On July 30, a military judge found Army Pfc. Bradley Manning guilty of multiple violations of the Espionage Act and other laws because of his unauthorized disclosure of restricted government records to the WikiLeaks website. On July 31, the Secretary of the Army formally established the Army Insider Threat Program. Remarkably, this is still a […]
Updated below, Updated again, 8/9/13 The U.S. military has been investigating the use of sophisticated data mining tools to probe social media and other open sources in order to support military operations against money laundering, drug trafficking, terrorism and other threats. But the window for doing so may be closing as the social media landscape […]
New and newly updated Congressional Research Service reports that Congress has withheld from online public distribution include the following. Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) and the Role of Congress in Trade Policy, August 2, 2013 Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) and Its Role in U.S. Trade Policy, August 5, 2013 Trade Adjustment Assistance for Firms: Economic, Program, […]
The Director of National Intelligence last month issued a revised Classified Information Nondisclosure Agreement, also known as Standard Form 312 or SF 312. It is a binding legal agreement that must be signed by each of the nearly 5 million people who are cleared for access to classified information. It affirms that the unauthorized disclosure […]
New and newly updated reports from the Congressional Research Service that Congress has withheld from online public distribution include the following. Military Sexual Assault: Chronology of Activity in Congress and Related Resources, July 30, 2013 Retaining and Preserving Federal Records in a Digital Environment: Background and Issues for Congress, July 26, 2013 Detention of U.S. […]
Newspapers can be held criminally liable for publishing secret information, according to a newly disclosed Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) opinion dating from World War II. A reporter who writes a story based on defense secrets could be found to have violated the Espionage Act for revealing secret information, as could his editor and publisher. […]
Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Amos exercised “unlawful command influence” in an attempt to punish Marines who allegedly urinated on enemy corpses in Afghanistan in 2011, attorneys for the Marine defendants said. And then Gen. Amos improperly classified information in an effort to conceal his own misconduct, the attorneys said. “The evidence shows that the […]
In a new interpretation of the Espionage Act, a federal judge made it easier for prosecutors in leak cases to meet their burden of proof, while reducing protections for accused leakers. Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled that the prosecution in the pending case of former State Department contractor Stephen Kim need not show that the information […]
There have been 71 federal judges who have served on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court or the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review from 1979 until the present. A complete list of the Court’s membership, prepared by the Court’s Administrative staff, was obtained by the New York Times. Although this comprehensive listing was not formally […]
An amendment to prohibit intelligence agencies from performing bulk collection of records such as telephone metadata was narrowly defeated in the House of Representatives yesterday by a vote of 205-217. Although the amendment by Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) was not adopted, its near-passage on a bipartisan basis signaled an extraordinary loss of congressional support for […]
The Department of Energy has undertaken a new effort to publish information and documents concerning the Manhattan Project to develop the first atomic bomb. The effort will notably include “the entire thirty-six volume Manhattan District History. Many of the volumes have been declassified” and are now online. “The remaining classified volumes are being declassified with […]
New and updated reports from the Congressional Research Service which Congress has withheld from online distribution to the public include the following. China’s Currency Policy: An Analysis of the Economic Issues, July 22, 2013 International Illegal Trade in Wildlife: Threats and U.S. Policy, July 23, 2013 The 2010 Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill: Natural Resource Damage […]