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A Republican senator has proposed a clampdown on whistle-blower website Wikileaks by announcing a legislation that would make it illegal to release information on informants working with the U.S. military.
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"There is a distinct difference between a whistleblower and a person who knowingly endangers the lives of many because of the information that they publish," Senator John Ensign (R-Nevada) said.
"With this newest document dump, WikiLeaks has knowingly endangered the lives of thousands and further threatened our military efforts. My legislation will extend the legal protections for government informants, such as the Iraqis named in this latest document dump, and will prevent an organization such as WikiLeaks from hiding like a coward behind a computer mainframe while putting lives in jeopardy," Ensign said.
Though Wikileaks has removed names from the Iraq war files it published last week and its founder Julian Assange said the leaked material poses no real risk to soldiers or civilians in Iraq, the U.S. Defense Department said the files published by Wikileaks had enough information to allow anybody to identify dozens of people.
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Currently, the Espionage Act prohibits disclosure of classified information about a "code, cipher, or cryptographic system of the United States" or "the communication intelligence activities of the United States."
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Violation of the law is a federal felony which is punishable with fine and/or up to 10 years in prison.
Ensign proposes to add "human intelligence" i.e. the name of informants and others who secretly aid the U.S. government in the list of non-disclosure.
Ensign's proposal came after Wikileaks released 400,000 Iraq war files of the U.S. military last week that suggest military excesses and reveal that more Iraqi civilians died during the conflict than previously thought.
Though the Pentagon has denied any wrongdoing during the Iraq war, the leaked reports suggest the U.S. authorities failed to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse, torture, rape and murder by Iraqi police and U.S. soldiers during the Iraq war.
The U.S. Department of Defense and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are currently investigating whether former army intelligence analyst Pfc. Bradley Manning has leaked the military files to Wikileaks.
In July, Manning was charged by the military with illegally taking secret State Department files and disseminating the classified video, later released by WikiLeaks, showing a U.S. military helicopter firing on a group of people in Baghdad. Two Reuters journalists and seven other people were killed in the 2007 incident.
The U.S. government is also exploring avenues of prosecuting WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange who earlier this year had released classified Afghan war files of the U.S. military.
However, going after Assange, legal experts said, would not be easy as Assange is not an American and has no intentions of stepping on the U.S. soil and submitting himself under U.S. jurisdiction.
