The former college student who guessed his way into Sarah Palin’s Yahoo e-mail account during the 2008 U.S. presidential election was sentenced to a year and a day in prison Friday.

David Kernell’s lawyers had been hoping for probation only; federal prosecutors had asked for an 18-month sentence.

The judge in the case recommended that Kernell serve his time at a halfway house rather than federal prison, but that decision is up to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, the U.S. Department of Justice said. Following his one-year sentence, Kernell must serve three years’ probation.

Kernell, a 20-year-old college student at the time of the incident, got into Palin’s gov....@yahoo.com account by guessing answers to the security questions used by Yahoo to reset the account’s password. In chat logs, Kernell said he was hoping to find information that would “derail” her 2008 vice presidential election campaign.

Palin was then governor of Alaska, and her critics thought she may have been conducting state business via the Yahoo account, in order to sidestep Alaska’s open records law. Kernell found no such evidence after examining her Yahoo account.

Politics aside. one year in prison followed by three years probation seems reasonable. In her autobiography, “Going Rogue,” Ms. Palin describes the incident as  “the most disruptive” of the campaign because it cut off easy communication with her colleagues in Alaska.

Mr. Kernell, who went  by the internet handle “Rubico,” was able to gain access to Ms. Palin’s private Yahoo! mail account by correctly the answers to her “secret questions” — her date of birth, her postal code, and information about where she met her husband Todd and then resetting her password.

Mr. Kernell then posted examples of Ms. Palin’s private emails, the addresses of her friends & family, and family photos on Wikileaks. Mr. Kernell also bragged that hacking into the vice-presidential candidate’s Yahoo account was child’s play… and it was. Standard challenge questions like “What is you date of birth?”, “What is your home zip code” or “Where did you meet your spouse?” are marginally effective for Mr. and Mrs. Average, but for a public figure like Ms. Palin whose life is well documented they’re pretty much useless… The answers can found in a matter of minutes using public sources like Wikipedia.

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• Sarah Palin’s Private E-mail Account Hacked
• Palin E-mail Hack Follow-up
• A Quick Update on the Palin E-mail Hacking Case
• Newsflash: Palin E-mail Hacker Indicted
• Palin E-mail Hacker Hit With Additional Charges
• Palin E-mail Hacker Convicted on Two Counts

(Reuters) – A college student who hacked into former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s e-mail account and posted some of its contents on the Internet was found guilty Friday.

After four days of deliberations, a federal jury found David Kernell, the 22-year-old son of a Democratic Tennessee state legislator, guilty of obstruction of justice, a felony, and unauthorized access of a computer, a misdemeanor.

Kernell was cleared of a wire fraud charge, and the jury could not agree on a verdict on a charge of identity theft.

Judge Thomas Phillips declared a mistrial on the identity theft charge but did not set a date for sentencing.

The obstruction charge alone carries a prison sentence of up to 20 years, while the misdemeanor count is punishable by up to one year in jail.

Ms. Palin issued a statement via her Facebook page, thanking the jury and prosecutors their efforts and explaining the case’s importance:

My family and I are thankful that the jury thoroughly and carefully weighed the evidence and issued a just verdict. Besides the obvious invasion of privacy and security concerns surrounding this issue, many of us are concerned about the integrity of our country’s political elections. America’s elections depend upon fair competition. Violating the law, or simply invading someone’s privacy for political gain, has long been repugnant to Americans’ sense of fair play. As Watergate taught us, we rightfully reject illegally breaking into candidates’ private communications for political intrigue in an attempt to derail an election.

I want to thank the public servants who worked so hard on this case, particularly the jurors who gave up precious time from their jobs and families to listen to the evidence and reach a decision.

My family and I appreciate the good people of Knoxville, Tennessee, who showed us true Southern hospitality. We can’t wait to visit again – but without having a subpoena in hand.

Although I expect Mr. Kernell will see some jail time it’ll be far less than the 20 year maximum, federal sentencing guidelines set a range of 15 to 21 months and allow for probation in cases like this. I do think prosecutors overreached a little in this case and as one witness said “put on a dog and pony show“. They had to though, never mind basic privacy considerations… Sarah Palin was a Vice Presidential candidate in the middle of hotly contested election, investigators and prosecutors had to aggressively pursue this case to send  a message that these types political dirty tricks won’t be tolerated.

Related

• Jury convicts Palin e-mail intruder on two counts; mistrial declared on ID theft – Knoxville News Sentinel
• Protecting Against Password Reset Attacks – Randy Abrams, Eset Software.

Previous

• Sarah Palin’s Private E-mail Account Hacked
• Palin E-mail Hack Follow-up
• A Quick Update on the Palin E-mail Hacking Case
• Newsflash: Palin E-mail Hacker Indicted
• Palin E-mail Hacker Hit With Additional Charges

Kernell is the son of Tenn. democratic state Rep. Mike Kernell of Memphis, he turned himself in to federal authorities for arrest today.

Michelle Malkin has more here.

Update: Allahpundit asks:

“Any legal eagles (or techies, I guess) want to speculate on why it took the grand jury an extra three weeks to return the indictment? The last time I wrote about this, the FBI reportedly already had the IP logs in hand and had searched his dorm for corroborating evidence. What extra evidence would they have needed to produce to nudge the case over the line of probable cause?”

As a former cop and a techie there’s several reasons, first this is a high profile case that involves a vice presidential candidate… You can not make mistakes, everything has to be done “by the book”, all the T’s crossed and I’s dotted. Second the server logs and IP adresses can get you to the suspects front door but it’s forensic analysis of his or her computer that will established his or her guilt or innocence. Finally, cyber forensics is time consuming process.

The FBI and Secret Service more then likely had a short list of suspects within a day or two… Connecting the all the dots to identify a “prime suspect” and establish probable cause for a search warrant takes days or even weeks. Ditto for conducting a proper forensic analysis of the suspects computer(s) and writing all the reports. All in all I think the FBI and Secret Service handled this case pretty well.

Previous:

• Sarah Palin’s Private E-mail Account Hacked
• Palin E-mail Hack Follow-up
• A Quick Update on the Palin E-mail Hacking Case