Yeah, because breaking the law in and of itself is never justifiable, right? As far as lives go, you'd have to offset the number of denied 911 calls that would've saved someone against the number of accidents he prevented by denying cellnet access to all those childadult accidents-waiting-to-happen. Really, it goes either way, and I'll bet the difference he made either way was negligible.
As far as critical infrastructure goes, it should be hardwired, with RF as an emergency fallback. It seems everyone, including emergency responders, politicians, and, apparently, even some technophiles here, need to realize these things are radios first, computers second, and phones/cameras/whatever a distant last. If it's important, hardwire it. If it's important and sensitive, hardwire and crypt it. If you cant hardwire it, then plan the necessary contingencies for when service is denied. Radio is not a guaranteed service. Deal with it. Frankly, the fact that so much already depends on the shitty, overpriced cell nets concerns me more than some guy with too much time on his hands. The fact he was able to do it should be a wake up call, but of course it won't. It'll just result in harsher penalties from lawyer-politicians who think the law defines reality. Meanwhile, the technologies deployed won't change one iota.
The fact that a service cannot be guaranteed does not give someone the right to sabotage it. Everything we depend on in society depends in part on society agreeing that we behave in certain ways, including not sabotaging services that we depend on as society. This is why we don't allow people to pollute rivers unnecessarily, we don't allow people to fly their aircraft without agreeing to obey the instructions of air traffic control etc.
There was a time when hard-line services would not have been considered essential - when just two people had telephones for example, and quite possibly for a long time after that. That changes when people began to depend on them, and one could argue that people now depend on wireless services in the same way.
Hardwires can also be cut (see recent tornadoes) and wireless service may be a lot easier an quicker to restore in emergency situations.
70% (and now possibly more) of emergency calls are now done using wireless devices, so the argument that we should not depend on them is incredibly silly and shortsighted at best.