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security clearance. All the other cases involved those and try to apply it to a journalist. As the
wording of the Espionage Act permits, it's extremely broad under earlier constitutional doctrines
that Espionage Act would almost surely be thrown out on grounds of over-breadth because it
actually applies in the wording to anyone on giving, plus, it doesn't use the word classified,
information relating to the national defense that's being protected, to an unauthorized person or
reading it or possessing it or keeping it, any of that. In other words, the literal wording would
apply even to readers of a newspaper who were warned that this is a leak of classified
information, and if they give it to their spouse or whoever and they protect it, they don't give it
back to an authorized authority as the wording of the law requires, they could be subject to this,
too.
Well, nobody had ever tried applying the law that far so clearly lead to if it got to the Supreme
Court to a judgment of unconstitutionality and then we wouldn't have any threat to hold over
people at all in terms of legal prosecution. Obama considered using this against Assange
actually in 2010 and 11. And remember, he gets out in 2017, early 2017. In all those years, he
did not apply it to Assange because of the reasons I've given and for the practical reason that
he could not explain using that against Assange and not against The New York Times or for that
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