

Airmen, don't let your babies grow up to read WikiLeaks. If they do, the Air Force may have no choice but to prosecute them for espionage.

Last week, the Air Force Materiel Command's lawyers warned that airmen who read the purloined classified cables on their home computers – not even government owned or issued devices – could be prosecuted for "dereliction of duty." And that's just for starters. WikiLeaks viewership could mean "prosecution for violation of espionage under the Espionage Act."

"DO NOT access the WikiLeaks information on government or personal computers;" the command's legal staff urged, "DO treat the leaked material like any other content assumed to be classified."

But the Air Force doesn't stop there. Your mom, your kids, your cousins – they can't access WikiLeaks either. If you don't stop them from reading those documents, they're looking at a potential Espionage Act prosecution, too.

"[I]f a family member of an Air Force employee accesses WikiLeaks on a home computer, the family member may be subject to prosecution for espionage under U.S. Code Title 18 Section 793," the legal guidance reads. "The Air Force member would have an obligation to safeguard the information under the general guidance to safeguard classified information."

Steven Aftergood, the secrecy and intelligence guru at the Federation of the American Scientists, asked the National Archives' Information Security Oversight Office what to make of the Air Force Materiel Command guidance. "That has to be one of the worst policy/legal interpretations I have seen in my entire career," replied director William J. Bosanko.

And it comes as the Pentagon's calmed down about overall effect of the WikiLeaks breach. Last month, the acting undersecretary for intelligence reassured employees that they wouldn't have their hard drives wiped should they stumble upon a webpage containing a WikiLeak, owing to the "prohibitive cost" of taking such a step. That directive didn't presume to govern what a Defense Department employee read on her laptop at home – let alone what her kid read on his.

But since WikiLeaks published thousands of classified military reports and diplomatic cables last year, the Air Force has spared no effort to make sure that its personnel doesn't read them. The 24th Air Force blocked user access to news websites like nytimes.com or guardian.co.uk that published the leaks. Again, though, that ban didn't apply to home or family Internet usage.

Aftergood can't make sense of it. His follow-up questions: "What if a family member accessed WikiLeaks on a computer outside the home? What if a non-family member accessed WikiLeaks on the home computer? What if one learns that a neighbor has accessed WikiLeaks in the neighbor’s home? Is the Air Force employee obliged to intervene or to report the violation to authorities? And how could any of this possibly be constitutional?"

Update, 4:15 p.m.: That was fast. An Air Force spokesman tells Josh Gerstein of *Politico *that the legal guidance is now under review: "We were just trying to give guidance to military and civilian servicemembers and employees to control their young'uns." That's the service's business?

Photo: U.S. Air Force

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