Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists notes that a press release from the Air Force Materiel Command not only describes orders to Air Force personnel not to access material from Wikileaks, but effectively threatens families of Air Force employees with arrest if they access the information.

The February 3 Air Force release says:

Within AFMC, and across the Air Force, the WikiLeaks site has been blocked to protect the network. Other sites discovered to be posting the leaked information have also been blocked. According to AFMC's legal office, Air Force members -- military or civilian -- may not legally access WikiLeaks at home on their personal, non-governmental computers, either."

"To do so [on a government or personal computer] would not only violate the SECAF guidance on this issue, a violation of which subjects the violator to prosecution for dereliction of duty or for engaging in prejudicial/service discrediting conduct, it would also subject the violator to prosecution for violation of espionage under the Espionage Act," they said.

Also according to the legal office, "if a family member of an Air Force employee accesses WikiLeaks on a home computer, the family member may be subject to prosecution for espionage under U.S. Code Title 18 Section 793. The Air Force member would have an obligation to safeguard the information under the general guidance to safeguard classified information." 

This sort of argument for a extraordinarily broad reading of the Espionage Act will, in my view, ultimately be unhelpful to those seeking to use the act to prosecute Wikileaks founder Julian Assange or others who serve as conduits for classified leaks. If every American who looked at the documents on the New York Times website is a criminal, then the law is absurd.

The Air Force statement does not say specifically whether Air Force personnel are banned or blocked from accessing the Times or the British newspaper the Guardian--both among those news outlets that worked with Wikileaks and published some of the same documents. 

It is probably worth noting that prosecuting civilians is outside the authority of the Air Force, whatever it may think of the law.

UPDATE: A spokeswoman for the Air Force, Joanne Rumple, tells POLITICO that the story is being taken down pending a further review of the legal opinions it was based on.

"We’re pulling the story. It apparently confused many people," Rumple told me Monday afternoon. " We were just trying to give guidance to military and civilian servicemembers and employees to control their young'uns. However, we've been told there may be other guidance from [the Justice Department] that we haven't heard or see. So, we're going to make sure we get the right stuff before we put it back up."