Home > Espionage Act of 1917
The Espionage Act was passed by the 65th United States Congress on June 15, 1917, during World War I.This act made it a crime, punishable by a $10,000 fine and 20 years in jail, for a person to convey false reports or false statements with intent to interfere with the operation or success of the military or naval forces of the United States or to promote the success of its enemies.
The laws were ruled constitutional in the United States Supreme Court case Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S. 47 ( 1919).
The law was later extended by the Sedition Act of 1918, which made it illegal to even speak out against the government.
During and after World War I the Espionage Act and the Sedition Act were used in prosecutions that would be considered constitutionally unacceptable in the U.S. even in the political climate after the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack on New York's World Trade Center. While much of the laws were repealed in 1921, major portions of the Espionage Act remain part of U.S. law (18 USC 793, 794) and form the legal basis for most classified information.
The U.S. Congress has encated other laws to protect specific types of information including:
- cryptographic intelligence and methodsCryptography (from Greek kryptos "hidden", and graphein "to write") is, traditionally, the study of means of converting information from its normal, comprehensible form into an incomprehensible format, rendering it unreadable without secret knowledge — th - 18 USC 798
- nuclear weaponmushroom cloud of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945 lifted nuclear fallout some 60,000 feet (18 km) above the epicenter. A nuclear weapon is a weapon that derives its energy from nuclear reactions and has enormous destructive power a single ns and materials (Restricted Data) - Atomic Energy Act of 1954 (42 USC 2162, 2163, 2168, and 7383)
- industrial trade secretIntellectual property A trade secret is a confidential practice, method, process, design, or other information used by a company to compete with other businesses. It is also referred to in some jurisdictions as confidential information. The concept is thas - Industrial Espionage Act of 1996 (18 USC Chapter 90)
- intelligence sources and methods (Wnintel)
- data stored on computers - Computer Fraud and Abuse ActThe Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is a law passed by the United States Congress in 1986 intended to reduce "hacking" of commercial computer systems. It was amended in 1994, 1996 and in 2001 by the USA PATRIOT Act. The USA PATRIOT Act increased the scope an (18 USC 1030) and the Stored Communications Act (18 USC 2701)
1 See Also
- Freedom of Information ActData privacy Nearly sixty countries around the world have national laws on Freedom of Information which set rules on what Government bodies have to reveal to the public. Over forty more countries have pending bills. Canada Canada's Freedom of Information
- Executive Order 12958In 1995, President Bill Clinton signed Executive Order 12958 which created tough new standards for the process of classifying documents and led to an unprecedented effort to declassify millions of pages from the U. diplomatic and national security history Classified National Security Information
- Official Secrets Act ( U.K. and others)
2 External links
United States legal history
Espionage
Computer law
