The federal authorities formally filed new felony charges against the hacker that illegally accessed the Yahoo e-mail account of the Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, on Monday.

David Kernell, the University of Tennessee college student, who was previously charged with a single felony count of illegally breaking into a protected computer to access the Yahoo e-mail account of Sarah Palin five months ago, was arraigned in U. S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee. Under the new charges, Kernell was accused of four felonies including three counts of computer fraud and one count of obstruction of justice.

According to court records, David Kernell pleaded not guilty to the new charges, which include fraud, illegal electronic transmission of material outside Tennessee and attempts to hide records to hinder an FBI investigation.

However, Wade Davies, Kernell's attorney and Gregory Weddle, the assistant U. S. attorney working on the case, declined to comment on the new charges leveled against David Kernell.

According to prosecutors, last year during the presidential race, David Kernell, the son of Mike Kernell, a Democratic state representative from Memphis, hacked Palin's gov.palin@yahoo.com account and reset the password for the account. He stole the information from Palin's account and posted the info at an online bulletin board at 4chan. org. He also posted the reset password to Palin's account that was accessed by at least one other person using the reset password. Kernell posted Palin's e-mail messages on the Wikileaks. org Web site on Sept. 17. The FBI agents nabbed Kernell linking him with the anonymous hacker named Rubico who had first posted the Palin data. Rubico's attack was aimed to "derail" Palin's vice-presidential campaign.

The FBI officials reported that the new charges came against David Kernell, after he deleted records on his laptop computer intending to hide his tracks. The prosecutors reported that David Kernell trial is set to begin on Oct. 27.