Story time from an oldfag.

Around 1990 my friend and I wardialed thousands of local numbers to find networked UNIX boxes to hack (internets did not grow on trees back then, if you wanted it you had to take it). He got a visit from a police officer because one of the ranges he dialed was a pager company so it caused every local doctor at every hospital to get paged for nothing which they weren't happy about, especially since he was dialing overnight. Officer talked to his parents, they told him to stop, and that was it. We stopped wardialing and hacked one of the servers we had found (it was very easy to hack shit back then but lets just pretend I was some amazing movie-level hacker). I used that server to hack other servers which I used for the nefarious purpose of... learning networking and UNIX development. I got Stevens' book and I'd login daily and build things and use my hacked machines as clients and servers. They were so ridiculously powerful and sophisticated compared to our DOS boxes with modems. Today I'm the head of design at a networking company I helped found and things are looking good. I've got some cutting-edge stuff in the works and I'm pretty confident we'll sell the company for a lot of money.

Looking back on that, had the kind of zero-tolerance policies that exist today been in place then, it would have ruined me. I'd likely have wound up jailed, banned from using computers, I'd have multiple felonies and couldn't vote, own guns, or get employed in the tech sector. I'd never have learned networking and I'd probably be working at a supermarket somewhere. My advice to you: be super careful as the current system is blind, stupid, and bloodthirsty. Keep your head down, hide your power-level.

Why not simply not break laws? Then you wouldn't have to go to jail. You don't have to hack into servers or download illegal porn in a way leakier than a torrent. You could read books and look at legal porn or something.