The question about the laptop is pretty settled to me. It's against the law to help someone try to break into something like that. I think that is a valid law, doing so is step well outside what a journalist should do, and all of that is regardless if you are successful or not. Also we'll see what he says in court about that, I could have sworn he or his lawyer already noted their lack of success, that sounded like they were talking about actually trying to do it.

I do think in my mind the two topics are tied together, if someone is not behaving as a journalist then I think the context of the charges changes dramatically.