Over a year ago ‘The Weev’ was convicted of a what was called ‘hacking’ when he exposed email addresses carelessly made available by AT&T. At the time, it was described as being convicted for embassarassing AT&T.
http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/11/weev-is-free/
This conviction was finally overturned on a venue technicality by a federal appeals court. In the decision, the appeals court openly challenges the hacking basis for the conviction. According to the article author:
The argument is concrete enough that it makes you wonder how the lower court managed to come to its decision in good faith.
Agreed.