Members of the Katie and Alex campaign who allegedly hacked in to vice presidential candidate Lamar Wise’s Gmail account and Sam Dotters-Katz’s Yes campaign Gmail account could be in more trouble than initially thought.
In a grievance filed against members of the Katie and Alex campaign, a website that mirrored the Gmail sign-in page was sent to other campaigns asking them to sync up calendars with other campaign managers for integration. The phishing site — a site made to trick people into typing in their usernames and passwords in order to gain access to their real accounts — then gave the suspected campaign and members access to an online document that contained all of the collected phone numbers that the Ben and Lamar campaign had gathered.
“It seems like a college prank,” @@it’s not@@said Jack Orchard, a lawyer at Ball Janik LLP@@http://www.balljanik.com/bio-detail/orchard-jack-l@@ and a University alumnus. “But a prank that could have serious implications.”
According to ORS 164.337@@https://parking.uoregon.edu/content/disclaimers@@, any person who commits a computer crime and knowingly accesses a computer with the purpose of committing theft, including theft of proprietary information — such as the phone list that was allegedly stolen from Lamar Wise — or who knowingly alters or damages documents or data contained in a computer, commits a class C felony.
A person who knowingly accesses a computer or computer data without authorization commits a class A misdemeanor.
Journalism professor Kyu Youm@@http://directory.uoregon.edu/telecom/directory.jsp?p=findpeople%2Ffind_results&m=staff&d=person&b=name&s=Youm@@ — who specializes in communication law — believes that the case could involve more than just computer crimes.
“To me, it seems like this case could have to do with identity theft,” Youm said. “When dealing with emails, it’s a personal account with personal information. That could be seen as identity theft to people.”
Youm related it to the 2008 case of David Kernell,@@http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Constitutionguard/Constitutional_Challenges_of_David_Kernell_Case@@ who hacked the email account of Sarah Palin, who at the time was the vice presidential candidate for the Republican Party. The jury was unable to come up with a decision on Kernell’s possible identity theft. Kernell was sentenced to one year and one day in federal prison with three years of probation.
Developments have yet to be made with the grievances against the members of the Katie and Alex campaign.