A federal court has rejected the appeal of a felony conviction filed by a Tennessee man who in 2008 guessed his way into a Yahoo email account owned by Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska who was then running for vice president.
Reading the decision this afternoon reminds us that an old political saying - It's not the crime, it's the cover-up - applies just as well to private citizens as elected officials. If you recall, a jury convicted David Kernell, right, of two crimes: a misdemeanor charge of illegally accessing a computer, and a felony charge of obstruction of justice. It was the latter that earned him almost a year in prison and which was upheld in the ruling released today.
(2012’s 25 Geekiest 25th Anniversaries)
The ruling makes clear that not only did Kernell attempt to cover up what he had done - no surprise, given the circumstances - but also that he wasn't very good it.
Later computer forensic examinations revealed that Kernell had taken numerous actions to remove information from the computer relating to his access to the Palin email account. ... Kernell cleared the cache on his Internet Explorer browser, removing the record of the websites he had visited during that period. He also uninstalled the Firefox Internet browser, which more thoroughly removed the record of his Internet access using that browser, and ran the disk defragmentation program on his computer, which reorganizes and cleans up the existing space on a hard drive, and has the effect of removing many of the remnants of the information or files that had been deleted. Finally, Kernell deleted a series of images that he had downloaded from the Palin email account.
... on September 20, the FBI executed a search warrant for Kernell's apartment and seized his computer. The seized computer, despite the deletions, contained numerous items related to accessing the Palin email account, including a draft" of the message Kernell had posted to 4chan bragging about his exploits and explaining that he had already covered his tracks.
The court ruled that these actions, in addition to being ineffective, constituted obstruction of justice because the law prohibits one from destroying potential evidence once it becomes clear that the authorities are on your tail ... or soon will be.
Which raises an interesting possibility: What if Kernell had done nothing to cover up what he had done?
With no cover-up, there would have been no felony obstruction charge.
The misdemeanor conviction did also carry the possibility of jail time, but absent the weight of a felony, maybe Kernell gets probation instead.
Moral to the story?
Don't destroy evidence, especially if you don't know what you're doing.
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