We tend to think that's bad and an incorrect definition of cracking that should be overturned around here, right?

> the conviction was vacated by a higher court

> While the judges did not address the substantive question on the legality of the site access, they were skeptical of the original conviction, noting that no circumvention of passwords had occurred and that only publicly accessible information was obtained.

I don't know how it works "over there", but where I'm from "URL-hacking" is not considered hacking, but data publicly available.

...and you are 100% sure that if this got before a court, the decision would go your way?

No, I am not a lawyer.

I did some reasearch though, and indeed there seems to be an untried case where, if it is obvious that the owner of the data wants to keep it secret, it isn't okay. It is in danish so you'll likely need som google translate or somesuch, search for URL hacking: https://projekter.aau.dk/projekter/files/305754822/Speciale_...

But as a rule, it is on par with an email sent to a wrong recipient. https://www.version2.dk/artikel/lovraad-slaar-fast-url-hacki...

I’m assuming, but the USA then. What country is that?

Denmark.

It is considered on par with an email sent to a wrong recipient. There might be an exception though, but it is untried in the courts, AFAIK.

...and publishing the personal data they got their hands on this way ("In revealing the flaw to the media, the group also exposed personal data from over 100,000 people")

It was a bit more than that. The attack was against AT&T, there was zero public interest in the information from a whistleblower perspective, the victims were customers of AT&T, a telecommunications provider.

Dumping the contents of a far-right website that helped push for Insurrection against the US Government seems pretty tame by comparison.

Also, Weev is open and proudly a Nazi, so the optics of bringing him up while defending the rights of a Fascist website isn't great.

>The attack was against AT&T, there was zero public interest in the information from a whistleblower perspective, the victims were customers of AT&T, a telecommunications provider.

You think there's "zero public interest" in knowing that a large US corporation, with private information about a significant fraction of the American public, has neglected their obligations to protect that private information? And that they've ignored all pleas to treat the vulnerability with the seriousness it deserves?

>Also, Weev is open and proudly a Nazi, so the optics of bringing him up while defending the rights of a Fascist website isn't great.

How are his political leanings relevant to the question of whether accessing this data would constitute a crime?