Revealing a national secret is considered treason in Finland, and the maximum penalty for the crime is four years imprisonment.
A military lawyer working for the Finnish Defence Forces (FDF) has been charged with revealing a national secret as well as a breach of duty offence.
The lawyer is suspected of using a messaging app to share a photo taken in an area where photography was prohibited.
The crime is suspected to have taken place in the autumn of 2024, while the charges were filed at Helsinki District Court last month. The court has not yet set a hearing date.
Revealing a national secret is considered treason in Finland, and the maximum penalty for the crime is four years imprisonment.
A person is committing a crime if he or she acquires, publishes, transmits or discloses information without permission that must be kept secret for the sake of Finland’s security.
Documents shared by the FDF say that the military lawyer had received a written warning about taking photos in prohibited areas in December 2024.
The military agency only found out last February that the lawyer had also allegedly shared the photo on a messaging app.
Shared on WhatsApp
According to the FDF, sharing the image was a more serious breach of information security than simply taking the photo — given the image’s subject and where it was taken.
The nature and location of the photo has not been disclosed in documents available to the public.
The suspect offered the FDF an explanation, admitting to have shared the image with two people on WhatsApp. But the lawyer pushed back on the FDF’s assertion that WhatsApp is a social media platform, suggesting that it is an encrypted messaging system.
The suspect noted that they reported the incident and the content of the image to the Defence Forces when the investigation was opened.
The military lawyer noted that they continued working normally after being handed the warning in December 2024 — suggesting that nothing had come to light regarding the matter since that would require being dismissed from the job.
However, the FDF decided to suspend the suspect from duty until a final decision about the matter has been reached.
