Kristian Saucier - https://www.google.com/search?safe=strict&q=kristian+saucier
He took photos of a sub he was stationed on, apparently just for his own use, with no intention of "spying" He's going to jail for a few years.
Might want to edit that link to:
https://www.google.com/search?safe=strict&q=kristian+saucier
or flag it NSFW - when I clicked it, SafeSearch bounced me to the one I just posted. I'm actually at work, so don't intend to investigate, but my guess is "Kristen Saucier" is a different person in a different line of work.
Done - thanks.
In that situation, the military may sometimes be stricter than a civilian agency would be for the same infraction. Anything dealing with nuclear tech has a higher chance of turning into a much bigger deal. The other thing is that he tried to destroy evidence, which usually makes matter worse.
Be that as it may, cases like Saucier's are fairly rare. It happens, but it's the exception rather than the rule.
Unlikely. You would lose your job for sure, but typically for a criminal prosecution to result there has to be an element of willful unauthorized disclosure of classified info, or very high impact of the disclosure of classified info.
In practice this means that the people who get prosecuted have almost always been people intentionally sharing secrets with foreign entities (spying).
I only know of one case where charges were brought against someone who was not doing that. It was when the feds retaliated against Thomas Drake for whistleblowing against the NSA. Even then the charges got dropped.