The Freedom of the Press

The A.P. said that the Justice Department informed it on Friday that law enforcement officials had obtained the records for more than 20 telephone lines of its offices and journalists, including their home phones and cellphones. It said the records were seized without notice sometime this year.

The organization was not told the reason for the seizure. But the timing and the specific journalistic targets strongly suggested they are related to a continuing government investigation into the leaking of information a year ago about the Central Intelligence Agency’s disruption of a Yemen-based terrorist plot to bomb an airliner.

[...]

The Newspaper Association of America issued a statement saying: "Today we learned of the Justice Department’s unprecedented wholesale seizure of confidential telephone records from the Associated Press. These actions shock the American conscience and violate the critical freedom of the press protected by the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights.”

  NYT

Maybe now that it’s them being targeted, the press will start extracting itself from the Beltway anus?

Justice Department regulations call for subpoenas for journalists’ phone records to be undertaken as a last resort and narrowly focused, subject to the attorney general’s personal signoff. Under normal circumstances, the regulations call for notice and negotiations, giving the news organization a chance to challenge the subpoena in court.

[...]

“Because we value the freedom of the press,” [DOJ spokesman] Miller added, “we are always careful and deliberative in seeking to strike the right balance between the public interest in the free flow of information and the public interest in the fair and effective administration of our criminal laws.”

And the none-of-the-public’s business what its government is doing interest. Don’t forget that.

The Justice Department did not respond to a question about whether a similar step was taken in the other major government leak investigation Mr. Holder announced last June. It is believed to be focused on a New York Times reporter, David E. Sanger, and his disclosures in articles and in a book about a joint American-Israeli effort to sabotage Iranian nuclear centrifuges with the so-called Stuxnet virus.

I think we can safely surmise our own answer.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.