Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you a lawyer by chance? I seem to remember cases or interpretations of the CFAA in which even guessing the username password combo of "admin:admin" would violate the act, resulting in teenagers or children being caught up in cYbEr FrAuD
If those teenagers or children enter someone's house and vandalize or steal because the door (or window) isn't locked, is it no big deal?
If I walk into your house, take a picture of your financial documents, that's not theft. That's still (potentially:) breaking and entering, trespassing, and depending on what I do with those pictures also fraud, but it's not theft.
This is all semantics of course, but I just really dislike the idea that digital data can be "stolen".
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But also: No one deserves to get their things broken into, but if you expose things to the internet without proper security, you can't cry too much if you get broken into I think. It's not okay (and possibly illegal? idk) for me to read other patients' medical records if they're in open display when I go to the doctor's office, but they also have an obligation to secure this information.
I do like the approach of "Mens rea" / "Guilty mind" overall, to differentiate of children/teenagers fucking around (ofc depends on the extent of what they do), white hat researchers finding vulnerabilities (should not be criminalized), and black hat people doing things with criminal intent.