“Legal scholarship provides little clarity regarding § 641’s interpretation; only a few scholars have even recognized § 641’s application to information,” reads a Columbia Law Review article about the statute’s use for prosecuting leakers, written by Jessica Lutkenhaus, an attorney focused on criminal defense at the law firm Wilmer Hale. “The circuits disagree about whether § 641 applies to information, and, if it does, what its scope is: What information constitutes a ‘thing of value’?”
Sharing information is arguably fundamentally different from stealing “a thing of value,” Freedom of the Press Foundation’s Timm points out. “You can’t steal a government Jeep or take something tangible or physical from government offices,” Timm says. “But copying something can be construed as different from stealing something. You copy it, and the original thing is still there, and you just…