While US Attorney General Eric Holder apparently recused himself from the warrantless seizure of Associated Press telephone records, he reportedly signed the warrant application used to obtain the personal email of Fox News reporter James Rosen.
Kim Zetter, writing for Wired reports the warrant was obtained after the US Justice Department identified Rosen “as a possible criminal co-conspirator for communicating with a source who allegedly supplied him with classified information.” The affidavit filed by Reginald Reyes, (.pdf; 4.1MB) a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent, for the warrant cites an email exchange between Rosen and his source, Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, an employee of Lawrence Livermore National Lab. Zetter reports that “the suggestion was that Rosen broke the law by soliciting information from Kim, something that all journalists do routinely with sources.”
Because of these matters of surveilling journalists, Holder subsequently agreed to review the Justice Department’s guidelines for handling such investigations. One of Holder’s first moves was to announce that he’d hold an off-the-record meeting with news organizations to go over the guidelines. The New York Times and the Associated Press quickly announced they would not be in attendance.
In a meeting held after business hours on Thursday, 30 May, Holder is reported to have discussed expanding the requirement for high-level review of proposed subpoenas for the telephone records of journalists to include email. Also under consideration is the possibility of tightening a standard governing when telephone records and email can be sought without giving prior notice.
Charlie Savage, writing for the New York Times, points out that such efforts aren’t new, citing a 2003 effort to revise law enforcement investigative guidelines with regard to journalists. “In 2003, for example, a group of lawyers representing The Associated Press, Gannett, The Washington Post and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press worked with Patrick Kelley, then the acting general counsel of the FBI, to develop a proposal,” writes Savage. A draft text and section-by-section analysis were provided, but after the 2004 election the Bush administration let the matter drop.
As Gabe Rottman writing for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) notes, “What’s astonishing here is that never before has the government argued that newsgathering — in this case, asking a source to provide sensitive information — is itself illegal.
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Holder signed warrant for Fox News reporter’s email was originally published by ARTS & FARCES internet on Tuesday, 4 June 2013 at 8:11 AM CDT. Copyright © ARTS & FARCES LLC. All rights reserved. | ISSN: 1535-8119 | OCLC: 48219498 | Digital fingerprint: 974a89ee1284e6e92dd256bbfbef3751 (64.237.45.114)