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Comment by ptero | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

It is not.

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