Feel free to read wikipedia as a starting point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classified_information http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classified_information > Acce

Feel free to read wikipedia as a starting point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classified_information http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classified_information > Access is restricted by law or regulation to particular groups of people and mishandling can incur criminal penalties. I'm sure someone could have tried to throw the hammer down about the Snowden leak, but they probably realized they would look ridiculous doing that over a few Powerpoint slides vs. thousands of diplomatic cables and other information which were released by Manning. Also note: Snowden is releasing specific information related to a specific crime. I keep repeating this because it is highly relevant to whistleblower protections && reporter shields etc.