The United States does not have an Official Secrets Act (UK does).

Outside of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, if you were never granted a clearance or read in to specific programs (you'd know; you have to sign an NDA and such), you have no obligation to keep classified information secret. Arguably if you gave information/support/etc. to enemies of the US, it might be treason, but there's no need for that information to be classified in the first place for it to be treason.

If you have had a clearance, even for unrelated stuff, you don't want to touch these -- it can be a violation of your NDA for the other materials.

I am not a lawyer; I am not your lawyer; this is not legal advice.

Or if you're an artist, you can stuff a sd card with the documents into a stuffed animal already stuffed with the documents in shredded form and then put them in some of the worlds most treasured art galleries and museums. no problem.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/09/opinion/the-art-of-dissent...

USG has a serious generational split problem. I wonder if they will ever resolve it or if they'll let this go on long enough to turn their snowden's, manning's, appelbaum's into modern Trotsky's

Classification aside, these documents are still stolen, aren't they? Couldn't a reasonable case be made that downloading them constitutes handling stolen property?

I don't think so. Despite mealy-mouthed online commentators' poor wording, the law doesn't see making copies of information as "stealing" in any way.

Perhaps I should say 'copyright violation' rather than 'handling stolen property'.

Government-produced content like this isn't subject to copyright, if I recall correctly.

Looks like you are probably right:

"Usually, a work receives copyright protection as soon as pen hits paper. However, a work created by an NSA employee, or any USG employee, as a part of the employee's official duties is not entitled to copyright protection"[1]

[1]https://www.nsa.gov/research/tnw/tnw193/article4.shtml

Just because something is public or leaked does not automatically make it declassified. This material is still classified until officially declassified by appropriate classification authorities. Persons with a US security clearance should avoid viewing this material. I don't know what the NSA is telling its people. When I was a fed, before the Snowden leaks, we were already warned about not visiting Wikileaks, and to avoid viewing classified material outside of the proper facilities established for doing so (that meant the internet, for one).

Of course, if the government had its way, no one would view this material. But that's another discussion.

Only the government can declassify a document, even if it's available through other means. These are still classified documents, you should at minimum treat them with respect.

IANAL: Not unlike copyrighted material, if you are found to be distributing classified documents, you are definitely at more risk for prosecution. Holding classified documents in your personal possession, however, won't likely cause any real means for prosecution.

Read the documents, be informed as to what they mean, then act on them through legal means -- in the voting booth or through the courts.