Police investigators do this all the time. Catch a thief. Start going through your unsolved burglaries to see if any others can be tied to him. It's done every day & it's considered legit. But the MSM expects that the public won't see it that way because they've poisoned the political air where Palin is concerned.
They'll find stuff where she's directing someone to check in the records to find out some FACT about someone and they'll call that "prying into private records" or something.