[An Old Man]

With nothing more than the Constitution as your guide, which way do you vote?

Shall we give him a pass?

or

Should we hang him from a yard arm?

[WayneS]

“federal employees and contractors who believe they may have inadvertently accessed or downloaded classified or sensitive information on computers that access the web via non-classified government systems, or without prior authorization, should contact their information security offices for assistance.”

Translation: If you turn yourself in for thought crimes we will go easier on you than if we catch you ourselves.

[theDentist]

Hmmmm... I guess this applies to reading the NYT as well?

[taxtruth]

The government who created this mess should go to jail.

[circlecity]

So, Federal employees can’t read the NY Times without breaking the law?

[JimSEA]

By similar logic, shouldn’t I be guilty of receiving stolen documents if I read any of them?

[ThePatriotsFlag]

If they read it they break the law. So? What’s the downside? D’ya think Holder is actually going to do anything?

[Revel]

The federal government does not want their own people questioning what those above them are doing. They just want their peons to obey orders and never question them. That is what this is all about.

[antiRepublicrat]

Those with security clearances know that they are supposed to abide by “need to know.” Even if they have access to classified information, they are not supposed to read it unless they have a legitimate need to know it. Classified systems are not for nosy people. That the information has been published does not remove its status as classified information, thus those with security clearances are expected to not read any of it.

There’s no constitutional issue involved for these people. They volunteered to abide by the security regulations in order to get their jobs. I don’t think hearing a headline containing some of it on the radio would lose somebody his job. However, downloading it from WikiLeaks would probably get someone in trouble. He just knowingly placed classified material onto his home computer, something that is highly frowned upon.

[Gaffer]

Regardless of the Constitution, there are additional agreements that cleared personnel usually sign that submit them to US Federal penalties, commonly the old 5 years/$250K fine thing, about dealing properly with ‘classified’ information. For those that have access to highly classified information which is usually backed up with a whole barrage of lie detector tests, explaining how you only viewed that classified material on an uncleared home machine is problematic at the very minimum....

[Tublecane]

“In the view of the US government, many of the WikiLeaks documents are still classified, and reading classified documents without clearance is illegal”

That’s idiotic. Makes a mockery of what “classified” means when the documents have been made public and are readily available.

[Grut]

What part of "blown" doesn't the government understand?

As an aside, warning people not to read the documents because they're classified only confirms that they're the real McCoy.