This week, Sarah Palin’s Yahoo! account gov.palin@yahoo.com was broken into, after hackers who remain unidentified managed to find the answer to her “Where did you meet your spouse?” security question by browsing the web for the information.

Although a college student who calls himself “Rubico” claims to have been behind the hacking, FBI agents, who are investigating the case alongside the United States Secret Service, have yet to reveal any details on whether they have tracked down the hackers.

Nevertheless, even if the feds find them, they might be able to avoid prosecution due to a Department of Justice loophole.

The federal Stored Communication Act prohibits unauthorized access of a person’s wire or electronic communication while the latter is in electronic storage. The law applies to both read or unopened e-mails.

Despite this, the DOJ defines „electronic storage” as referring only to communication that has not yet been accessed by the recipient, stating that once an e-mail is read, the copy the recipient chooses to retain is not in electronic storage any more. Since at the moment, there is no evidence showing that the hackers accessed unopened messages in Palin’s e-mail, they could be held accountable only for illegally gaining access to the Republican’s account.

According to Andrew Grossman, a senior legal policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, the punishment for re-setting the password to Palin’s account and posting screenshots of her inbox and address book to the Wikileaks Web site consists of criminal fines and also up to five years in prison.