April 12, 2010:
Last December, Israeli police arrested a 23 year old Israeli woman, Anat Kam, for stealing 2,000 classified documents from military headquarters. Kam took the documents while she was doing her military service (women are subject to conscription in Israel). Kam gave the documents to a newspaper reporter. Kam has been under house arrest since December, while the government tries to get the documents back, and insure that the information does not spread. The government is threatening to prosecute Kam for espionage, which can get her 14 years to life in prison. If you are convicted of "leaking" classified information to the media, you get a year in jail. Kam was herself starting a career in journalism when the theft, and her part in it, was discovered. The reporter who got the documents has left the country, which complicates things a bit. The military is also in a uproar over poor internal security that enabled a low ranking soldier like Kam to get her hands on those documents, and get them out of military headquarters.