Do I have that all right? Seems to me if they intercepted an email, they wouldn’t need an IP to convict him, you can see who owns the email address, and go from there!
considering that they are intercepting encrypted emails and decrypting them, I am sure they are "going by the book" on this one.
I would have thought that a far more likely scenario is someone receives an offensive e-mail and reports it to the authorities.

A one year sentence is trivial by US standards so it cannot have been very serious?

Hardly enough to merit Federal involvement or "interception"?

I really dont think we have the full story though...
I think that is very true!