Espionage Act makes felons of us all

[The Straight Story]

Espionage Act makes felons of us all

Dear Americans: If you are not "authorized" personnel, but you have read, written about, commented upon, tweeted, spread links by "liking" on Facebook, shared by email, or otherwise discussed "classified" information disclosed from WikiLeaks, you could be implicated for crimes under the U.S. Espionage Act -- or so warns a legal expert who said the U.S. Espionage Act could make "felons of us all."

As the U.S. Justice Department works on a legal case against WikiLeak's Julian Assange for his role in helping publish 250,000 classified U.S. diplomatic cables, authorities are leaning toward charging Assange with spying under the Espionage Act of 1917. Legal experts warn that if there is an indictment under the Espionage Act, then any citizen who has discussed or accessed "classified" information can be arrested on "national security" grounds.

According to the Act, anyone "having unauthorized possession of, access to....information relating to the national defense, or information relating to the national defense" which "could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation" and "willfully retains" that information, can be fined or imprisoned "not more than ten years, or both."

Benjamin Wittes, who specializes in legal affairs, blogged, "By its terms, it criminalizes not merely the disclosure of national defense information by organizations such as Wikileaks, but also the reporting on that information by countless news organizations. It also criminalizes all casual discussions of such disclosures by persons not authorized to receive them to other persons not authorized to receive them-in other words, all tweets sending around those countless news stories, all blogging on them, and all dinner party conversations about their contents. Taken at its word, the Espionage Act makes felons of us all."

http://blogs.computerworld.com/17521/espionage_act_makes_felons_of_us_all

[DJ13]

1. Look on the bright side

The government may have finally found a use for all those detention camps they paid Halliburton to build.

[villager]

4. and think of the socialism as they house and feed us all!

n/t

[Angry Dragon]

2. A lot of republican-elects are really in trouble then

[RKP5637]

3. This could cause a boom in prison construction and solve the

unemployment problem as much of the population would be guilty.

[Whoa_Nelly]

5. Zippy Skippy! :) I wanna be the Gatekeeper!

Anyone up for being the Keymaster?

[RKP5637]

6. LOL n/t

[Name removed]

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[Name removed]

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[RKP5637]

16. Yep, I watched his program on that. It really makes one wonder what's going on - being

prepared for - Politicians come and go, but the hidden wealth and power continues ... It's more than a little spooky anymore IMO.

[guruoo]

7. They could give us all house arrest, w/travel being limited only to work

and WalMart.

[Name removed]

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[guruoo]

17. Please tell us more about Obama's secret trip to 1917...

Enjoy your stay.

[Name removed]

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[Newest Reality]

8. It seems to appear to be on schecdule.

When you put the puzzle pieces together, in your own way, the Empire is turning inward on its own people. That's not new, really.

How the people are going to respond to that is another matter.

[truedelphi]

9. BAck on October 23rd 2010, Daniel Ellsberg correctly predicted

That Pres. Obama would be doing his best to see to it that not only Assange and those in the inner loop of Wikileaks, but anyone who has stored the "insurance" file and as the OP states, even those who mention it in passing on FB or Twitter, can be facing serious charges.

This is one of the reasons why Obama saying that the Republican Tax Plan is good for us Americans makes my stomach turn - I am guessing that many progressives are simply not going to be around any more when election 2012 comes about.

If giving the Powers that be "everything they want" is such a good idea, why not put some of us in camps to help make our work places as competitive as the Chinese prison work places? That too would help the Upper One Percent.

[Name removed]

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[Name removed]

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[Kaleko]

15. The rise of the Nazi party in Germany revisited.

Glenn Greenwald wrote a scathing piece on the legal ramifications today.

Attempts to prosecute WikiLeaks endanger press freedoms


http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/14/wikileaks/index.html