The Volokh Conspiracy - Palin's Yahoo E-mail Account Hacked, Contents Posted Online:

Fox News reports:

  In the latest of a series of invasions into Sarah Palin's personal life, hackers have broken into the Republican vice presidential candidate's private e-mail account, and a widely read Web site has published screen grabs from it.
  An article Wednesday in Gawker.com posts family photos and snapshots of e-mail exchanges the Alaska governor had with colleagues. Gawker says the-email account has since been shut down, but it will leave the images up on its site for all to see.
  "Here are the screenshots of the emails saved before the account went dark, along with the contact list. It's newsworthy and we will not be taking it down!" the site declares.

Gawker has posted the contents in several individual posts; here is the most recent.

UPDATE: The FBI and Secret Service are conducting a joint investigation. The easiest crime to prove here is 18 U.S.C. 1030(a)(2)(C), accessing a protected computer without authorization to obtain information, with the possibility of felony liability under 18 U.S.C. 1030(c)(2)(B)(ii)-(iii) and also the possibility of felony liability under 18 U.S.C. 1030(a)(4). As with most computer crime cases, the real trick will be finding the bad guy rather than finding a charge.

ANOTHER UPDATE: In the comment thread, J. Aldridge writes:

Since Gawker is fully aware this information was obtained illegally they are looking at some serious charges.

Well, it's a free country, so anyone can look. But I don't think Gawker is criminally liable for posting the information. While it's unseemly and perhaps rather nasty to post it, it's normally not a crime to post evidence that was obtained as a fruit of crime. There is no claim that the information was obtained in violation of the Wiretap Act, 18 U.S.C. 2511, which might trigger a prohibition on disclosing illegally intercepted materials. The contents here were stored, not in transit, and thus the Wiretap Act's disclosure limitations don't apply. See, e.g., United States v. Steiger, 318 F.3d 1039 (11th Cir. 2003). Further, even if a statute did prohibit such a disclosure — and again, I don't know of such a statute — publishing it is likely protected by the First Amendment under Bartnicki v. Vopper, 532 U.S. 514 (2001), assuming that Gawker was not involved in the hack.

	[Orin Kerr, September 17, 2008 at 10:16pm] Trackbacks Palin's Yahoo E-mail Account Hacked, Contents Posted Online: Fox News reports: In the latest of a series of invasions into Sarah Palin's personal life, hackers have broken into the Republican vice presidential candidate's private e-mail account, and a widely read Web site has published screen grabs from it. An article Wednesday in Gawker.com posts family photos and snapshots of e-mail exchanges the Alaska governor had with colleagues. Gawker says the-email account has since been shut down, but it will leave the images up on its site for all to see. "Here are the screenshots of the emails saved before the account went dark, along with the contact list. It's newsworthy and we will not be taking it down!" the site declares. Gawker has posted the contents in several individual posts; here is the most recent. UPDATE: The FBI and Secret Service are conducting a joint investigation. The easiest crime to prove here is 18 U.S.C. 1030(a)(2)(C), accessing a protected computer without authorization to obtain information, with the possibility of felony liability under 18 U.S.C. 1030(c)(2)(B)(ii)-(iii) and also the possibility of felony liability under 18 U.S.C. 1030(a)(4). As with most computer crime cases, the real trick will be finding the bad guy rather than finding a charge. ANOTHER UPDATE: In the comment thread, J. Aldridge writes: Since Gawker is fully aware this information was obtained illegally they are looking at some serious charges. Well, it's a free country, so anyone can look. But I don't think Gawker is criminally liable for posting the information. While it's unseemly and perhaps rather nasty to post it, it's normally not a crime to post evidence that was obtained as a fruit of crime. There is no claim that the information was obtained in violation of the Wiretap Act, 18 U.S.C. 2511, which might trigger a prohibition on disclosing illegally intercepted materials. The contents here were stored, not in transit, and thus the Wiretap Act's disclosure limitations don't apply. See, e.g., United States v. Steiger, 318 F.3d 1039 (11th Cir. 2003). Further, even if a statute did prohibit such a disclosure — and again, I don't know of such a statute — publishing it is likely protected by the First Amendment under Bartnicki v. Vopper, 532 U.S. 514 (2001), assuming that Gawker was not involved in the hack.