I'm not sure anyone really understands how the law works when it comes to bug bounty programs and legal retaliation by companies. Is there any case law precedent yet?
In most cases where the opposing parties are one large publicly-traded company and one small company or individual, the law works like this:
* little guy offends large company, usually through some totally well-meaning and innocent activity that, if illegal at all, is only so due to obscure, obsolete, and/or obtuse laws
* large company unleashes unholy wrath of $1000/hr law firm on little guy threatening to destroy little guy's world if he doesn't immediately comply with all demands
* lawyers laugh at the plight of little guy and say it doesn't matter what he thinks because he can't afford to oppose large company
* little guy is forced to comply no matter how absurd large company's demands are, because only other large companies can oppose large company in court
* should the large company feel inclined to sue the little guy even after he acquiesced to their ridiculous demands, little guy loses all of his possessions in his attempt to pay legal fees. little guy will run out of money before the case wraps, resulting in him getting saddled with a judgment for massive personal liability (cf. Power Ventures)
* large company is free to make the same infractions whenever they feel it's appropriate to do so, because what are you gonna do, sue them? (cf. practically every company who has ever brought a CFAA claim; Google's whole business is violating the CFAA, as well as various copyright laws)
* bonus points: large company has friends in the prosecutor's office and gets the little guy brought up on life-destroying criminal charges (cf. Aaron Swartz). if the case makes it to trial, little guy spends time in jail (cf. weev)
Total aside: I have a startup idea to throw a wrench into your accurate depiction of how things currently play out: little guy hires full time lawyer from large pool of unemployed lawyers, suddenly has legal counsel at reasonable (relative) price for extended time. Suddenly little guy has more of a fighting chance to fight back against lawsuit, instead of having to pay out his counsel at $1,000/hr. (He can add a full time yearly lawyer at the clip of every 2 weeks of his adversary's costs)
I'm not sure in this case, that's true. But whether or not this was illegal I generally support skirting laws if it makes everyone else more secure. To that end, I also support Snowden.
