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What if someone doesn't violate "whistleblower laws," but illegally accesses personal/private information in order to obtain the information to leak?

Like what if someone not affiliated with the company illegally hacked into Monsanto's servers in order to find information to then "whistleblow" on?

Ends, means, etc...

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To repeat: "as long as the whistleblowing otherwise aligns with universally accepted human values and ethics".

Does it complicate your scenario if the private information the whistleblower has illegally accessed was itself illegally accessed, as is the case in the Snowden situation? Doesn't it make the government's position ironically untenable, to want to prosecute someone for doing on a relatively small scale what they've been doing on a massive scale?

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