He was authorized to read that data. He was not authorized to freely access the server the data was stored on, or to extract the credentials from the software.

He was authorized to read that data. He was not authorized to freely access the server the data was stored on, or to extract the credentials from the software. This is an obvious difference that matters. I can't break into an AWS data center to access my data, even if I they didn't have any security and I knew exactly where my data is stored. Not because I could be seeing other people's data but because I'd be trespassing.