It's worth reading the criminal complaint and indictment (https://www.eff.org/cases/us-v-auernheimer) to get some background. In particular: the discussions of using the email addresses for a phishing scheme, using them for spam, shorting AT&T stock and profiting off the data release, setting up WiFi routers so they can blame it on a third party, discussing how this was a federal crime, and how to spin themselves as a legitimate security organization. These things make it really hard to view weev as a genuine security researcher who was prosecuted for no good reason.