FBI Closes in on Alleged Palin Hacker

The feds are zeroing in on David Kernell, the suspected hacker of GOP veep nominee's Yahoo email account:

The FBI searched the residence of the son of a Democratic state lawmaker in Tennessee over the weekend looking for evidence linking the young man to the hacking of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's personal e-mail account, two law enforcement officials told The Associated Press on Monday.

David Kernell, 20, has not returned repeated phone calls or e-mails from the AP since last week. He is the son of state Rep. Mike Kernell, a Memphis Democrat and chairman of Tennessee's House Government Operations Committee. The father declined last week to discuss the possibility his son might be involved in the case.

"I had nothing to do with it, I had no knowledge or anything," Mike Kernell told the AP. "I was not a party to anything of this nature at all," he said. "I wasn't in on this — and I wouldn't know how to do anything like that." [...]

Experts said the hacker apparently left an easy trail for investigators.

"He might as well have taken a picture of his house and uploaded it," said Ken Pfeil, an Internet security expert. "He should have just set up a big beacon that said, 'Here's my house,' or confessed. If they can't catch this guy based on all the information posted on the Web then all bets are off."

For details on the hacking of Sarah Palin's email, please refer to my earlier post.