You wouldn’t want to ask anyone to steal bank account information about your client’s spouse. You would never ask for the theft of that person’s medical records. You would not try to break into his office to take the computer on his desk to see his work email.

So why would you delight in using information stolen from Ashley Madison? Why would you even endorse it, as many have, because it somehow gives wrongdoers what they deserve?

Where adultery is legal, disapproving of the activity is no reason to commit a crime. If the Ashley Madison break-in was OK, so was Watergate.

Of course, using information that is in the public domain is different from using information that you yourself have stolen. Newspapers in the U.S. routinely report the products of illegal leaks, but even journalists in countries outside the U.S. who do not enjoy First Amendment protections need to be careful about possessing stolen information.

The next time a newspaper (even in the U.S.) reports on a leak and writes that its reporters have reviewed (but not obtained) documents, you might ask why they didn’t make a copy. It could be because possession is worse in the eyes of law enforcement than a quick look at what someone else obtained.

With Canadian police saying that they intend to prosecute the leak of Ashley Madison’s information as a theft, just as they would go after a bank robber or a credit card hacker, we should ask ourselves what to do with the information that comes from the theft.

Is it admissible into evidence? Lots of information that is reported in the newspapers or on the internet every day would not be admissible, because it is hearsay and doesn’t fall into one of the many hearsay exceptions, or maybe because it violates the no-contact rule. Or, it was procured legally but in a way that bar associations would view to be unethical. For instance, recording a phone conversation is legal in many states if just one of the two people on the call knows about the recording, but many bar associations say lawyers should not record conversations unless someone’s liberty is at stake.

The search for assets would not likely take us toward the Ashley Madison database to begin with. But if one day a client asked about it, my preference would be to warn my client that this is stolen property and to let them look if they want (how can you stop them?) If my client were outside the U.S., I would warn them to proceed with even greater caution.