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Ex-NSA Official Indicted For Leaks To Newspaper
Hugh Pickens writes "The Baltimore Sun reports that in a rare legal action against a government employee accused of leaking secrets, a grand jury has indicted Thomas A. Drake, a former senior National Security Agency official, on charges of providing classified information to a newspaper reporter in hundreds of e-mail messages in 2006 and 2007. Federal law prohibits government employees from disclosing classified information which could be 'expected to cause damage to national security.' The indictment (PDF) does not name either the reporter or the newspaper that received the information, but the description applies to articles written by Siobhan Gorman, then a reporter for The Baltimore Sun, that examined in detail the failings of several major NSA programs, costing billions of dollars, that were plagued with technical flaws and cost overruns. Gorman's stories did not focus on the substance of the electronic intelligence information the agency gathers and analyzes but exposed management and programmatic troubles within the agency."
Adds reader metrometro: "Of note: the government says the alleged NSA mole uses Hushmail, which is all the endorsement I need for a security system." Perhaps Mr. Drake was unaware of Hushmail's past cooperation with the US government?
By pointing to Wikipedia, you undermine your own argument. Wikipedia is not a reliable source of information.
A "regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time." It is. The budget is published, with certain details redacted for national security purposes. This is completely legal and constitutional.
Your Jefferson quote does not support your position. Drake is not being held without benefit of habeas corpus. He has been charged with a crime and indicted as described in Amendment 5 of the Constitution.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Article 1, Section 9: No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time.
If you're using this for justifying a detailed accounting of expenditures, I'd rather see it applied to how public money given to banks for "troubled asset relief" was spent. Banks are apparently threatening to appeal to the Supreme Court to keep this info under wraps. The amount wasted on whatever system the NSA was upgrading is complete round-off compared to TARP money.