Wrongful Unmasking Prevention Act

Wrongful Unmasking Prevention Act

This bill amends the federal criminal code to establish new criminal offenses:

• for knowingly making a request to unminimize (i.e., unmask) nonpublic information concerning a U.S. person to access classified information for a reason other than to understand or assess foreign intelligence information, or to determine whether classified information is evidence of a crime; and
• for intentionally, knowingly, or negligently disclosing classified information to an unauthorized person.

[Congressional Bills 115th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.R. 3585 Introduced in House (IH)]

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115th CONGRESS
  1st Session
                                H. R. 3585

To amend title 18, United States Code, to make it a criminal offense to 
knowingly make a request to access classified information concerning a 
    United States person to be unminimized pursuant to the Foreign 
  Intelligence Surveillance Act for a reason other than an authorized 
             reason under that Act, and for other purposes.


_______________________________________________________________________


                    IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                             July 28, 2017

 Mr. Farenthold (for himself and Mr. Gohmert) introduced the following 
       bill; which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary

_______________________________________________________________________

                                 A BILL


 
To amend title 18, United States Code, to make it a criminal offense to 
knowingly make a request to access classified information concerning a 
    United States person to be unminimized pursuant to the Foreign 
  Intelligence Surveillance Act for a reason other than an authorized 
             reason under that Act, and for other purposes.

    Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

    This Act may be cited as the ``Wrongful Unmasking Prevention Act''.

SEC. 2. UNLAWFUL UNMASKING OF NONPUBLIC INFORMATION OF UNITED STATES 
              PERSONS.

    Section 798 of title 18, United States Code, is amended by adding 
at the end the following new subsection:
    ``(e)(1) Whoever knowingly makes a covered request to access 
classified information for any reason other than a reason described in 
paragraph (3) shall be imprisoned not more than ten years.
    ``(2) Whoever intentionally, knowingly, or negligently discloses 
classified information to a person, unless such person is authorized to 
receive such information for a reason described in paragraph (3), shall 
be imprisoned not more than ten years.
    ``(3) A reason described in this paragraph is any of the following:
            ``(A) To understand foreign intelligence information.
            ``(B) To assess the importance of foreign intelligence 
        information.
            ``(C) To determine whether the classified information is 
        evidence of a crime which has been, is being, or is about to be 
        committed.
    ``(4) In this subsection:
            ``(A) The term `covered request' means a request for 
        nonpublicly available information concerning a United States 
        person to be unminimized pursuant to section 101, 301, 402, 
        501, or 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 
        1978 (50 U.S.C. 1801 et seq.).
            ``(B) The terms `foreign intelligence information' and 
        `United States person' have the meaning given such terms in 
        section 101 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 
        1978 (50 U.S.C. 1801).''.
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