Yeah, you can't hack into websites to pursue stories about corporate misdeeds, any more than you could break into a company's office and rifle through the files. This is silly.

What if I team up with another journalist, and I tell them about curl commands to run but never tell them that they're exploiting vulnerabilities in the company's website? That way they don't have the necessary intent and I never perform any illegal acts?

Do you think the judge would fall for it? Or would we have done a RICO?

The question is at what point is it considered "hacking"? There is evidence of corporate misdeeds on the company's computers. Under what circumstances can a journalist view it? At no point would the guilty company want them to for obvious reasons, but if the answer is thereby "never" that seems like a major flaw in the law. Whereas if it isn't never then when is it, and why?

Or to extend your analogy, where's the computer equivalent of an investigative reporter getting let inside under a pretense so they can snoop around wearing a guest badge instead prying open the back door with a crowbar?