Palin Email Hacker to Serve Time in Kentucky Low-security Prison Camp

Palin Email Hacker to Serve Time in Kentucky Low-security Prison Camp - Despite being told he might be spared from jail, 23-year-old David C. Kernell, who was found guilty last year of hacking into Sarah Palin’s email during the 2008 presidential campaign, has ended up in federal prison, the BBC reported.

Officials confirmed that Kernell reported Jan. 10 to begin serving his time at a federal corrections institute in Ashland, Ky.

BBC said that is not the situation his friends and family had hoped for: During a hearing in November, Judge Thomas Phillips said Kernell’s sentence of 366 days should be served at a halfway house to reflect the case’s “unique circumstances”.

The U.S. Bureau of Prisons, however, had a different opinion and decided to make Kernell serve out his term in the low-security prison camp nearly 300 miles from his home in Knoxville, Tenn.

The move comes more than two years after the email intrusion occurred. Using the online pseudonym “rubico,” Kernell answered a series of security questions that gave him access to Palin’s private email account. He then shared some of her email communications with websites such as WikiLeaks.

At the time of the trial, Kernell’s attorneys argued there have been similar court cases where people have been sentenced to probation. What Kernell did was closer to a prank than a crime, they said.