Leaking

It's "legal" when there is no law (or contract I suppose...) preventing you from doing it. In most government or corporate jobs there are designated "spokesmen" that are authorized to release information to the public. If you aren't one of those people then you usually aren't "legal" if you are doing it.

In many cases, if you are acting on an issue where there is a large risk of people getting injured or laws are being broken people are heralded for leaking info. Those people usually take an awful lot of risk in doing it though. You'd better have tried the "approved route" and be VERY sure you are 100% right before ever trying it.

The one's that get fired are usually the ones that bypass the system or are just flat out wrong. If you are right the media and public opinion can serve to protect you from getting fired. It doens't make it "legal" but the media coverage makes peopel stop and think hard about taking any legal action against the whistleblower.

I join in fishin's opinion, and write separately only to add a few additional comments.

There is a tendency to view a "leak" as something undesirable and injurious. Our current president, for instance, vowed to stop such leaks of information when he came into office. But this administration has been just as leaky as previous administrations, for the simple reason that the leaking most often is done as a matter of policy, not as a matter of individual initiative. Leaks, in other words, are just as often done for a government as they are done to it.

For example, in the most notorious case of a leak for the GWB administration, a newspaper columnist (Bob Novak) was informed by undisclosed White House officials that Valerie Plame, the wife of former ambassador Joseph Wilson, was actually a CIA operative. Now, it's quite possible that this information was divulged by a person acting on his or her own initiative (and thus acting directly contrary to the administration's "no leak" mandate). On the other hand, it's just as likely that the leak was authorized as a means of advancing White House policy.

So, when is a leak illegal? Certainly, when it violates a specific law. Are all leaks the misdeeds of disgruntled individuals, acting contrary to orders? Hardly.