What laws, bills, or acts govern the legal accessibility of information on the internet?

[john]

Long story short, someone did something horrible to a friend, but got off really easy with just having to be on probation and go to rehab. My friend has found out that he has violated some of the terms of his probation and we were told if he did so he would be sent straight to jail. They tried to get some electronic evidence of this but the attorney didn't feel like it was strong enough for a case and they will "look into it further".

Well I am a computer science/math double major at purdue and because of my knowledge base I know how to comb the internet for information in ways most people don't know how and i figured I might be able to provide more specific, detailed, and conclusive results. So i did some searching and found all the information I needed using more advanced google search engine queries and my knowledge about how to navigate information and collect it in a professional and what I assumed was a more legal way then printing out a facebook wall post like they did. I found several cases where he was in violation of his probation.

I did nothing illegal to my knowledge (i.e. hacking, code injection, querying secure databases, etc.) and never threatened or said anything to the person. I simply used google and exploited the fact that most people don't know how much information they actually give out (i.e. the geolocation tags in photos to prove where-abouts, their posts they do publicly, etc). All information I got was publicly accessible to any person on the internet, he just apparently doesn't know either how to set privacy settings or doesn't care.

My main question comes in here because one of my fellow cs friends said that while I did access the information legally through browser only, it could be considered cyber-stalking or cyber-harassment. I feel that doesn't apply with the methods I used such since it was he that did not set privacy controls on his information. But decided, like the programmer I am, to go ahead and account for this possible bug and I wanted to find the actual laws that govern the everyday use of the internet by individuals, but do to my limited legal knowledge I did not know really what I was searching for. I found a few things but they all seemed to be related to the government and the fact that there information must be open and free or to companies and what they can collect/distribute.

So my question is two fold, did I do anything that would make this evidence inadmissible in court? And if so/not can you please cite why? (preferably with a url or at least the proper names of the laws governing such things so I may conduct further research)

Any help with this would be appreciated

[J]

The legal framework for online privacy thus rests largely on two federal laws, a subdued federal regulatory approach, a mixture of state laws, and contradictory case law from the courts:

In 1986, Congress significantly updated the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), originally enacted two decades earlier in 1968 to prevent telephone wiretapping. The law protects the privacy of much online communication, such as e-mail and other digital messaging, but far from all of it. The law offers little privacy protection to electronic communication in the workplace, which courts have further restricted.
The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 was passed amid complaints that websites frequently sought too much personal information from children. The law requires website operators to maintain privacy policies, grants parents powers to control information gleaned from their children by websites, and grants regulatory power to the FTC.
Throughout the 1990s, the FTC studied and recommended proposals for new Internet privacy laws. The commission made such recommendations again in its annual 2000 report on the issue, but in 2001 new FTC leadership called for more study of the issue and a continued emphasis on self-regulation by business.
Passed in response to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks upon the United States, the Patriot Act of 2001 appeared likely to significantly impact online privacy. The law dramatically increases federal police investigatory powers, including the right to intercept e-mail and track Internet usage.
Courts have offered mixed verdicts on anonymity on the Internet. In 1997, Georgia was prohibited from enforcing a statute that barred anonymous communication in ACLU v. Miller. In subsequent cases, courts have allowed plaintiffs to force disclosure of the identities of anonymous users of Internet message boards, but some have required that strict evidentiary standards are met by plaintiffs first.