Reminds me of the Brit who hacked the Pentagon from the privacy of his own home.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/Accused-British-Hacker-Gary-McKinnon-Loses-Appeal-to-Block-Extradition/

Shame on Palin’s ISP for not having better security software.

And another point, although I am not (happily) a lawyer. Although it is possible that the young man would get 50 years, it is more likely that the prosecutors (US Attorney’s Office) threatened him with that (and asked the judge to award them, the prosecutors, with that sentence) because they hope to get a great deal of attention for their “superb” prosecution skills. And of course the main way they achieve their successes as US Attorneys is by threatening defendants and then offering “plea bargains”.

Plea bargains, under these circumstances constitute torture, forced confessions and punishment not mandated by law. The system coerces defendants into accepting a guilty plea when they fear (because of what the prosecutor threatens) the possible outcome of a “trial”. Ninety five percent of US Attorneys’ cases are plea bargained, but of the other five percent of cases which go to court for trial about one half are acquitted. The USA is the only country in the world that uses this particular system of adjudication to imprison alleged criminals.

True plea bargains are used in about 80% of major cases (federal cases, or I guess Crown cases) in Great Britain, but with a MAJOR difference. In the UK, the prosecutors must detail their whole case, all evidence, all testimony, all facts, to the defendants’ barristers before the plea bargain is considered. In other words, if the case has real merit and the defendant is likely to lose, he/she can bargain by pleading to a lesser offense. But in the USofA the prosecutor does not disclose any of his/her case to the defendant - in fact the threat of meaningless preliminary statements made to the court in writing is the only official description of the case made at all by the prosecutors. The defendant is leveraged into accepting the plea without knowing what the case is against her/him. It is effective.

The problem is, like water boarding, many may confess who have not transgressed. Oh well, that’s justice.

The rest of Europe does not use plea bargains to anywhere near this extent. For example, in Italy the plea bargain rate is very low, maybe fifteen percent. Scandinavia doesn’t use the system almost at all, but then why would they, no one commits crimes there (that’s not intended to represent fact).

So the headline of FIFTY YEARS is one way that the US Attorney’s office makes sure to get headlines for their job performance - that’s part of the perks of being the US Attorney.

Two lasts notes. Obama is the first president (of a different party, that I know of) to allow ALL US Attorney’s to stay in office throughout his administration, so far. Usually, well almost always, the US Attorneys(political appointees, one and all) tender resignations when the administration changes. Obama broke protocol this time. WHY? Donno, but I might guess….

Many have accused US Attorneys of prosecuting political adversaries of the Babybush/Cheney administration. There is a great deal written about it. Obama, with the one gesture of retaining all the US Attorneys, essentially prevented TOTALLY the investigation or prosecution of any of them for misuse of office/malfeasance. But think of it another way, just as nefarious: he agrees with what they did (of course of course I really mean to say ‘he agrees with what they allegedly did’).  At least that’s what I think.

I heard a journalist from Alaska on “liberal” radio this evening describe how Palin herself, just before she quit her job as Commissioner (of Something in Alaska) she herself, because asked by her ‘boss’, hacked into a co-worker’s computer and made the information public. She reportedly said, about her alleged crime, that she dreaded doing it ahead of time, but once she found out how much nasty stuff the computer held, it was “okay” with her.

Hmmmmh? Did she do the time? Was she prosecuted? HmmmmmH?

What did I say before about politically motivated prosecutions in the wonderful USA?

they are typically inspired who defend her, the victim,
those who offer such lingual diversity as the
scorchingly clever “he did the crime, he should do the
time” (hey, that rhymes), or who vaporize their
detractors with such novel insights as “liberal bias”,
that’s a regular rush limbaugh, that one. my favorite
is the unwittingly expository “hatred makes people
become stupid and mean”. you think?
i could have said it better myself.

I am not a “liberal” but I also find Palin is an embarassment to this country. The fact that she testified is overblown. The court “should” regard her testimony exactly as it would anyone else’s (like ALL of us who were wiretaped by W’s administration). I am afraid that the “court” will punish the man for a political crime. Justice in America is very political, very…

That’s not going to change soon. That’s the real shame.

“Hatred makes people become stupid and mean.” (OzarkMichael)

So does fear. In fact, I submit that fear is the underpinning of much of the hatred… fear of the unknown - ignorance. When humans are ignorant of something there seems to be some sort of instinct triggered which generates fear.

So how do we reduce ignorance? With education, of course. You still might have fear but at least you’ll have some clue why and perhaps even some understanding of how to cope reasonably with it.

I also think it’s about time Americans and others begin to dial down the left-right rhetoric nonsense. There is SO MUCH TIME AND MONEY WASTED on petty territorial battles - wars, even. What kind of example are the so-called “adults” providing for younger generations? Listening to the banter coming from everywhere from Congress to Truthdig you’d swear the local community sandbox was bugged for sound. Perhaps it’s time to GROW UP A NOTCH? Surely not everyone is suffering from arrested development!

OzarkMichael, April 25 at 11:01 pm #

quotes from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/23/sarah-palin-testifies-in_n_549570.html
**********************************************

Excuse me but I, too, am a liberal. But I believe that OM has correctly identified the situation.  Britol Palin has been thrust into the spotlight against her will.  So was Chelsea Clinton.  LEAVE THE KIDS ALONE! That goes for both sides.

I have no compassion for Sarah Palin.  She’s a pol and she put herself out there. But I stand by my words from September 2008—hacking her email without proper legal authority IS WRONG! 

I know nobody expect “50 years” but there are two things to consider: 1) he could land in front of a “hanging judge” appointed by Bush 2) Federal offenses usually have to be served in full.

If found guilty should this guy get off scot free? I would be offended by that. Should he get a REASONABLE sentence? Sure.

Cybernaught said to me: So, do you support someone being jailed for 50 years for a political embarrassment committed against a woman

First, if you werent a liberal you would realize that your political opposition are human beings, and the what happened to Sarah is not merely “political embarrassment”. In your irrational hate, you have no concept of civil rights.

“Their daughter, Bristol, told jurors earlier this week that she got harassing calls and text messages after screen shots of e-mail from the account revealed her cell phone number.”

I wouldnt wish this sort of thing on my worst political enemy. Anyone who caused that, and the potential for worse, deserves to be on trial. But Sarah is the hated conservative, and this is Truthdig, so you guys, almost all of you, excuse the crime and bloame the victim. You have no compassion.

Second, all this Leftist “50 years in jail” is a kind of hysteria. Nobody posting here expects or wants that. And the fabrication that Palin expects or wants the 50 years is just a smokescreen.

She(Sarah Palin) declined to say if she thinks conviction of the 22-year-old defendant should lead to prison or if community service would be punishment enough. “That’s up to the judge,” she said when she stopped to talk to reporters outside the courthouse.

So it turns out that she left it up to the judge whether the hacker should do community service or jailtime. It doesnt sound like she is gunning for the 50 years, but Truthdiggers have bought the lie. As usual, you have no common sense.

RAE said, “But then, America is FULL of people without either common sense or compassion.”

So true. Hatred makes people become stupid and mean.

quotes from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/23/sarah-palin-testifies-in_n_549570.html

Rob719 penned this wisdom: “Yeah he didn’t do very much but thats not the point.”

Sorry to disappoint, Rob, but THAT IS THE POINT. When you don’t “do very much” there can’t be “much crime.” You go on with… “what if…”? Since when are people arrested, charged and convicted on “what if?”

If it’s OK with you that anyone can be prosecuted for “what if” - if that’s the kind of world you’re OK living in… it’s all yours. I want no part of it.

“Plus he tried to obstruct FBI investigation…” Oh wow! One little twerp ATTEMPTS to thumb his nose at big FBI. Let’s put him away for 50 years. America is so full of “hanging judges” with their instant, prejudiced judgments it’s astonishing. Talk about a fascist society in the making!

“Sorry for any bad gramar or spelling possibly in my posting.”

I’m sorry too, Rob…FOR YOU. It looks as if you’ve completely wasted your time and your teachers’ even going to school. You can’t even write your own language. You expect us to take your ideas seriously?

But I’ve got to give you one thing… you’ve taken your societal conditioning 100%. “Authority” rules, in your view. Anyone who challenges “authority” needs to be dealt with harshly. (Translation: anyone who thinks for him/herself and makes decisions accordingly is DANGEROUS and UNAMERICAN and must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.)

Kernell broke some laws. There are punishments on the books for such transgressions which, I assume, judges are required to use COMMON SENSE in adjudicating. Only a complete absence of both common sense and compassion/understanding could lead anyone to accept that 50 years in prison is a fair and just penalty for what he did.

But then, America is FULL of people without either common sense or compassion.

Cybernaught said: For a good example of actual conservative hypocrisy, one can turn to Palin, so personally harmed by the theft of her email, cheering and championing the theft of email from professors at a university. It appears when its not her email and the criminals are political allies, it is all okay.

Well, thats a good point. No one knows how the emails were brought out yet but if you assume it was hacked, and if the hacker also obstructed an investigation, etc etc… then it is similar. OTOH it may be that one of the scientists involved got a guilty conscience about the shabby level of work and decided to cough up the info. Then it is different. 

So, do you support someone being jailed for 50 years for a political embarrassment committed against a woman who ought to be embarrassed every time she opens who her mouth?

Thats a good question. But lets start at the beginning and not with hysterics.

I support the guy going to trial. Do you?

The “50 years” stuff which everyone here focuses on and runs with is just Truthdig hoopla.

50 years is the summation if maximum penalties are given on each charge. No one here really thinks that he will get 50 years. Unless you guys know something I dont. Like maybe in the past he has killed people or robbed stores at gunpoint…

You know he might not do any jail time at all. Except obstructing an investigation by the FBI might carry not only a big maximum sentence, but also some sort of minimum sentence. Assuming he did it and is also found guilty, he might actually do jail time because of that.

Finally, if he was an operative working for someone else, like a Watergate ‘plumber’ working for a political committee, then the threat of jail time is a good thing. Or do you think it is best to let him off in order to protect whoever is pulling the strings?

I amswered your questions, Cybernaught. So please answer mine.

This guy might get 50 years for hacking into Palin’s email and yet we have criminals like Bush, Chaney, and Rumsfield who lied us into a war that has killed 10s of thousands and cost us 100s of billions of dollars and they they walk though life without a care.  Something’s wrong here.

diamond said: The rules? Don’t make me laugh, Ozark Michael.

This is the liberal’s dilemma. You want to complain that rules are broken and yet you want free reign to break the rules yourself.

Truthdig did not uphold civil liberties when Sarah Palin’ email was hacked, instead they published a link to it at the time and today they do their best to accuse her of wrong doing in the matter. And the itty bitty bird-brains like diamond just chirp along in chorus.

Inherit the Wind is right. And he was right 2 years ago when he posted his initial response:

Still, if you stand for civil liberties and believe in civil liberties and recognize that people DIED to protect them, you can’t simply throw them away to get at the other guy (or gal) even if she would do it in a New York minute.  If you do, those liberties are meaningless.

So in contrast to diamond and most Truthdiggers, who consistantly cheer the trampling of civil liberties when it happens to their political opponents, we have ITW, who is very consistant as he upholds civil liberties.

We also have Leefeller from way back when, who responded to ITW’s “I am bothered by the hacking.”

with his own: Actually happens to me too! Every time I here Palin’s voice, my throat feels like I swallowed a toothpick and go into hairball mode.

eheheh. That was a golden oldie, Leefeller. And you havent changed a bit.

quotes from http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/20080917_palins_hacked_e_mail_disappoints/

The rules? Don’t make me laugh, Ozark Michael. George Jackson stole $70 from a gas station and got one year to life. After ten years they charged him with murdering a guard, which carried the death penalty. Pardon me for DISSENTING but why was he in jail for ten years for stealing $70? Well we all know, don’t we? He was poor and he was a young black man and it’s always open season on them. Since the seventies it’s only gotten worse. Goldman Sachs has stolen billions and cheated ordinary people out of their houses and their life savings in the process and look at the fuss because Obama wants to charge them with their crime. And put your hand up anyone who thinks any one of those crooked bastards will ever see the inside of a cell. The whole concept of a justice system in the US is a joke. There is no justice: if there was Dick Cheney and his gang would have been given the sentence George Jackson got, for their cold blooded murder of 1,000,000 Iraqis and 3,000 Americans and no one knows how many Afghanis.

He deserved 50 years someone from his kindergarden class did meth.

Sorry, I may be a liberal but I don’t think this guy should walk away scot-free.

I detest Sarah Palin and think she’s a danger to the nation. But so is “ends-justify-means” law-breaking to “get” Palin.

Do I think he did the damage she says? Of course not! Do I think Palin is vindictive? Obviously. 
Should this clown get 50 years? No f’in way. 

If the judge has any brains, he’ll get 1-2 years, and suspend the sentence with the caveat that if he does it again, he must serve the entire sentence in the clink.

When killers get out in less time letting the sentence fit the crime needs to be followed.

Email is about as private as a postcard.  Would you be surprised if someone read your postcard before it got to its destination?

The difference is that unlike a postcard, an email leaves a copy of itself on every server along the way.

What David Kernell did was not a crime but a service. He didn’t steal or destroy anything but he did call attention to the vulnerability of technology and the foolishness of people.

Any elected official, be it Palin or Cheney, stupid enough to use their personal unencripted email to conduct state or even campaign business is not fit for public office.

Thank you David Kernell for your service.

diamond said:  Sometimes people of conscience break the rules the way that black lady did when she refused to sit at the back of the bus. Kernell is a dissident, not a criminal.

The black lady broke a rule that was unjust. A rule that needed to abolished.

You are saying that the rules Kernall broke are unjust and need to be abolished.

Please explain this to me, diamond.

I will consider this law just when Dick ‘anthrax’ Cheney and the foot soldiers at the CIA bio warfare lab get 50 years for actually killing people with weaponised anthrax. Palin makes me want to vomit and she’s so incredibly stupid I hardly think her emails would be worth a pinch of shit.

“Well come on Leroy let’s go out and shoot us some moose. Whatdya say? I’m a hankering after a moose steak right now and my trigger finger’s so golldarn itchy I caint stand it”.

Why bother? She was never going to be president anyway, because even the American voting public draws the line at outright dumbness and out and out fascism however much Fox News rams this cretin down their throats. You should all bear in mind that Daniel Ellsberg could have gone to jail for life for revealing that the Pentagon knew the war in Vietnam was unwinnable for years but kept the knowledge ‘Top Secret’. Sometimes people of conscience break the rules the way that black lady did when she refused to sit at the back of the bus. Kernell is a dissident, not a criminal.

Maximum of 50 years, total…  and recalling the various things he did, “identity theft” , “wire fraud”, and especially “interfering with the FBI’s investigation” is what attaches the most years to his sentence.

“entering Palin’s e-mail without permission” was a comparatively minor charge.

Also, I would like to turn the tables and ask if someone did this to YOUR presidential or vice presidential candidate during the height of the political campaign, how would you feel? What would you suspect?

And wouldnt it be a good thing to threaten the criminal with long hard time in prison just to get him to cough up names of anyone who paid/put him up to it?

“David Kernell is charged with identity theft, wire fraud, entering Palin’s e-mail without permission and interfering with the FBI’s investigation.”

It sounds to me he could be a full-time employee of the CIA, some other enforcement agency of government or some financial corporation on Wall Street. It’s my belief that all of these and more use any and all of these tactics on a daily basis against unsuspecting private citizens.

Amazing, isn’t it? A government agency is immune from any effective prosecution whenever it tramples all over a citizen’s rights, but God help a private citizen that does it. Talk about a double standard!

This young fella probably thought, as I do, that Palin is some kind of sick joke and not worthy of serious consideration for any responsible role in public life. However, even if both are true, it doesn’t give him the right to trespass on her right to privacy.

On the other hand, anyone who considers their online communications - email or otherwise - as confidential and inviolable is a complete fool. Every letter you or I type is recorded somewhere just waiting for some ambitious functionary with little else constructive to do to make your life miserable trying to make a mountain out of a molehill.

As I’ve always thought: One half of us is here only to irritate the other half.

Seriously?  50 years for hacking into an e-mail account?  And Palin didn’t say “This young was obviously misguided and deserves to be punished, but 50 years is too extreme”?  Does she really believe that breaking into her e-mail account is a worse offense than supporting the torture of enemy combatants?  What a sad, small person.

Government does this to many every day.

Whats the big deal?

Serial hacker & public nuisance D. Kernell should be hit with the maximum penalty for the pain & suffering he has caused the Palin family.

st.sarah palin deserves the same protection from surveillance that we all have… zero. and better believe that she would back the unconstitutional super-spying started by bush, protected and continued by obamabush.

50 years for this? i mean really, for hacking into emails? murderers often get out in 10. punishment should be no more severe than the actual damages and suffering of the victim; so maybe a week in jail would be called for here.

i guess if this guy were black, he’d be sent up the river for 100 years without parole…

To make matters more ridiculous, the courtroom on Friday saw Sarah Palin spend 45 minutes in the witness box..

To Truthdig, i guess it is awful. Palin actually got to testify in a court hearing that was about how someone hacked into her email account and the effect that had on her. In Truthdigland, Palin has no rights.

Typical liberal bias.