Jumping to Conclusions on the Identity of the Palin Email Hacker
On Wednesday, Michelle Malkin published the contents of a 4chan.org thread in which someone with the handle “rubico” and the email address “rubico10@yahoo.com described how he broke into Sarah Palin’s Yahoo email account. Within hours, Michelle’s readers had linked that email address to David Kernell, the 20-year-old son of democrat Mike Kernell, a Tennessee House Representative.
By this afternoon, the right side of the blogosphere was bubbling over with indictments of Kernell. Blog goers declared him guilty, and decreed jailhouse rape the only acceptable punishment. Reports that the feds in Memphis were investigating spawned even more excitement among bloggers.
But did David Kernell hack Sarah Palin’s email?
Perhaps. And maybe that statuesque blond chick you met online isn’t really a 67-year-old grandfather.
The answer is that we have no idea who we’re dealing with on the Internet. The “rubico” who posted on 4chan could be David Kernell or it could be his jilted ex-girlfriend or an unsupervised 12-year-old who randomly chose Kernell’s online identity to hide behind. We just don’t know.
One has to wonder why David Kernell would post his email address on the 4chan board where posting anonymously is expected, and even encouraged. Am I the only one surprised by that?
The speed and decisiveness with which the Internet mob concluded that David Kernell is the culprit in the hacking of Sarah Palin’s email makes me extremely uncomfortable. It’s entirely possible that he’s guilty, but at this point, the evidence is far from conclusive. One way or another, I hope he can aid in the investigation.
Now let’s wait and see what the feds have to say.
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