Everything I've read about him with the partial exception of some of his writing makes him seem like an ass. Being an ass shouldn't be criminal but some of the

Everything I've read about him with the partial exception of some of his writing makes him seem like an ass. Being an ass shouldn't be criminal but some of the things you list should be. Harassment and wasting police time are both offences in the UK although I've no idea about in the US (probably state dependent). DOS attacks may also be illegal and in my view are more serious than the action in this case. All that doesn't make accessing a sequence of URLs, joking about selling the resulting personal data, giving it to a journalist to expose the flaw and then deleting the data worthy of a long prison sentence (if any at all). If this offence gets a large penalty what room is there for someone who does sell the data from such a break for profit? There is also the risk that it sets a norm for this offence and the next person being threatened by a prosecutor hears about how this guy got 10 years for just crawling a sequence of URLs. My conclusion is that it is OK to hate this guy, think he deserves a long spell in prison but not to want this action to lead to a long sentence.