David C. Kernell must have been very curious about what a vice presidential hopefuls email might contain. The 20-year-old got into Sarah Palin’s email (I’m sure he guessed her password was jesus) and now finds himself indicted for a single count of accessing a protected computer, which means he can get up to five years in the big house and a quarter million dollar fine. All in all, it seems like if you were going to break into someone’s email it might be more interesting to log into Joe Biden’s (password = geezer), McCain’s (password=nukeiraq) or O’Bama’s (password = IAMNOTATERRORISTDAMNIT).
But really, what would the point be, to see who gets more spam… My guess is that their email would be about campaigns and speeches and demographics. I doubt that Mr Kernell had any interest in any of that. Now, of course when he gets out of jail (if he gets any jail time), he’ll likely end up getting hired immediately as a security consultant. He could have gone to Vanderbilt, just down the road from the Tennessee district court where he was indicted, which would have taken 4 years (minimum) and cost him about $225,000 instead. Assuming he gets the maximum penalty it would have netted him $25,000 less and 1 less year (unless of course he started playing Dark Ages of Camelot during his freshman year) of his life…
Now, given that his father is in the Tennessee state legislature (Democrat) and that the kid is an ardent Democrat (other than that short span he was all for Ron Paul, like most college kids), it’s not hard to guess what motivation there was here. Judging from his Facebook page, he seems like a typical kid. He screwed up, he’ll get suspended from the University of Tennessee, no big deal – unless of course you’re looking to inspire a conspiracy theory. There are some who think that there is a definite connection between him and the Obama campaign. But let me ask you this, are you gonna’ have some frat boy from UT do your dirty work if you’re the Obama campaign or are you gonna’ hit up your local Chicago 2600 meeting where you’re more than likely to find people who can spin circles around this kid… Or even better, why on earth would you pull something like that when you’re already winning an election…