]

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