Sarah Palin's hacker son of a Democrat

19 September 2008 @ 05:50 pm EDT

The hacker is David Kernell, the 20-year old son of Mike Kernell, a Democrat and elected state representative in Tennessee, according to Nashville's largest newspaper, the Tennessean.

He broke into her email, revealing inconsequential personal messages and official emails received since presidential candidate John McCain selected her as his running mate.

"This is a shocking invasion of the governor's privacy and a violation of law," the McCain campaign responded in a written statement. "The matter has been turned over to the appropriate authorities and we hope that anyone in possession of these e-mails will destroy them."

Kernell obtained access to the Alaska governor's personal gov.palin@yahoo.com e-mail address this week after successfully navigating through Yahoo's password reset process.

The Secret Service contacted The Associated Press, which obtained documents, and asked for copies of the leaked emails which circulated widely on the internet. However, AP failed to comply. Screen shots of the emails and photos that were in her email account have been posted up on gawker.com

The disclosure raises new questions about the propriety of the Palin administration's use of non-government email accounts to conduct state business.

This article is copyrighted by International Business Times.

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