The Espionage Act Reform Act
Starting in the early 1900s, Congress passed the Espionage Act and several related laws in
order to prevent government employees and other individuals entrusted with the government’s
secrets from selling or revealing that information to our enemies. Today, over 4 million people
have an active security clearances because of their work for or with the government. These
people have agreed to protect the government’s secrets. It is important that they keep their
word, and criminal penalties serve as an important deterrent for those who might violate that
trust. However, the secrecy laws go far beyond their stated purpose and have been repeatedly
abused by the executive branch to chill investigative journalism and to prevent oversight of
illegal government surveillance programs by Congress and the Federal Communications
Commission.
This bill narrows the Espionage Act and related secrecy statutes to ensure that criminal
penalties for revealing government secrets only apply to those entrusted with government
secrets. This includes government employees, defense contractors and individuals working in
critical infrastructure sectors. The bill also keeps in place criminal penalties for foreign spies,
individuals who are working for foreign governments, or those violating another federal law, who
conspire, aid, or abet a violation of these secrecy laws. Finally, the bill narrows the theft of
government property statute, so that it only applies to tangible things, and not just information.
This is already the standard adopted by the 9th circuit.
Every single person convicted, to date, under the Espionage Act could still have been
convicted had this bill been the law at the time they were prosecuted.
This bill:
● Protects journalists who solicit, obtain, or publish government secrets from prosecution.
● Ensures that each member of Congress is equally able to receive classified information,
including from whistleblowers. Currently, the law criminalizes the disclosure of classified
information related to signals intelligence to any member of Congress, unless it is in
response to a “lawful demand” from a committee. This puts members in the minority
party and those not chairing any committee at a significant disadvantage.
● Ensures that federal courts, inspector generals, the FCC, Federal Trade Commission,
and Privacy & Civil Liberties Oversight Board can conduct oversight into privacy abuses.
● Ensures that cybersecurity experts who discover classified government backdoors in
encryption algorithms and communications apps used by the public can publish their
research without the risk of criminal penalties. It is up to governments to hide their
surveillance backdoors; academic researchers and other experts should not face legal
risks for discovering them.

 Frequently Asked Questions
Q: ​How would this bill impact the government’s prosecution of Edward Snowden?
A: This bill would have no impact. The bill leaves in place criminal penalties for current and
former government employees and contractors who reveal classified information they obtained
through a trusted relationship with the government.
Q: How would this bill impact the government’s prosecution of Julian Assange?
A: The government would still be able to prosecute Julian Assange.
Q: What about hackers who break into government systems and steal our secrets?
A: The Espionage Act is not necessary to punish hackers who break into U.S. government
systems. Congress included a special espionage offense (U.S.C § 1030(a)(1)) in the Computer
Fraud and Abuse Act, which specifically criminalizes this.
Q: How have secrecy laws been abused to stop Congressional oversight of surveillance?
In 1976, the Church Committee revealed the existence of Project SHAMROCK, a 30-year,
illegal NSA surveillance program in which the agency obtained copies of Americans’ domestic
and international telegraph messages.
This public NSA ​document​ describes the impact 18 USC 798 had on Congressional oversight:
Probably the most interesting aspect of this confrontation, from an Agency standpoint,
was the lengthy disagreement over whether section 798 precluded any open session
and disclosure of information pertaining to NSA. Both Chairman Church and
Vice-Chairman Tower (through Senator Goldwater) requested the Congressional
Research Service (CRS) to provide a legal opinion on the matter. The American Law
Division of the CRS did provide a lengthy opinion which was inconclusive. The ​CRS
essentially said that section 798 may mean​ ​what NSA maintained it meant, i.e., ​that
no public disclosure was authorized, and thus the speech and debate clause of
the Constitution may not protect individual congressmen from the criminal
penalties of section 798​. The committee was extremely divided on the question and
voted several times not to conduct an open session. However, the chairman finally did
obtain a vote to have a public session, based on an opinion of the Senate
Parliamentarian that the Senate rules permitted the committee to decide the question.
This action was strongly questioned by the minority members of the committee, with
several asserting that the disclosure constituted a violation of law. NSA officials were not
required to be present during the disclosure to which NSA objected because the

 disclosure was not authorized and they too could have been considered to be subject to
the criminal penalties of section 798 had they participated.
Q: How have these secrecy laws prevented independent regulatory agencies from
investigating corporate violations of privacy laws?
After the NSA’s SHAMROCK program was revealed by the press in 1976, the FCC opened an
investigation, as the disclosure to the NSA by the phone companies of customer
communications violated federal communications law. As then-FCC Chairman Richard Wiley
described below in in an exchange with Congresswoman Bella Abzug at a hearing in 1976, the
carriers refused to answer the FCC’s questions, citing the secrecy rules in 18 USC 798. Unable
to get answers, the FCC then shut down its investigation:
Ms. Abzug:​ Are you saying that you think the statute bars you from looking into unlawful
interceptions, or from even inquiring as to whether there were unlawful interceptions ?
Mr. Wiley:​ As I tried to say before, when this first came to our attention, which was after
the Daily News story, we had never heard of Operation Shamrock in the FCC. We had
been told that there was going to be a complaint issued by the paper as a user of
communication services. That did not occur. We then went back and filed our own letter
with the carriers. They, acting on the advice of the Senate committee — that is the
Church committee and the staff of the Senate committee — as they told us, and 798
refused to give us the information. This would have provided us with the basis on which
to give these answers.
Ms. Abzug:​ And you dropped it merely because the corporations refused to give you
any information, even though they may have been acting unlawfully within the confines
of your general jurisdiction as a regulatory agency? What steps did you take beyond that
?
Mr. Wiley:​ As I pointed out in my statement, ​we didn't go further because of the
provisions of 798. If you do not like 798, I would suggest that you change the law,
but that is the way the provision reads.
...
Mr. Wiley:​ In all candor, I would like to carry out my responsibilities, but I do not know in
light of 798 what to do.
Q: How else have these laws been abused?
A: In 1981, NSA learned that journalist James Bamford was writing a book on the history of the
agency and had obtained from DOJ through FOIA documents about the NSA, which the NSA
did not think DOJ should have released. NSA attempted, unsuccessfully, to pressure the
journalist into returning the documents and not publishing the book, including ​threatening​ him
with prosecution under 18 USC 798.