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Marius comments on Dark Arts 101: Using presuppositions - Less Wrong
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What is espionage? "The act of obtaining, delivering, transmitting, communicating, or receiving information about the national defense with an intent, or reason to believe, that the information may be used to the injury of..."
And, what's a journalist? Someone who publishes information/analysis. Some focus more on information-gathering, and then publish their discoveries. Others focus more on promoting a specific narrative, leaving information-gathering as a secondary concern. But a journalist who happens to obtain or publish information against their nation's interest is not automatically a spy.
You may choose to count saboteurs and assassins as spies, contrary to the dictionary definition, but consistent with popular usage. If you do, these represent a vanishingly small proportion of the overall number of spies, and are not germane to most discussions of espionage laws (laws against murder, theft, destruction of property, etc are not particularly controversial.)
For the most part, spies gather information and publish to a small audience. They are, essentially, doing journalism for a specific group and refraining from broader publication of their work.
The second most common espionage activity is propaganda - essentially journalism with a bias that is paid for by a foreign power. The audience may again be limited, as in spies dedicated to propagandizing only specific useful targets. But the goal is the transmission of information (false or true) rather than the gathering of information.
What distinguishes espionage from ordinary journalism is that the spy is paid by (or has her loyalty otherwise secured by) a power (nation, corporation, or other conspiracy) that we regard as hostile, and is willing to violate journalistic ethics in support of that employer. Simply limiting the scope of publication does not make one a spy; nor do violations of journalistic ethics; nor does targeted propaganda. It is the motivation that makes one a spy.
For the most part, spies gather information and publish to a small audience. They are, essentially, doing journalism for a specific group and refraining from broader publication of their work.
I cannot remember ever reading the word "journalism" used to refer to the act of providing information to a small, closed audience. Publication is an essential part of journalism, not an afterthought. And nobody says that handing over a report to your superiors constitutes "publishing".
If I watch a wealthy couple having sex for my enjoyment, I'm a voyeur. If I tell a few friends, I'm a gossip. If I tell it to the absent partner of one of them, I'm a private eye. If I tell it to the readers of the Sun, I'm a journalist.
Wikipedia: "Journalism is the practice of investigation and reporting of events, issues, and trends to a broad audience."
M-W: (a) : the collection and editing of news for presentation through the media (b) : the public press (c) : an academic study concerned with the collection and editing of news or the management of a news medium
I agree that the practice of espionage and [investigative] journalism are pretty much identical when it comes to acquiring information. But what they then do with that information is very different and is, indeed, the very reason why two separate concepts exist in the first place.
So, if you write for a small local paper, you're not a journalist?
If there's a qualitative difference, it may be that anyone can access something published by a journalist, if they pay for it. Whereas you can't buy the video feed from an Army UAV.
But if a spy sells secrets to anyone who'll pay for them, is he/she a journalist? :)
Actually the Army UAV's publish their video steams unencrypted and make them accessible to a broad public who has a video receiver.
So they're not spy planes; they're journalist planes!
More like if it's an internal paper that only selected employees are allowed to read. A small local paper can still be read by anybody in the world.
If it is broadly known that she's willing to sell those secrets to anyone, AND if she allows the stories to become widespread i.e. everyone can buy the story, not just the highest bidder, then yes, it seems to me that she's essentially operating a (probably) very expensive bulletin.
If you go to Washington DC, you will find a variety of newsletters with high prices and limited readership on very specialized topics involving impending government regulation. I've never heard it claimed that the people researching and publishing such newsletters are not journalists.
Do you need to fulfill certain requirements, other than money and interest, to be allowed to buy one?
Right, so I think you are getting to the crux of the matter: where the money/motivation comes from. The kind of journalist we like gets his money/cred/etc from the audience. If he writes articles that her audience values, he does better. The audience can be broad or narrow, but the important thing is that he'd like to broaden it if she can do so without lowering prices. This model is the most ethical because it puts the audience's and journalist's incentives in alignment.
But it's not the only model. For instance, many journalists get their money/motivation from the message rather than the audience. In the most extreme form, this is advertising/propaganda. Without getting that extreme, a journalist may be attempting as much to get a certain viewpoint out there (Coke is delicious, trade with China is dangerous, whatever) as to benefit her audience. She may well believe what she is saying; this makes such activities more ethical. But yellow or unethical journalism is still journalism.
A specific form of the above is espionage. If you write lots of articles for the NY Times about how important it is to invade Iran, that's propaganda. If you do so because the Saudi government is paying you to, you're conducting espionage. The Nazi regime paid a large number of "pacifist" authors in Europe, for instance. It's the dissemination of information/analysis on behalf of a foreign government, and it is (and was) considered to be espionage just as information-gathering on behalf of a foreign government is espionage.
I am certainly not promoting the prosecution of Assange as a spy, or the prohibition of unethical journalism. My point is that because espionage is a form of journalism, attempts to prevent espionage are always likely to result in the censorship of articles we'd like to see permitted. Likewise, restrictions on propaganda or advertising always ends up inhibiting free speech. We should be weakening rather than strengthening such laws.
Well, to be pedantic, doesn't that then include your example above of private eyes?
I could be wrong as I have little experience with the category, but I am under the impression that they are expected to maintain confidentiality with their clients, in a similar way to lawyers, doctors, priests and psychotherapists.
So if A hires Mr. Bogart to spy on B, and then C comes to Mr. Bogart and tells him "I'm interested in B, and a little bird told me you spied on B for someone", basic professional ethics would require Bogart to refuse to discuss anything related to A's case with a random stranger, potentially costing him his licence should he fail to do so (depending on what regulations apply in Bogart's country).
With Wikileaks we might soon live in a world where the information that spies gather get read by more people than a small, closed audience. Does that mean that those spies stop being spies?
If I send a secret report to my boss, and Mr. Smith manages to read it and publishes it on the Times, the journalist is Mr. Smith, not me,
It's still not intended to be broadcast beyond that closed audience. Most information of that nature becomes far less useful when your opponent knows that you know.
Limiting the scope of publication the way that many (most, I think) spies do puts one well beyond what most people think of as journalists.
If, in the days before the Internet, I observe an event and then write a report about it for school, I'm publishing to a very small audience, much as any spy would. (If it's a good report, someone other than my teacher and my parents might even read it.) But nobody thinks that I (in this fantasy a schoolchild) am a journalist.
These days, I might post my report to my blog and claim to be a citizen journalist; some people will accept this claim, while others will reject it out of hand. Even stuck with this controversy, this puts my audience (at least in the sense of the people who have the report available to them to read) far above most spies'. And even today, if I don't put it on my blog but only turn it in to school, nobody will think that I'm a journalist.
So I don't agree that spies are journalists.
Spies by definition are agents of foreign powers acting on your soil without proper registration - i.e., like the many representatives in embassies have registered as agents of that country and are allowed to operate on their behalf until/if expelled.
As far as Assange (IIRC) has not been in USA while the communiques were leaked, and it is not even claimed that he is an agent of some other power, then there was no act of espionage. It might be called espionage if and only if Manning was acting on behalf of some power - and even then, Manning would be the 'spy', not Assange.
Do you know whether that's the definition used by the espionage act?
I'm not an expert on relevant US legislative acts, but this is the legal definition in local laws here and I expect that the term of espionage have been defined a few centuries ago and would be mostly matching throughout the world.
A quick look at current US laws (http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/usc_sec_18_00000793----000-.html) does indicate that there is a penalty for such actions with 'intent or reason to believe ... for the injury of United States or advantage of any foreign nation' - so simply acting to intentionally harm US would be punishable as well, but it's not calling it espionage. And the Manning issue would depend on his intention/reason to believe about harming US vs. helping US nation, which may be clarified by evidence in his earlier communications with Adrian Lamo and others.