Category Archives: Secrecy

Willfulness and the Harm of Unlawful Retention of National Security Information

Discussions of the Espionage Act usually focus on the public’s conception of “spying.” Spies steal information that their government seeks to keep secret and disclose that information to other governments. A common acronym, “MICE,” describes the common motivations for spying: money, ideology, compromise, and ego.

The Espionage Act, however, covers a broader set of conduct that can compromise U.S. national security. The original Act, enacted as the United States entered the First World War, included the precursors to prohibitions against undisclosed foreign-government activities in the United States.

The Espionage Act also prohibits taking or possessing national security-related information from the government and keeping it in an unauthorized location. This article explains how some criminal law protections for national security information interact with Executive Branch decisions to protect information based on national security concerns, and how those protections apply in cases where a defendant stole and kept national security information, even if the defendant did not disclose that information to an unauthorized recipient.

To the uninitiated, taking national security information from its authorized location and keeping it in an unauthorized location may seem like a ministerial or administrative violation without much substantive consequence. But to the national security professional—and to the national security professional’s counterparts in adversarial services—such theft constitutes a profound compromise of security.

Authorized locations for the storage of national security information are approved because they are secure and because they facilitate the government’s control over, and tracking of, individuals who access that information—for example, as then-Assistant Attorney General John Demers stated, when Nghia Hoang Pho stole highly classified information and retained it at an unauthorized location, he “placed at risk our intelligence community’s capabilities and methods, rendering some of them unusable.”

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FARA in Focus: What Can Russia’s Foreign Agent Law Tell Us About America’s?

In 2012, Russia passed its first-ever Foreign Agent Law, which western analysts described as an attempt to stymie civil society. Russia argued that it modeled its Law after the American Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).

Samuel Rebo describes how on their face the laws seem similar, while their implementation has differed. While Russia has actively used its Law, the US launched only a single criminal FARA prosecution from 1990 to 2010. However, since Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election, DOJ prosecutors have brought more FARA cases (2016-2019) than they had in the past 50 years combined.

Comparing FARA to its Russian counterpart, Rebo notes that the Russian law contains significantly more substantive limitations on the functioning of “foreign agents” than does FARA. However, both laws are broad and can sweep in legitimate civil society groups. Thus, DOJ discretion is the main barrier stopping America from replicating Russia. Rebo argues that, given the First Amendment rights at stake, this reliance on the DOJ is insufficient, and Congress should amend FARA to narrow its breath and clarify its scope.

Full Court Press: Preventing Foreign Adversaries from Exfiltrating National Security Technologies Through Bankruptcy Proceedings

While an important part of US innovation and culture, bankruptcy proceedings have nonetheless become a unique avenue through which foreign adversaries are able to acquire sensitive US national security  technologies and intellectual property. Through a detailed analysis of the current gaps in federal regulations governing foreign investment and bankruptcy proceedings in the US, Camille Stewart provides the reader an in-depth look into exactly how foreign companies have been able to circumvent these US foreign investment regulations.

In raising awareness to an issue that could ultimately leave the United States vulnerable to destructive cyberattacks, Stewart argues that training and equipping bankruptcy judges to identify potential national security concerns in bankruptcy cases will help mitigate the exfiltration of national security-related information and technology.