You steal my personal data, sell it to someone else who uses that data to commit crimes, you are a dangerous person.
When Google and Facebook do this for a profit, hide the data collection behind an EULA, and then sell your personal data to third parties, they are called geniuses and made billionaires.
Furthermore, the individual in question did not seek to make a profit. You can disagree with his methods, but back when the scales of justice were still capable of measuring anything at all, these sort of considerations were commonly implemented.
Stop trying to make excuses when people commit crimes. They're a criminal, pure and simple.
In 1750: "Stop making excuses for those who commit treason against the King. They are criminals, pure and simple."
In 1850: "Stop making excuses for those people who steal slaves under the guise of making them free. They are criminals, pure and simple."
In 1950: "Stop making excuses for those people who participate in race riots. They are criminals, pure and simple."
Legitimate power and systems of law do not justify themselves without some reasoning. So can you tell me why people who commit physical assaults, armed robberies, and sexual assaults should see less jail time that someone who made a copy of an email archive to try and expose overreach of our privatized military economy?
How is putting this individual in prison going to
1) repair the damage they are accused of
2) improve society at large
3) cost effectively return them to society
Questions 1-3 are routinely ignored because the American incarceration system is not designed to help American society. It causes more harm than good, has shoved millions of people into a cycle of poverty and violence that few escape from, and the costs (upwards of 60-100k per prisoner per year) to perpetuate the broken system are far more than simpler, more humane justice systems found throughout the industrialized world.
This is not 1600. America is not a puritan state. Keep your dead ideas about corporal punishment in the distant past where they belong.