I am not a lawyer but this line of thinking does not make sense to me. First, poster did not post any personal information. Second, the poster responsibly disclosed the bug to Alaska Airlines but Alaska did not fix it. The poster is now publicly disclosing that the bug exists. Note that the poster did not include repo steps for the bug.
The bottom line is we need a mechanism to ensure security bugs are fixed. Publicly disclosing security bugs when an organization does not fix the bug is a good way to do this.
Note this practice started in the 1980s or early 1990s because software venders refused to fix security bugs. The full disclosure movement was created because security researchers wanted the bugs fix and publicly disclosing them was the only way to get some organizations to fix their security bugs.
Yeah, that’s all nice and all but it’s irrelevant in the eyes of the law.
Not posting personal information is irrelevant - that he has accessed it and admits doing so, is.
Prior disclosure is irrelevant. There’s case law that makes this clear.
Not including repro steps is irrelevant as merely disclosing the presence of a vulnerability is enough to fall foul of the CFAA, as the reasonableness test is whether a competent person could with the knowledge given reproduce the vulnerability, to which the answer is almost always yes. They also admit using the vulnerability, which is definitely a violation of the CFAA.
I agree wholeheartedly with your sentiment that this is nuts, but this is the way the law has been written and applied, and he is taking a serious risk with this disclosure.
The bottom line is we need a mechanism to ensure security bugs are fixed. Publicly disclosing security bugs when an organization does not fix the bug is a good way to do this.
Note this practice started in the 1980s or early 1990s because software venders refused to fix security bugs. The full disclosure movement was created because security researchers wanted the bugs fix and publicly disclosing them was the only way to get some organizations to fix their security bugs.