If I maintained a large sercuity network or somthing and I was hacked, I wouldn't neccesairly file charges aganist the hacker, i'd talk to the hacker, i'd be like hey lets turn this around for you I give you 250,000 you sign this contract, and you will fix all entry points you used to get into my system. I honsetly don't think the gov. should throw everything they got at this man. Its not like he hacked it to shut it down he just wanted to read, granted senstive material but the way he did it... It was so simple, and easy for him he doesn't sound like a hardcore terroist, hes unemployed instead of giving hm a prison setence and feeding him give him a job! He obviously knew more then what the government sercuirty offical did.
And frankly he already knows a lot of information, jailing him, and making him upset doesn't sound like the wisest idea. Give him a nice fat juciy paycheck that'd shut me up more then prison. In fact if he really thought this out he'd of given the information to other poeple and told them when he went to prison to lunch the files on a mass media network like a huge bitorrent community! OMG that'd be a pain to clean wouldn't it
I know i'd simply tell the judge, jail me, the information that I know will be in not in the hands of a few, but avaible to billions of poeple, let me go, and it goes no where your choice
He has a huge leverage and if he plays it right he can scare the gov out of it. Personnally i'd rather give a man a paycheck nstead of having to find all the files and delete them. Because well, terrioists would be on top of thos efiles like fire on oil.