An interesting discussion is happening on the Volokh Conspiracy blog. The indictment against the college student who broke into Sarah Palin’s email charges him with a felony. The prosecutor, in order to get the charges up to the felony level, must claim that the break-in occurred in furtherance of some other tortuous or criminal act. Perhaps they mean that he posted the new password so others could also view Palin’s emails — that he was enabling other violations of the same statute. It isn’t at all clear, and some of the lawyers who are commenting wonder if the argument isn’t circular and the indictment flawed. That would go with the view I mentioned earlier that the crime was a misdemeanor at worst.

You can download the indictment here. It is easy to read, if not to interpret.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 9th, 2008 at 7:59 am and is filed under Security, The role of government—laws and regulations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.