The 20-year-old son of Democratic Tennessee state representative Mike Kernell was indicted for accessing without authorization Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s Yahoo! Web mail account and his trial is scheduled to begin on December 16. If convicted, David Kernell faces up to five years in jail and a maximum fine of $250,000.

Kernell's attorney, Wade Davies, explained that as soon as they found out the charges, David voluntarily turned himself in. He refused to answer any other questions for now.

The 20-year-old student from the University of Tennessee was indicted by a federal grand jury under the accusation that he broke into Palin’s e-mail. It all happened on September 16, when Kernell managed to guess all the answers demanded by Yahoo’s verification process and was able to change the account’s password. Once he was in, he read the messages then posted screenshots of the inbox and also the new password on a popular Web page called 4chan.org, offering access to others. He detailed the password change process, explaining each of the steps taken. He used Google and Wikipedia to get the needed info for the first questions, typing in her birthday and zip code. The second step of the verification demanded an answer to the question "where did you meet your spouse?" He had to search the Web a little bit harder for this one, but eventually found out that they met in high school and after a few attempts with variations of the answer, typed in the winner - "Wasilla high." Once that was taken care of, he changed the password to "popcorn" and began his "investigation."

On the same online community page, he explained his actions, saying that he was searching for any sort of material that would prove efficient in ruining her campaign but admitted that there was nothing of such value in the messages, as he only came across personal texts and family photos.

For now, he is released under a series of restrictions and was ordered to return to court on December 2. Until the start of the trial he is banned from owning a computer; he must not be provided with full Internet access; he must not contact Gov. Sarah Palin or any member of her family and cannot travel outside eastern Tennessee without the approval of his probation officer.

Sarah Palin’s spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt referred to the hack as "deeply troubling," and released a statement saying that "We are certain that the proper authorities will pursue justice and send a clear signal to reassure all Americans that their personal e-mail accounts cannot be hacked into with impunity." There have been many issues raised even before this incident about Palin’s actions of handling official matters through her unsecure personal e-mail and the hack added more fuel to the fire. One of the conclusions reached is that there is a general need for a better online security and also that official matters, no matter their domain, must be dealt with at all times through secure accounts.