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Comment by icpmacdo | Hacker News Reader

Would it be a crime if I were to read one of the emails?

It may be a crime to link directly to a zip file containing the data in an IRC chat, as we saw with Barrett Brown [1].

That made me reconsider even posting this Wikileaks page to HN (yay chilling effect). But I'm not aware of any criminal law preventing you from reading published content on Wikileaks or submitting a link to them on a social media site.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrett_Brown

Any chance they could get you for downloading copyrighted emails without a license?

IANAL, but copyright violations almost always have to do with distribution rather than downloads. They get P2P users on the technicality that to download, you also end up uploading.

Interesting.

I wonder if disabling uploading is any defense.

That's not a technicality, and with most clients (e.g. BitTorrent) it's quite possible to download without uploading. There's a fair amount of work focused around penalizing people for downloading without uploading.

All I really torrent anymore is Linux images, and there I usually find I can't seed more than I download if I try.

That zip file contained 5,000 stolen credit card numbers, along with CVVs and ID info.

Correct, he copied and pasted a link (posted by someone else) to a zip file from one chat room to another chat room, that contained 5000 cc's.

And is now facing "12 federal charges relating to identity theft and fraud" for doing so.

In the same vein, and according to leaked TPP documents (incidentally also leaked by WL), simply linking to infringing content would be grounds for forcing ISPs to notify you of your infringement and subsequently disconnect you.

It's certainly quite clear that submitting such links to social media services would permit retaliation against you.

The real question is, what does it really mean for something to "be a crime," and does it really matter? If you mean could the US government do anything it wanted to you because you read one of the emails, then the answer is a definite yes.

If you are a DoD employee or contractor, then the answer is 'yes'.

[1] http://blogs.fas.org/secrecy/2013/06/dod-classified/

(assuming there is classified information in the documents)

The Stratfor documents were accessed through the internet. If anything in there is classified someone at Stratfor should be facing a criminal investigation for storing classified documents on an unclassified system.

That doesn't mean it isn't also a crime to access the classified files (in certain circumstances, as above).

That's the great thing about the US government now - everything's a crime, oh boy!

thoughtcrime, maybe.

Not if you live in China

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