New York Law School Blog: Wikileaks Has Committed No Crime

[Hissyspit]

http://lasisblog.com/2010/11/12/wikileaks-has-committed-no-crime

Wikileaks Has Committed No Crime

By Trevor Timm

A cantankerous press, an obstinate press, a ubiquitous press must be suffered by those in authority in order to preserve the even greater values of freedom of expression and the right of the people to know.” – Judge Murray Gurfein, June 1971.

Since August, when Wikileaks first published 91,000 classified documents relating to the Afghanistan War, and in October, when they published approximately 400,000 more relating to the War in Iraq, many conservative commentators have been clamoring for the Justice Department to prosecute Wikileaks for publishing classified information.

But in the United States, generally publishing classified information is not a crime. The sort of information that a news organization can be prosecuted for publishing is limited to: nuclear secrets (Atomic Energy Act), the identities of covert agents (Intelligence Identities Protection Act), and certain forms of communications intelligence (Section 798 of the Espionage Act).

Perhaps lamenting that the U.S. does not have an Official Secrets Act like the United Kingdom, right wing columnists have consistently misinterpreted these Acts, or have cited other provisions of our espionage laws which almost surely do not apply to Wikileaks.

The most commonly cited statute by those who advocate prosecuting Wikileaks is Section 793(e) of the Espionage Act. In August, former Bush speechwriter Marc Theissen linked to this section in an article for the Washington Post when he wrote that Wikileaks is “a criminal enterprise” whose founder, Julian Assange, should be arrested by U.S. forces on foreign soil, international law be damned.

But this provision does not apply to those who publish information.

MUCH MORE

[malaise]

1. So what happens when the government led by the Vice President

breaks the law and leaks '...the identities of covert agents (Intelligence Identities Protection Act)'?

[yodermon]

3. the lackey gets convicted and then commuted

the evil genius gets off scott free

[ThomCat]

2. So many rights have been taken away. We only find out

when we try to use those rights and law enforcement or the courts ignore those rights entirely.

So Wikileaks has a lot of reason to be cautious, and to presume that they can be prosecuted. Right wing judges can invent crimes where none existed before. They can remove protections where they always existed before.

If the government wants to get Wikileaks and Julian Assange, they will, and nothing in the law will stop them. The law in a malleable tool that THEY RESHAPE to THEIR NEEDS and their advantage. Never assume that Wikileaks or Julian Assange will have any benefit or advantage if the government wants him in prison, no matter what the law says.

[Odin2005]

4. Their "crime" is exposing the evil of the M-I Complex.