Either they think it is illegal or what is more likely is that anytime a sysadmin at a federal facility sees "atypical" behavior (as defined by them) they conta

Either they think it is illegal or what is more likely is that anytime a sysadmin at a federal facility sees "atypical" behavior (as defined by them) they contact the feds. It is very unlikely that a sysadmin in the federal court system would think about whether the crawling session overloading his server is legal, forget moral and I am sure if he/she complains, the FBI is obligated to investigate. I am not saying this is what should happen but this is what likely happened.