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.
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?
"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]
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.