US Lawmakers Want to Bar Using Espionage Act to Target Journalists

A trio of congressional lawmakers reintroduced the Espionage Reform Act on Wednesday to prevent reporters from being prosecuted for publishing classified information.

Unveiled by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), the measure aims to narrow the scope of the 105-year-old Espionage Act enacted during the First World War—ostensibly to protect the United States from spies but, according to critics, to criminalize anti-war dissent, resulting in the imprisonment of nearly a thousand people, including socialist Eugene Debs.

According to Khanna, Wyden, and Massie, the bill would:

• Protect journalists who solicit, obtain, or publish government secrets from prosecution.
• Ensure that each member of Congress is equally able to receive classified information, including from whistleblowers. Currently, the law criminalizes the disclosure of classified information related to signals intelligence to any member of Congress, unless it is in response to a “lawful demand” from a committee. This puts members in the minority party and those not chairing any committee at a significant disadvantage.
• Ensure that federal courts, inspector generals, the FCC, Federal Trade Commission, and Privacy & Civil Liberties Oversight Board can conduct oversight into privacy abuses.
• Ensure that cybersecurity experts who discover classified government backdoors in encryption algorithms and communications apps used by the public can publish their research without the risk of criminal penalties. It is up to governments to hide their surveillance backdoors; academic researchers and other experts should not face legal risks for discovering them.

However, a summary of the bill adds, “every single person convicted, to date, under the Espionage Act could still have been convicted had this bill been the law at the time they were prosecuted.” As a result, the likes of Daniel Hale, Edward Snowden, and Julian Assange could still have been charged with espionage.

Originally published at Commondreams.org.