"If you've seen our SOP, we have a problem . . ."
Jul 21, 2008, 6:36 pm
#46
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Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: Newport Beach, California, USA
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Amongst others subjected to such legislation, include lawyers, publishers and journalists who have been forced to gag themselves as they don't want to end up in prison or separated from their assets/income for doing nothing more than publishing or publicly discussing (even in open court) "secret" information that came into their possession without even any wrongdoing on their part.
Jul 22, 2008, 9:37 am
#47
Moderator, Omni, Omni/PR, Omni/Games, FlyerTalk Posting Legend
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Between DCA and IAD
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No. The US currently does not have an "official secrets" act. In other countries, disseminating classified or even sensitive information is a crime, but not here, with one caveat - if you give it to a foreign national, you could be arrested for espionage or violating technology export licensing, depending on the content.
I would assume that after having been debriefed if I became privy through other channels to classified info I hadn't been privy to in the course of my job, I'd be the same as a journalist or other member of the public in that role, and wouldn't face the same obligations. But I wouldn't want to test that.
However, I do believe the courts have generally held in the US that it's not criminal at all for journalists, etc., to seek out and disclose classified information. Now, as to the people giving that info to them, well, they could be in trouble, assuming it was indeed leake to them and not just discovered (like the existence of the NRO, which IIRC the FAS discovered through examining blueprints on file with building permit applications in the Fairfax County courthouse. Heck, people at my company STILL are gimpy about anything to do with the NRO even though its existence and location are now public info--you can drive by the building today and see signs out front proclaiming its existence.)
Jul 22, 2008, 5:05 pm
#48
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 573
He could have been referring to the fact that if you plainly admitted that you had unauthorized access to the S.O.P., that a dozen or so people would want to talk to you about it. Kind of a catch-22. You tell him and he does nothing, he's negligent. You tell him and he reports it, wheels get spinning over something that amounts to nothing.