Tess Bridgeman and Brianna Rosen write:

Military plans and capabilities, for example, are some of the most zealously guarded secrets a government can hold, because the compromise of that information can put at serious risk any military operations – and the lives of members of the armed forces – related to those plans or capabilities.

It is also important to pay attention to the classification markings on the documents at issue in the 31 Espionage Act counts. These markings reflect not just the level of sensitivity of the information, but are often used to indicate how the government knows the information contained in the document. Some of the documents listed in these counts bore markings indicating that the information was derived from human intelligence (HUMINT), signals intelligence (SIGINT), and sensitive imagery collection, while other information was collected under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). That means their compromise could risk not just exposing the information in the U.S. government’s possession, but the sometimes extremely sensitive sources and methods used to collect it.

Of particular concern is that, in addition to Top Secret information (which means its unauthorized disclosure could reasonably be “expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security”), the documents likely contained what is known as codeword material, the highest level of classification in the U.S. government and restricted to a small list of named individuals with a “need to know.” [Continue reading…]