With all this legal talk, here is the 21-page "memo" to Congress written by Congress's own non-partisan research arm, CRS, concerning the WikiLeaks issue, released Dec. 6th. It discusses what actions could be taken, why, and why not, along with other interesting stuff. The CRS is supposed to give objective, simple legal advice to Congress, and if you're patient enough to read through all 21 pages, you get an apple.
"Criminal Prohibitions on the Publication of Classified Defense Information"
The summary page states:
Quote:
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This report identifies some criminal statutes that may apply [to dissemination of classified documents], but notes that these have been used almost exclusively to prosecute individuals with access to classified information (and a corresponding obligation to protect it) who make it available to foreign agents, or to foreign agents who obtain classified information unlawfully while present in the United States. Leaks of classified information to the press have only rarely been punished as crimes, and we are aware of no case in which a publisher of information obtained through unauthorized disclosure by a government employee has been prosecuted for publishing it. There may be First Amendment implications that would make such a prosecution difficult, not to mention political ramifications based on concerns about government censorship.
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It then talks about the Espionage Act, the Pentagon Papers, etc. Courtesy of the EFF.