The Power to Make Secrets out of the Public Record: "Retroactive classification."

[pnwmom]

This is the issue with many of Hillary's emails as Secretary of State, but it effects people across the government and all those who deal with them.

http://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=9475&context=penn_law_review

DO YOU HAVE TO KEEP THE GOVERNMENT’S SECRETS?

RETROACTIVELY CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS,
THE FIRST AMENDMENT,
AND THE POWER TO MAKE SECRETS OUT OF THE PUBLIC RECORD

By Jonathan Abel, Fellow, ConstitutionalLawCenter, StanfordLawSchool.

Now you see it. Now you don’t.

This is not a magician’s incantation. It is a description of retroactive classification, a little-known provision of U.S. national security law that allows the government to declassify a document, release it to the public, and then declare it classified later on. Retroactive classification means the government could hand you a document today and prosecute you tomorrow for not giving it back. Retroactive classification can even reach documents that are available in public libraries, on the Internet, or elsewhere in the public domain.

The executive branch has used retroactive classification to startling effect. The Department of Justice, for example, declassified and released a report on National Security Agency (NSA) wiretapping only to declare, years later, that the report was once again classified. The journalist who had received the report was threatened with prosecution if he did not return it. Retroactive classification has also targeted government documents revealing corruption in Iraq, violence in Afghanistan, and mismanagement of the national missile defense program. In each of these cases, the government released a document in an unclassified form through official channels—not through a leak—and then turned around to classify it.

This practice would be troubling enough if it actually removed the document from the public domain. But in the Internet Age, once a document is released to the public, it is often impossible for the government to retrieve it. While retroactive classification does not remove the document from the public domain, where our enemies can access it, retroactive classification does remove the document from the public discourse,prohibiting members of Congress, government auditors, and law-abiding members of the public from openly discussing it.

[catnhatnh]

1. You state "This is the issue with many of Hillary's emails as Secretary of State"

but I see no proof.

[pnwmom]

2. There is plenty of evidence.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/03/politics/hillary-clinton-email-controversy-explained-2016/

Was what she did illegal?

Probably not, said Anne M. Tomkins, the former U.S. attorney who oversaw the prosecution of Gen. David Petraeus over his having showed classified materials to his mistress and biographer.

Tomkins wrote this week in USA Today that Clinton committed no crime because she didn't "knowingly" share classified materials.

"Clinton is not being investigated for knowingly sending or receiving classified materials improperly," Tomkins wrote.

"Indeed, the State Department has confirmed that none of the information that has surfaced on Clinton's server thus far was classified at the time it was sent or received," she wrote. "Additionally, the Justice Department indicated that its inquiry is not a criminal one and that Clinton is not the subject of the inquiry."