The linked post celebrates this saying they can share this data with law enforcement, but is it legal for them to pursue cases based on the evidence found in stolen data?
> But, in some ways, there’s really no such thing as an “illegal” search by a private citizen, at least in the sense that police searches can be illegal: Regardless of issues like lack of probable cause, evidence found by private citizens acting on their own is usually admissible in court. That’s true even if the private citizen committed a crime like trespass or theft to accomplish the search.
It does, but in a murder trial, the weapon was generally out of police custody for at least some time, right?
There's an opportunity to introduce reasonable doubt when a third-party is in possession of the data in-between, but it's likely this sort of data isn't going to be the only evidence in any resulting prosecutions. It's far more likely to be probable cause for warrants.
It does, but it’s actually the fourth amendment that would be in place here, and numerous child pornography cases as well as the Panama papers have shown that US courts will allow illegally obtained data, as long as it was obtained by private citizens who were not working with law enforcement and that the data can be established as reasonably untampered.
Edit: this Reddit post appears to be inaccurate. More details here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25725268