US anti-espionage show case shot down

By Liam Tung on Jun 14, 2011 6:36 AM
Filed under Oddware

The difference between leaking and whistleblowing.

Espionage charges against a former National Security Agency employee have been watered down to the relatively minor offence of unauthorised access of a government computer.

Thomas Drake, the 55 year old former NSA senior executive, pleaded guilty last week to the “misdemeanor offence of intentionally exceeding the authorised access of a computer,” the US Department of Justice said in a statement.

Drake had used his 'Top Secret' clearance to NSA’s intranet, NSANet, to give classified information to a person that was not cleared between 2006 and 2007.

Drake had previously faced 10 charges under the Espionage Act and a potential 30 years' imprisonment, however he now faces a maximum one year sentence in a federal prison.

His case was meant to serve as a warning to others of the risks of leaking classified information.

The former NSA staffer’s defence attorney labelled the government’s efforts to charge him under the Espionage Act -- which US authorities may seek to charge WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange with -- as “overreach”.

"This was the wrong person, this was the wrong case, and the Espionage Act was an overreach," Jesselyn Radack told the LA Times.

"I hope this is the death knell of using the Espionage Act to send a message to 'leakers' who are more often than not whistle-blowers," she added.

The recipient of the information was Baltimore-Sun reporter Siobhan Gorman, who had used the information to write about waste and mismanagement at the NSA.

Prosecuting Drake under the original charges would have made highly classified information publicly available, which the NSA concluded would harm national security, according to the Justice Department.

“As today’s guilty plea shows, in cases involving classified information, we must always strike the careful balance between holding accountable those who break our laws, while not disclosing highly-sensitive information that our intelligence agencies conclude would be harmful to our nation’s security if used at trial,” said Assistant Attorney General Breuer.

1 comment in this discussion

""Drake had used his 'Top Secret' clearance to NSA’s intranet, NSANet, to give classified information to a person that was not cleared between 2006 and 2007" Wrong. The judge ruled that there was ..."

By decora

Tags

espionage act, national security agency, leak, unauthorised access

Aussie software ferrets out hidden money

LinkedIn hit by 6.5m password leak

VMware loses ESX hypervisor code to hackers

WikiLeaks unleashes Stratfor email trove

Breaking Stories

Aussie retailers falling behind on 'couch commerce'

eHealth measures missing the point

Microsoft adds Azure sub-regions in NSW and VIC

Rio Tinto scales BYOD to 4000 users

Carriers attack NBN Co's 'lack of urgency'

Readers of this article also read...

Comments: 1

decora

Jun 14, 2011 12:57 PM

"Drake had used his 'Top Secret' clearance to NSA’s intranet, NSANet, to give classified information to a person that was not cleared between 2006 and 2007"

Wrong. The judge ruled that there was 'no evidence' that any classified material from his home had wound up in the news articles. The judge also ruled that the emails between him and the reporter contained no classified information.

On top of that, he was not charged with 'leaking classified information', he was charged with 'retaining it'.

On top of that, two of the documents (40% of the case) he was charged with were not even classified - one was marked UNCLASSIFIED and the other was declassified shortly after his indictment.

"Prosecuting Drake under the original charges would have made highly classified information publicly available, which the NSA concluded would harm national security, according to the Justice Department. "

That is the DOJ's perspective, but many other people have written that the case was weak to begin with, otherwise why would they have dropped all 10 felony charges and agreed to a misdemeanor?

On top of that, how can the DOJ claim that 'classified material' would be released from unclassified documents? Even if you believe their version of the story, they only had to throw out the three classified documents, and then use the two unclassified documents against him.

They tried to declare 'NSA privilege' thanks to an obscure 1959 law that has never been used in a criminal case, in order to hide some unclassified information.

This case is not about 'leaking classified information'.

It is about an attempt to shut off the flow of information from 'senior officials' to reporters by scaring people with terrorism. but talking to reporters is a practice that is as old as the United States itself - even with our faults, we have been a comparatively good protector of the freedom of speech, in general, compared to most countries on this planet.

Comments have been disabled for this article.

Ads by Google