WikiLeaks and the First Amendment

FCBA Distinguished Speaker Series In November 2010, Julian Assange's WikiLeaks collaborated with major media organizations to release thousands of classified U.S. State Department documents. American soldier Bradley Manning stands accused of leaking those documents to the website. In response, Congress introduced the SHIELD Act to amend the Espionage Act of 1917, making it a crime for any person to disseminate any classified information concerning American intelligence or the identity of a classified informant. Such sweeping language, while possibly constitutional as applied to government employees like Manning, is plainly unconstitutional as applied to those like Assange and WikiLeaks who subsequently publish such classified information. In the context of these actors, the Act violates the First Amendment unless, at the very least, the government can establish that dissemination of the classified information poses a clear and present danger of grave harm to the nation.