A fair example for line drawing. Do illegal drugs have value? Yes. If you take possession of them, have you broken the law?
Now, change the offer to one where the Englishman tells you he has information that your business partner has been selling your business secrets. This is valuable too. are you breaking the law by taking possession of this information?
The legality or taint assocaites with the substance of what is being offered. Illegal drugs vs. evidence of unethical business practice. And to be fair, there is some infoamtion that is dangerous or illegal to possess, such as the detail drawings of warheads.
Is it illegal to possess information about Russian contributions to Hillary Clinton's campaign?
>> Do illegal drugs have value? Yes. If you take possession of them, have you broken the law? <<
Yep. For sure. But what if you go to meet the Russian drug dealer and he really doesn’t have any drugs. Have you still been involved in an illegal conspiracy? I simply dunno.
On the other hand, if the guy who emailed you was actually a cop in a sting operation who offered to supply child pornography and you went to meet him, you’d certainly be in big trouble even tho’ there never was any actual porn that could have changed hands.
>> Is it illegal to possess information about Russian contributions to Hillary Clinton’s campaign? <<
Mere possession would surely not seem to be illegal, unlike the case with child pornography.
But if the information had been stolen or otherwise obtained illegally, and if you knew about the theft, then your taking the info might constitute “knowlingly receiving stolen property” — not to mention possible misprison of a felony.
I can’t say what’s correct here in terms of the law. As far as I know, the rightness or wrongness may depend on which judge happens to get involved. Or it may depend mainly on the case law precedents of the state where the action occurred. But I definitely wouldn’t want to be on either side of such a matter!