The legal consequences of hacking celebrity accounts

Today, the 20 year old college student who hacked Sarah Palin's Yahoo account on the 2008 election trail was given a sentence of 366 days in federal prison. Having a background in law, I can only assume such an egregious penalty was given as the result of his malicious nature - he admits he was looking for evidence to smear her image as she approached the presidential election as the republican VP candidate. however, I still feel the penalty is a bit much, as he did not actually do anything to her account; this is more than likely a federal judge's attempt at "making a statement" towards the hacker community.

the disconnect between the federal authorities and hacking subculture is not unheard of. frequently, the federal government's computer scientists/engineers who are trained to hack have neither the width nor depth of the hacking skills of the private community, which more often than not encompasses 16-24 white males. actually, in a rolling stone magazine a few years back, it was discussed that the feds send an agent/delegate every year to one of the major hacker conventions in Las Vegas in hopes of recruiting them to work for the government to bolster united states' computing security. this agent is usually rebuffed by the majority of attendees; the rolling stone article goes on to mention that the majority of the federal security agents are gathered by being arrested for an internet/hacking crime, and then, upon facing jail time, being offered to work for the federal government; thus, it's a bit of the "rock or a hard place" scenario for a member of one of the most anti-authoritative countercultures.

now, do i think this gentleman refused such an offer? probably not, as the article mentions that he guessed his way into the account. however, the vital component (at least, imo) was the fact that he posted the information on 4chan. for those who don't know, 4chan is a message board, frequented by hackers and their subculture. they have pulled off a variety of computer and software/information system-based pranks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4chan#Media_attention), some being hilarious and some being scarily informative of how much we rely on technology as a culture. as a matter of fact, this message board weilds so much power that the main poster and arguably the ringleader is a young man who goes by the handle of "Moot," who despite being unable to confirm his actual existence for a while, Time magazine placed him on the 2009 100 most important people list.

in the end, i think the sentence is disproportionately heavy for the crime, but the judge here is advocating a heavier penalty in order to design a public policy that encourages hackers to stay out of the digital private property of other individuals, especially when said individual is a high profile person and the hacking moves from disruptive to a dangerous nature. honestly, he will probably be let out early on good behavior; though i feel that our government, as well as any government, should have no ability to regulate the movement of things in the cybersphere - it was designed as an alternate universe, and there is no legitimate, encompassing legal framework to regulate its behavior, ergo government is intruding on our rights as private individuals.