[5219] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: House committee ditches SAFE for law enforcement version
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (John Denker)
Mon Jul 26 13:19:41 1999
Date: Mon, 26 Jul 1999 10:01:18 -0400
To: cryptography@c2.net
From: John Denker <jsd@research.att.com>
In-Reply-To: <199907261131.HAA08657@thunk.epilogue.com>
At 07:31 AM 7/26/99 -0400, Bill Sommerfeld wrote:
>
>".. for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be
>questioned in any other place."
>
>But then again, i'm not a lawyer, and I'm also not sure how this
>provision has been interpreted in the past..
IANL but as you can imagine, members of congress take their privileges very
seriously. No court or executive agency would dare sanction a member for
something said in speech or debate, and the privilege has even been
extended to member's aides, e.g. in the Pentagon Papers case:
http://www.law.vill.edu/Fed-Ct/Supreme/Flite/opinions/408US606.htm
Leakage from the floor (or peremptory declassification, as Senator Gravel
did with the Pentagon Papers) has been a sore point in the past. It makes
agencies very leery of giving a "secret briefing" to members of congress.
But congress wants, and sometimes requires, such briefings.
The result is that each house has its own rules against disclosing secret
information. I couldn't easily find a copy of the rules, but I assume that
member who broke the rules could be censured or expelled. OTOH in a case
where there was a legitimate difference of opinion as to whether something
*should* have been classified, the member would have a very strong defense.
