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This guy wasn't really a hacker, just someone who knew a little bit about tech and figured out a flawed system. I think that sums him up as a scammer instead of a hacker.

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To be fair that is fundamentally what hacking is - noticing a flawed system an exploiting it. "Just scamming" would be convincing people that they need to use him to get tax refunds while he cashes it and takes a cut. Closer to fraud in many ways too really.

Really the term hacking could use more consistent sub-definitions per type. Social engineering is well established but there isn't even a uniform term for quickly conveying the nuance of say cracking DRM offline vs getting in a server.

This. He filed false tax returns with stolen identities, I fail to see any activities one would associate with a technical hack. I also have a hard time understanding why someone who is engaging in criminal acts has a reasonable expectation to privacy related to the commission of said crimes.

You can't know that a priori, though. The cops should not get to say "I want to track this cell phone, it's being used for a crime" without filing a warrant. That is pretty much exactly what warrants are for in other contexts, cell phones should not be treated differently.

the cops have to abide by the law, that's their weakness.

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