My understanding is that there generally isn't a legal prohibiton on disseminating data you obtained legally even if the person who initially acquired it did so illegally.

I haven't thought about it too much. I feel like taking stolen data from a Tor BBS and amplifying its harms to make a political point is going to put you on shaky legal ground, and past that I don't have a take on whether you should ultimately prevail. There does reach a point where a government can't sit back and say "yeah, yeah, you got us" while someone posts, like, the list of police CIs.

Agreed.

I think something people are getting hung up on here is that just because something is technically public, doesn't mean you can assist in distributing it.

Example: Controlled drugs are public in that you can easily go to a certain area in downtown and obtain them. However, if you do so, and then you start distributing it yourself, you will be charged with a crime. Nobody has issues understanding this but they seem to have issues understanding when it's data instead of physical goods for some reason.