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David Kernell, best known for hacking into Sarah Palin's personal Yahoo account during the 2008 presidential campaign, has died from complications of multiple sclerosis. After being sentenced to a year in prison he got his life back on track, by most accounts. Kernell, 30, was a student at the University of Tennessee 10 years ago when he successfully guessed Palin's security answers, which allowed him to change the password and get access to the Yahoo account, the Memphis Commercial Appeal reported while confirming his death last week in California through family members.

...Now don’t weep for this weasel, he is connected as high as they can go. His father is Mike Kernell, a longtime Tennessee State Representative, and a democrat, of course. More importantly though, David, who is a student at the University of Tennessee appears to have ties to the highest levels of Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign...

KNOXVILLE - Federal court jurors reported today they have reached a verdict on three of four charges against former University of Tennessee student David C. Kernell, accused of illegally accessing the private e-mail account of 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. But they also reported they are deadlocked on the first count, a charge of identity theft. Without asking what their verdict is on the other counts, U.S. District Judge Thomas W. Phillips sent them back to the jury room to continue deliberating the first count. In their written communication to the judge this afternoon, the jurors said: "Some...

The son of a Democratic Tennessee state legislator surrendered to authorities in connection with the hacking of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's e-mail, the Justice Department said Wednesday.

The guy who hacked into would-be VP Sarah Palin’s Yahoo email account is none other than the son of a Democratic state representative from Tennessee, posits GatwayPundit. A convincing amount of evidence suggests the “hacker” (perhaps a status he doens’t deserve) is David Kernell, son of Tennessee representative Mike Kernell.

State Representative Mike Kernell, a Memphis Democrat, made a statement to the Tennessean in which he identified his son, David Kernell, as the hacker who broke in to vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s email address and posted screenshots of the contents on the internet. Mike Kernell represents District 93, which covers the University of Memphis, and parts of south-east Memphis. He told the Tennessean on Thursday that it was indeed his son David who, using the handle Rubico, posted the original screenshots of Governor Palin’s e-mail account after using Yahoo’s password recovery service and a bit of research to find out...

http://www.mikefrancesa.com/wordpress/?p=1212Mike Kernell, a longtime Tennessee state assemblyman from Memphis and a technology enthusiast, is concerned about future elections because the new machines are harder to get a look at. ”We used to be able to check the machines and see if they’d been tampered with,” he said. ”It is now almost impossible.” Mr. Kernell wonders whether he will have to hire a computer programmer in his next race to make sure the machines are working smoothly and haven’t been tampered with. ”We’ve hit a brick wall,” he said.

Cannot be posted due to copyright issues: http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/D4/20080918/NEWS01/80918041