After Julian Assange was indicted Thursday under the 1917 Espionage Act, the news was played as an escalation in President Trump’s war on the press—a “direct assault” on the First Amendment. There’s reason to worry this precedent could be used against journalists. Yet the WikiLeaks case also presents hard questions that can’t be waved away. The Espionage Act makes it a crime to obtain, transmit or retain national-security secrets without proper authorization. The law has been used to prosecute spies like Julius Rosenberg and...

Source: Wall Street Journal May 24, 2019 23:15 UTC