I don't care about punishing the kid because it was so ingenious of him. Had he actually defeated her security through hacking, that would be a different story. I find this whole story such a ridiculous sideshow to the campaign - what other public official but Palin would have the place she met her husband as her password hint?
I haven't been able to determine what crime, if any, he could be charged with, and the news articles are rather vague on the matter. If it had been her mailbox at the state capitol, or the one beside her driveway at home, then things would be more clear (mail fraud having granted us a rather well-developed body of case law). Does anyone know?
Ask former Philadelphia anchorman Larry Mendte whether hacking someone's e-mail is a federal crime. Hint: it is.
No question, hacking someone's email is a federal crime if it occurs across state lines.
That having been said, sending personal emails from work is generally a borderline area because employees lose the protection of a "reasonable expectation of privacy" to some degree when they are using corporate email servers. Personally, I only send one personal email a day to my wife, knowing that I do not have expectations of privacy, and also knowing that I am violating company policies related to personal emails.
This having been said, because I am not abusing company policies by spending only 1-2 minutes per day of non-work time, so this is a non-issue.... if I sent over 1000 personal emails from work in a two year period there would be a serious chance that IT would flag me for abusing the system. In which case I can guarantee you, I would not be afforded any legal protections.
