News Media and the Indigenous Fight for Federal Recognition

since 2010—the first time the United States has used the Espionage Act to prosecute a publisher of classified information, rather than an informant. Assange is currently being held in a jail in London. Engelman and Shenkman’s study of the Espionage Act of 1917, the first history of this important and troublesome law, concludes with a call for its replacement. “Digitization has increased both the capacity of the state to amass extraordinary levels of secret information and the potential for journalists to obtain that information, raising the stakes in a constitutional crisis that can only be addressed by replacement of the Espionage Act,” they write (pp. 269-270). Whatever form that replacement might take, it will need to distinguish between secrets that serve the public interest and those that impede just and democratic decision-making. A worthy replacement will also need to distinguish between disclosure of classified information and its publication. Engelman and Shenkman’s compelling history should inform deliberations about the roles of secrecy and publicity in our digital world for some time to come.