In my opinion, when one unlawfully accesses a personal email account where there are passwords etc to other personal accounts (bank accounts etc), that could be at least construed as the intent to commit identity theft. If this guy went so far as to access one account, which he did, why not deduce that his intent was to also access other accounts with the information he found there? His goal was to cause damage, and there is no reason to think that he was going to stop with just one effort.
I don’t know if there were any of those details in Palin’s account, but the talk of pictures etc leads me to believe there may have been. And I also don’t know if the accused did see any passwords or personal information to other accounts. So just speculating along with the rest of the interested folks here.
“The crime of stealing someone’s personal, identifying information for the purpose of using that information fraudulently. Personal, identifying information includes: Social Security Numbers, credit card and banking account numbers, usernames, passwords, and patient records. Fraudulent uses for that information can often include: opening new credit accounts, taking out loans in the victim’s name, stealing money from financial accounts, or using available credit.”
Sounds like this fits to me...
In my opinion, when one unlawfully accesses a personal email account where there are passwords etc to other personal accounts (bank accounts etc), that could be at least construed as the intent to commit identity theft. If this guy went so far as to access one account, which he did, why not deduce that his intent was to also access other accounts with the information he found there? His goal was to cause damage, and there is no reason to think that he was going to stop with just one effort.