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Comment by skee8383 | Hacker News Reader

Unless he was trespassing on gov property i don't see how it can be espionage. If the gov flies a top secret plane or drone over you house and you happen to see it or even video it, i don't see how that's anyone's fault but theirs.

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He doesn't have to trespass to break the law -- taking pictures from the outside is enough.

18 U.S. Code § 795(a) )Photographing and sketching defense installations): Whenever, in the interests of national defense, the President defines certain vital military and naval installations or equipment as requiring protection against the general dissemination of information relative thereto, it shall be unlawful to make any photograph, sketch, picture, drawing, map, or graphical representation of such vital military and naval installations or equipment without first obtaining permission of the commanding officer of the military or naval post, camp, or station, or naval vessels, military and naval aircraft, and any separate military or naval command concerned, or higher authority, and promptly submitting the product obtained to such commanding officer or higher authority for censorship or such other action as he may deem necessary.

I'm not sure whether protected airspace would count as an installation, but the military base itself certainly would. Per the article,

>> Dreamland Resort, at dreamlandresort.com, started by Arnu in 1999, features YouTube videos taken from drones flown over places around Area 51, satellite images of the base, a discussion forum with posts on the topic, articles on test flights, “black projects” and UFOs, and what it says are photos of new vehicles such as the so-called “super secret” Northrop Grumman RQ-180 unmanned stealth aircraft shown flying in 2021.

Which leaves open also the possibility that they are investigating someone else; eg, someone with clearance getting an ego boost by posting info on the forums, which isn't unprecedented.

I don't know the laws on this, but from a common sense point of view such activities could be espionage if done as part of an espionage mission but could also not be espionage is done for other purposes. For instance if you happen to record which naval ships are in a harbor, that's not espionage. If on the other hand you are sending that film to German intelligence in exchange for your income as a German spy the act of taking that film is probably espionage.

IANAL, but I think distributing classified information, even if you did not get it illegally, is still a crime. So if a secret thing flies over your house you are probably OK taking its picture, but if you share it with the world the feds may come for you.

It is not.

this is false, prior restraint is not a thing. It is forbidden to improperly distribute classified information that you have access to as a security clearance holder, but just think for a moment whether there have been any charges filed for any newsmedia organizations that reported on the snowden leaks, etc.

Interesting, thank you for the clarification!

To further clarify, if the newspapers has anything to do with the act of giving them classified documents, they are guilty of a crime. So if you walk into the NYT and say " I have these secret documents, want them" they are fine and can publish them and (depending on how you got them) you get to spend a long time in jail. If a reporter comes to you and says "hey, can you sneak out classified documents" and you do, you both go to jail.

It's worth noting that news agencies will often give the government a chance to explain why they should not publish the files in truly important cases. If that's likely to be "if you publish the plans for D-Day, many people will die. So please don't"

If they're flying secret aircraft over the public it's a really, really high bar to think they can charge anyone with a crime in the US for taking a picture in 2022.

This is not the 1950s or something where 99% of the public didn't have a camera at all and someone would have had to make a big effort to go out of their way to photograph a secret aircraft... More like they are expecting to fly the craft over 1M+ cameras and think it's not going to be captured, which is astoundingly ridiculous.

Citizens have no right to privacy from being photographed in public in the US, the government should not have a double standard.

It comes down to intent.

You’re trying to reduce both “I took a picture of a sunset and a top secret drone happened to zip by and appear in my picture” and “I routinely fly drones next to top secret military installations to photograph their goings on” to the same thing.

But I am pretty sure that is not how it works.

This theoretical double standard doesn't exist. In you follow aviation news circles closely, you'll see every couple months these days a photo go viral that someone has captured of actively classified aircraft operating in open areas. Nothing ever happens to these people because obviously what they're doing cannot be illegal.

The article doesn't really provide any information about what specific material on the site they took objection with, but it seems unlikely that it was just a photos of classified aircraft operating in the open, as that material exists in lots of places that don't get raided by the FBI.

In the US, classified information only legally binds people with security clearances, and people who are complicit/conspire with them to violate them. But otherwise, you can publish it. There is one legally untested exception, which is nuclear-related restricted data.

> features YouTube videos taken from drones flown over places around Area 51

These activities could be

What if you fly a drone over a top secret base with a no fly zone over it?

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

100% ok as long as the drone is not of the order Diptera.

Maybe seeing a secret government aircraft from private property makes that property into government property for as long as it takes to render the aircraft unseen.

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