Comment by smsm42

That's what jury instructions are for. The judge can instruct the jury to ignore pretty much any facts and consider any subset of what really happened that they want. So they'd just instruct "did they access the system? Were they authorized? If the answer to the first question is yes, and to the second is no, the verdict is guilty, ignore all the rest". The jury won't be from the HN crowd, it would be random people who don't know anything about CFAA or computer systems, it will be the easiest thing in the world to convict. Those guys got so lucky DHS exhibited unusually sensible behavior, they could have ruined their lives.