I’m going to riff on this for a bit about how this works in the real world.

—-Every Deleted Parler Post, Many With Users' Location Data, Has Been Archived

Law enforcement generally doesn’t use work by hackers i their investigations because 𝒉𝒂𝒄𝒌𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒊𝒔 𝒊𝒍𝒍𝒆𝒈𝒂𝒍. And while it’s permissible for law enforcement to use evidence that was illegally obtained by a private citizen, the government doesn’t like to do it.

The first reason for this is because the government doesn’t want to be perceived as encouraging illegal activity. In fact, if the government goes over the line the court might and has in many cases said the private party was acting on behalf of the government.

If the evidence is thrown out then you risk losing the evidence and everything you leaned from that evidence.

The second reason is that LE doesn’t need somebody else to archive the data during an active investigation. Law enforcement does this all day everyday with the company

It’s called a preservation letter and it requires the company to keep all data it has at that moment for the length of time stated in the letter (usually 90 days).