> The only question is how they apply to the law and whether or not they raise to the level of a crime.

It was a fairly unique and novel application of those laws and some of the charges depended on making arguments about what the intent was with the data. There absolutely was a great deal of prosecutorial discretion and even imagination in coming up with those charges. We will never know if which of those would have stuck.

> the profile of someone ripe for heavy handed prosecution.

It was most certainly a political prosecution.