Robert Merkel said:

Hi guys,

Here's a hypothetical for you. Say somebody posts a piece of information about, say, an American-designed weapon, to the Wikipedia. A piece of information that the US government would prefer to be kept secret and thus is classified. Now, the person that originally leaked the information could certainly be punished under US law, but is the Wikipedia under any *legal* obligation to delete the information, assuming it's relevant?

One for the lawyers, I guess. But I think you'd have the Secret Service or the DIA in the colo with some bolt cutters before you could say ACLU.

Robert Merkel wrote:

Hi guys,

Here's a hypothetical for you. Say somebody posts a piece of information about, say, an American-designed weapon, to the Wikipedia. A piece of information that the US government would prefer to be kept secret and thus is classified. Now, the person that originally leaked the information could certainly be punished under US law, but is the Wikipedia under any *legal* obligation to delete the information, assuming it's relevant?

I wouldn't think so. Starting a fuss of this kind would only bring attention to the fact that there is a government secret on the web. Neither denying nor confirming the information is a more effective tactic. That way you can always use the argument that the material comes from the writer's own imagination, and that he's just putting out his own crank theory.

What ever happened to the bloke, who some years back was avoiding prosecution under Britain's "Official Secrets Act." by living in Australia?

IIRC during WW2 some U.S. science fiction writers were arrested because what they wrote suggested knowledge of defence secrets.

Ec

My take on this (as someone who has spent some time studying the history of nuclear secrecy, but who is not a lawyer):

1. The US federal gov. could probably request that Wikipedia delete certain types of information posted to it. It could likely obtain an injuction against Wikipedia to keep it offline until the full issue was wrangled out in court, if Wikipedia objected. In the end, it would probably depend on the nature of the information in question whether Wikipedia would win or not. I have no idea how this would apply internationally, though, but if Wikipedia is 100% out of the US then the country it is in probably has its own technology transfer laws in agreement with the US which would be relevant.

2. The main person the government would go after, though, is the person who leaked it. They are the one who has likely violated their security clearance which let them see the information in the first place.

3. The US government generally does not admit when information has been leaked or not (to admit that something is leaked is to confirm that the data is legitimate).

4. An interesting case to look at in thinking about this would be U.S. vs. The Progressive, Inc. (1979). I've been meaning to writing an article about it here for some time, actually. Basically, an activist named Howard Morland came up with what he thought was the "H-bomb secret" -- how a hydrogen bomb works, the secret Teller-Ulam configuration (I've done a graphic of Morland's theory at [[Nuclear weapons design]] for those who are curious what the "secret" supposedly is). A left-wing magazine, The Progressive, agreed to publish it. Through a long series of events, the U.S. Department of Energy told The Progressive not to publish it, and obtained a temporary injunction against it claiming that it was going to publish restricted data which had a clear and present danger. In the appeals stage, though, the magazine argued that Morland had compiled the idea out of public domain material. The government argued that he couldn't have done so, but even if he could, then that particular arrangement of public domain material, since it constituted secret information, was thus a secret (under the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, any information on "atomic energy" was technically "born secret" until officially declassified). The Progressive (and then the ACLU) challenged the "born secret" doctrine on first admendment grounds. The government bungled a few other secrecy-related scandals in the meantime (and the Three Mile Island accident happened, which didn't help), and eventually the government lawyers dropped the case and let the Progressive publish (most commentators speculate it was because they were afraid of the Atomic Energy Act getting completely shut down and things were going quite poorly). So, the general legal interpretation has been that this means that nothing obtained from public domain (that is, not obtained from anything marked "secret" or from someone with a secrecy clearance) can actually be considered "secret." However, it didn't fully resolve itself, so that isn't completely part of precedent. (the above is a very basic version of the whole story, which has many more twists and turns)

So... part of it would depend on the source of the information. If it was unknown or anonymous or questionable (as one could easily imagine a Wikipedia contribution to be), then it would perhaps be a problem: it would probably lie upon WP to prove that it wasn't from a "secret" source. If it was, say, me (who has no access to secret information), and I was willing to defend myself and show all of my sources, WP could probably win it in court.

The two legal complexities which make it hard for me to really think this through are: 1. Is Wikipedia subject to US classification laws (Espionage Act, Atomic Energy Act)? I don't know where Wikipedia is located or how the courts view "location" in terms of the internet, but if it is in any NATO country I'm betting it is subject to them in some way (just a hunch). 2. Is Wikipedia any different from any other "publication"? Does its dynamic editing make it take on the responsibilities of its users? I suspect that a court would hold Jimbo accountable for anything written on Wikipedia, whatever his official disclaimer statement says. But I don't really know that for sure.

Again, I'm not a lawyer, but this is my take on it based on the research I've done on the history of nuclear secrecy (which is a fair amount). Which may or may not be applicable. If the question is just, can the US government request that publications not publish US secrets? Yes, and it probably applies to many countries outside the US due to mutual agreements. But part of the question lies on the definition of "US secrets" which is what has historically been most contested.

FF

On Apr 1, 2005 4:02 AM, Robert Merkel robert.merkel@benambra.org wrote:

Hi guys,

Here's a hypothetical for you. Say somebody posts a piece of information about, say, an American-designed weapon, to the Wikipedia. A piece of information that the US government would prefer to be kept secret and thus is classified. Now, the person that originally leaked the information could certainly be punished under US law, but is the Wikipedia under any *legal* obligation to delete the information, assuming it's relevant?

--

                                       Robert Merkel
                                 robert.merkel@benambra.org
                                    http://benambra.org

The only time an aircraft has too much fuel on board is when it is on fire.

-- Sir Charles Kingsford Smith

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