Journalists
and free press advocates are responding with alarm to newly released
documents revealing the U.S. government's secret rules for using
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court orders to spy on
reporters, calling the revelations "important" and
"terrifying."
The
documents—obtained and released by the Freedom of the Press
Foundation and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia
University through an ongoing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)
lawsuit filed last November—confirm long held suspicions that
federal officials can target journalists with FISA orders.
The two
2015 memos from former Attorney General Eric Holder to the Federal
Bureau of Investigation (FBI) lay out procedures to ensure that the
attorney general or deputy attorney general signs off on any FISA
applications "targeting known media entities or known members
of the media."
These
secret rules, as Cora Currier reported for The Intercept, "apply
to media entities or journalists who are thought to be agents of a
foreign government, or, in some cases, are of interest under the
broader standard that they possess foreign intelligence information."
"There's
a lack of clarity on the circumstances when the government might
consider a journalist an agent of a foreign power," Ramya
Krishnan, a staff attorney with the Knight Institute told Currier.
"Think about WikiLeaks; the government has said they are an
intelligence operation."
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