What Does “classified Information” Mean and What Happens If You Divulge It
Media outraged that President Trump is sharing classified information with Russian foreign officials, but what is classified information? What happens if you open it? Good news: you have received permission to acquire this not-so-classified knowledge.
What is classified information
Generally speaking, classified information is knowledge or material that the government considers confidential and requires special attention or protection. Usually laws or regulations are passed in such a way that only certain groups of people – usually government officials – can access restricted content. Ideally, this information will never be available or studied by those who do not need it.
This information could be something relatively mundane to the public, such as official government documents, or something much more startling, such as the names of undercover fighters, the location of weapons of mass destruction, or information that ISIS is accidentally mentioned by Russian officials over coffee. … … Basically, this is information that the US government considers unsafe to the public. After all, if everyone knew the name of the undercover operative, they wouldn’t be undercover. If a terrorist organization could search Google for where the weapons were located, they could launch devastating precision strikes against those locations. You get the picture.
Different types of classified information
To access or even process classified information, you will need an official security clearance from the US government. To obtain this permit, you must have a job that requires it and you must go through a thorough background check.
But not all clearances are created equal. There are several levels of confidentiality of classified information, as defined in Ordinance No. 13549 . Here they go from least sensitive to most sensitive:
- Public trust: general knowledge that the public can know. No permissions required.
- Confidential: the lowest level of classified information. This information could potentially interfere with national security efforts if disclosed to the public.
- Secret: The second highest level of classified information and the level at which the most secret information is stored. Unauthorized disclosure of classified information will cause serious damage to national security.
- Top Secret: Highest level of secrecy. According to Decree No. 13549, unauthorized disclosure of this information could cause “extremely serious damage” to national security. Come up with secret codes for military operations, nuclear codes and possibly aliens or something.
Persons with security clearance can gain access to classified information from their own level, as well as to some information from levels below, if necessary. An official document can be marked with one or more of these levels, depending on the confidentiality of the information. The US government selects the level based on a careful assessment of the impact.
There is also a final unofficial category of classified information known as “unclassified”. This is previously classified information that can be passed on to those who do not have security clearance. Information may be disclosed “for official use only”, for example, to law enforcement agencies, or made available to the public in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act .
What happens if you disclose classified information
People are constantly disclosing classified information. Jeffrey Fields, a professor at the University of Southern California who once had Top Secret clearance, explains that it can be difficult to remember what information received in oral briefings is considered secret :
Government officials sometimes accidentally reveal classified details in casual conversations and media interviews. We may not hear about it because it is not in the interviewee’s or employee’s best interest to point it out ex post facto, or he or she may not even realize it at the time … which will never knowingly, but almost certainly inadvertently, share a tidbit of classified information in class. It is very difficult to remember many of the “small” details that are sensitive.
So mistakes are not uncommon. Those with a high level of security clearance are dealing with an enormous amount of classified information and sometimes things elude them. Take, for example, the case where Senator David Boren accidentally revealed the name of an undercover CIA agent during a press conference in 1991. Oops.
But what happens if you deliberately divulge classified information without permission? Well, this is a federal crime under the Espionage Act of 1917 and Section 18 of the US Act, Section 798 , which deals with the disclosure of classified information. Basically, this means that anyone who knowingly reports, provides, transfers or otherwise provides classified information to an unauthorized person is in great trouble.
This could mean a prison sentence of up to 10 years, a heavy fine, or possibly a charge of high treason, as the case may be. However, the US government decides who to prosecute for violating these rules. More often than not, they target whistleblowers who seek to expose government misconduct and allow others to divulge information as long as they are not deliberately trying to harm a country’s security.
So what about President Trump? Will he be in trouble for disclosing classified information to Russian officials? Don’t hold your breath. As NPR’s Rachel Martin Benjamin Wittes, Senior Fellow in Management Research at the Brookings Institution, explains , the president controls classified information:
… the definition of classified information is material the president wants to protect. So if the president wants to disclose it, he must disclose it. And disclosing information, which would be a very serious crime if someone else did it, almost certainly wouldn’t happen if the president did it. So, you know, if the question is, is there a criminal issue here, the answer is almost certainly no.
When it comes to what information is classified, he does his best, so he can tell whatever he wants. Of course, Wittes is careful to point out that what Trump is doing is technically not against federal law, doesn’t mean it’s not a problem. Actions such as his actions disrupt basic intelligence operations, exposing all our cards to the enemy. It’s not illegal, but it’s not ideal either.
Update: The previous explanation of how different levels of clearance can access information sounded like this top secret permission can view any and all classified information they want. It is not true. The text above has been revised to clarify this.