At the end of the day I am not so sure the value of the information matters, even though in their case it turns out the data subset accurately reflected the larger picture (e.g. Capital One data was consistent with not just other credit card transactions, but cash as well).

Nevertheless, one may still be committing insider trading by trading based on non-public information even if the bet was wrong. Though is such a circumstance they may not have come up on the radar.