Six Journalists Arrested, Charged While Covering Trump Inauguration Protests

from the not-so-free-press dept

We’re in something of an era of firsts here in America. We have our first billionaire President, for instance. Add to that that, on his first day as President Elect, Donald Trump saw fit to take to Twitter to take aim at the First Amendment. Fears for what a Trump presidency means for the rights of the press and for free speech rights have compounded since then, supercharged by Trump himself, who has constructed a narrative in which the press is his foil, either because he truly believes that’s the case or out of pure political expediency. Whichever the case, we had another first as on the very day of Trump’s inauguration, his first day officially as President of the United States, police managed to arrest and charge six journalists for the crime of covering the protests coinciding with the ceremony.

There had already been reports of two such arrests, but we now learn of four more.

A documentary producer, a photojournalist, a live-streamer and a freelance reporter were each charged with the most serious level of offense under Washington DC’s law against rioting, after being caught up in the police action against demonstrators.

The Guardian learned of their arrests after reporting on Monday that the journalists Evan Engel of Vocativ and Alex Rubinstein of RT America had also been arrested and charged with felonies while covering the same unrest on Friday morning.

Six arrests, six journalists charged, and six arraignments and releases pending future hearings in the coming months. The arrest reports for each are remarkably free of any detail on specific actions these individuals are to have undertaken which would violate the law.

None of the arrest reports for the six journalists makes any specific allegations about what any of them are supposed to have done wrong. Keller’s report, which also covers the arrests of an unknown number of unidentified other people, includes a note that a police vehicle was vandalized. “I had absolutely nothing to do with the vandalism,” said Keller.

Reports on the arrests of five of the six journalists contain identical language alleging that “numerous crimes were occurring in police presence”. They state that windows were broken, fires were lit and vehicles were damaged. “The crowd was observed enticing a riot by organizing, promoting, encouraging and participating in acts of violence in furtherance of the riot,” the police reports said.

One of the privileges of American law is typically that it avoids levying legal responsibility on one individual for the actions of others. There’s little sense generally in pointing at a crowd of people, a percentage of which are engaging in unlawful behavior, and tossing a legal net over them all. There’s even less sense in this when the net catches members of the press, who the public relies on for reporting on newsworthy events. And there’s even less sense still when the reporting is on a political matter.

Now, it’s not as though it was only upon President Trump’s inauguration that journalists were suddenly being arrested while performing their jobs. It happened on several occasions under Barrack Obama, beacon of transparency and press access though he claimed to be. Instead, this is something of a continuation of an attack on a free and open press, buttressed by a President engaged in open warfare with any press outlets he doesn’t find favorable.

The signals have been sent since before his inauguration and since: access and information is going to be cut off. In response, several press outlets have announced investments into their investigative reporting teams. If the arrest of those journalists covering their stories continues to be accepted, that doesn’t leave the public with much of a press at all.

Filed Under: arrested, donald trump, free speech, freedom of the press, journalism, protests, reporters, riots, washington dc

Trump Muzzles Federal Employees; Reporters Start Asking For Leaks

from the we'll-see-how-this-goes... dept

Reports started coming out this morning that the new Trump Administration had told the EPA that it needed to stop doing anything publicly without first getting approval from the White House (in addition to freezing grants and contracts). According to a memo that was sent around to EPA staff:

If you can’t read that, the key parts say:

• No press releases will be going out to external audiences.
• No social media will be going out. A Digital Strategist will be coming on board to oversee social media. Existing, individually controlled, social media accounts may become more centrally controlled.
• No blog messages.
• The Beach Team will review the list of upcoming webinars and decide which ones will go forward.
• Please send me a list of any external speaking engagements that are currently scheduled among any of your staff from today through February.
• Incoming media requests will be carefully screened.
• No new content can be place on any website. Only do clean up where essential.
• List servers will be reviewed. Only send out critical messages, as messages can be shared broadly and end up in the press.

Why yes, such messages may end up in the press.

Of course, it quickly became clear that this was not just for the EPA. The USDA received similar marching orders. Same with the Department of Health & Human Services and possibly others as well, including the Department of Commerce, being told it can’t even publish the basic research it releases for US companies.

It’s possible to say that this is just the Trump administration hitting the pause button to figure out what’s going on before moving forward again, but many in these agencies are quite worried that they’re going to be muzzled for political reasons. Most of the people working in these agencies are civil servants, not political appointees, and their work is not at all political. The press releases and blog posts are generally to release new findings, research and data from taxpayer funded studies. This shouldn’t be controversial or reviewed for political motives.

Of course, this kind of thing is hardly unprecedented. For many years, we wrote about the ridiculousness of then Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper gagging Canadian scientists from talking about factual research that was politically inconvenient (including a study on fish stock). This kind of gagging on “politically sensitive” but factual science was only lifted last year once Justin Trudeau came into office. Of course, just a few months before that, the UK similarly started muzzling scientists to stop them saying anything the politicians didn’t like.

One hopes the Trump administration will not be putting in place similar policies.

Of course, if that is the plan, it should be a huge boon for investigative journalists. And they’re already hunting for sources. As the reports on the gag order came out this morning, lots of reporters stepped up on Twitter with notes on how to contact publications with information:

So, perhaps this kind of gag order will lead to a golden age of whistleblowing. Unfortunately, it may also lead to further crackdowns on whistleblowers. Once again, as we’ve explained over and over again the past few years, the Obama administration was the most aggressive and proactive in cracking down on whistleblowers and the press, and they’ve now handed off that power and precedent to the Trump administration, which will have a pretty big opportunity to use it.

Filed Under: commerce department, donald trump, epa, gag order, hhs, leaks, reporters, usda

If You're Worried About What President Trump Can Do To The Press, Blame President Obama

from the look-at-that-roadmap dept

President Elect Donald Trump has made no secret of his dislike for any reporter who reports stuff about him in a negative light, and throughout the campaign and even after being elected, he has spent a tremendous amount of time insulting, attacking and berating the press. Oh, and threatening them with bogus defamation claims that rarely seem to turn into actual lawsuits. Trump famously promised to “open up” the libel laws if he became President, though there really isn’t that much he can do on that issue directly.

But, as a story at Politco is noting, it’s probably not libel laws that reporters should be worried about: it’s things like the Espionage Act and bogus intrusive investigations of reporters by the DOJ. And, really, while the report only mentions this in passing, if a President Trump goes down that route, it’ll be because he’s picking up on the trend created by his predecessor, President Obama. As we’ve noted, President Obama has used the Espionage Act against more whistleblowers than all other Presidents in history combined. In fact, he used it more than twice as many times as all others combined. Think about that.

During the Obama administration, the Justice Department brought more criminal charges under the Espionage Act?a vague 1917 law that makes it illegal to share information related to national security?than it had under all previous presidents combined. It used the Espionage Act seven times against government employees who spoke to reporters. If Trump continues to aggressively prosecute reporters? sources, it will make it much tougher for journalists to report on the government.

?What is very true is that an increase in prosecution of leakers and leak investigations has a huge chilling effect on the ability to report important information about what the government is up to,? said Laura Handman, a partner at Davis Wright Tremaine who specializes in media and First Amendment law.

This could be especially damaging to journalists because confidential sources and government leakers are likely to be the best source of exposing potential wrongdoing in Trump?s government.

And that’s not the only intimidating tip that a President Trump could pick up from President Obama:

Trump?s Justice Department could also ask for more federal grand jury subpoenas against reporters who rely on confidential sources to report on government activities.

This is another tactic that the Obama administration has used. New York Times reporter James Risen was nearly held in contempt of court and thrown in jail when he refused to identify one of his sources, who was being prosecuted under the Espionage Act.

The Trump administration could even try to use the Espionage Act to bring criminal charges against journalists, according to First Amendment experts.

?There are sections of the Espionage Act which have now been used, under President Obama, against leakers which could be used against those who publish information obtained from those leakers,? Abrams said.

The article also talks about the infamous and ridiculous case of James Rosen, a Fox News reporter that the Obama administration came mighty close to using the Espionage Act on, calling Rosen a “co-conspirator” in the leaking of confidential information. Then Attorney General Eric Holder later admitted he regretted this decision, but it was pretty difficult to take seriously.

Here at Techdirt we called out the Obama administration many, many times on these highly questionable tactics, intimidating and threatening whistleblowers and journalists alike. And people told us we were overreacting. Somehow, I get the feeling that those who opposed Trump in the election will suddenly have a change of heart over these practices. If Trump goes down that road, those who are upset should be blaming President Obama and his Justice Department for leading the way.

Filed Under: barack obama, donald trump, espionage act, president obama, reporters, sources, subpoenas, whisteblowing

Bad Idea From Famed First Amendment Lawyer: Press Should Sue Trump For Libel

from the no,-they-shouldn't dept

Floyd Abrams is one of, if not the most famous First Amendment lawyers in the country. He gets and deserves a ton of respect. His most famous case was defending the NY Times against the US government when Richard Nixon tried to block the NY Times from publishing the Pentagon Papers. And he’s been involved in many other seminal First Amendment cases as well. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t sometimes make mistakes — like the time he insisted that SOPA wouldn’t violate the First Amendment because it was censorship for a good cause (i.e., for his clients at the MPAA). Or the time he falsely accused Wikileaks of indiscriminately leaking information that was actually being more carefully distributed.

And while I totally agree with Abrams in claiming that Donald Trump is the “greatest threat to the First Amendment since the passage of The Sedition Act of 1918,” I disagree with his thoughts on how to fight it. His argument is that the press that Trump has been insulting should sue Trump for defamation:

“Trump has denounced people in language that punctuated his campaign,” Abrams tells The Hollywood Reporter in a follow-up conversation. “If what he said is not pure protected opinion, then the press side ought to take a hard look and see if they have a basis for commencing litigation. They have to think creatively as no candidate in living memory has denounced the press as he has; no candidate has banned journalists from covering him because they didn’t like the tone or substance of what they are saying. And so, press lawyers ought to bear in mind that if things get rough, if the relationship is one of constant denigration and threats, it may be time for journalists to think about using libel laws in way that is constitutional.”

Admittedly, he has a lot of caveats in there, but it’s still a silly suggestion and would almost certainly backfire in a big way. Yes, Trump himself is somewhat famous for his bogus defamation threats addressed to the media, as well as his claimed plans to “open up libel laws” as President. So, you could argue that there’s some potential irony or karmic retribution were he to be hit with a defamation lawsuit by the very reporters he’s been threatening for so long.

But it’s also a strategy that seems highly likely to backfire in any number of ways. Suing a sitting President is just difficult, first of all. Second, the bar to defamation is quite high — as it should be — and it’s difficult to see how Trump has crossed that line at all, even as he falsely seems to believe the bar for defamation is much lower. Third, this is very much stooping to his level, and if Trump has shown anything this election year, it’s that when you stoop to his level in the mud, he’ll drown you in it, because he knows how to play that game better than anyone else. Anyone who did this would almost certainly be hit with a countersuit (at the very least) and would have to prove “actual malice” against a sitting President. They’d also have to point out actual false statements of fact that Trump made, rather than his usual ridiculous hyperbole.

Trump is, absolutely, a huge threat to the First Amendment. And lots of people and organizations need to be ready, willing and able to fight back on any attempt by the Trump administration to harm the First Amendment. But playing the low game of suing for defamation is the wrong way to go about it, and will be seen by his supporters as yet more evidence of the press trying to muzzle Trump.

Filed Under: defamation, donald trump, first amendment, floyd abrams, journalism, reporters

New York Times Public Editor Scolded For Suggesting Websites Should Treat News Commenters Like Actual Human Beings

from the flogged-in-the-public-square-for-caring dept

For some time now, the opinion du jour in “enlightened” media circles has been to treat the news comment section (aka the customers who visit your website daily and directly) as some kind of irredeemable leper colony. One that should be nuked from orbit before the infection spreads. As such, we’ve seen website after website proudly crow about how they’ve given up on allowing site comments because a handful of posters are obnoxious, hateful little shits and the social media age means more direct community interaction is passe.

These announcements usually come hand in hand with all manner of disingenuous platitudes from the editorial staff, like we killed comments because we wanted to “build relationships,” or we muzzled our entire user base because we just “really value conversation.” Usually, this is just code for websites that are too lazy and cheap to moderate, weed and cultivate their community garden, and find it convenient to argue that outsourcing discourse to the homogenized blather realm of Facebook is an improvement.

Since this trend began a few years back, you’ll occasionally see an editor stop and realize that these disregarded masses are, warts and all, the life blood of a community — and preventing them from publicly interacting on site is actually a step backwards. Case in point is new New York Times public editor Liz Spayd, who this week asked a bizarre and outlandish question: what if websites were to treat these people like actual human beings and the comment section as something worth saving? Says Spayd:

What The Times and most other newsrooms mostly do now is not so much listen to readers as watch and analyze them, like fish in a bowl. They view them in bulk, through statistics measuring how many millions of ?unique? users clicked on content last month, or watched a video, or came to the site multiple times, or arrived through Facebook.

What would prove more fruitful is for newsrooms to treat their audience like people with crucial information to convey ? preferences, habits and shifting ways of consuming information. What do they like about what we do and how we do it? What do they want done differently? What do they turn to other sites for?

This isn’t really complicated. Spayd refreshingly realizes that the rise of the comment troll is in many ways the fault of websites themselves. Writers and editors simply don’t want to cultivate real conversation, because it’s hard work and their current analytical tools can’t monetize discourse quality. Instead, websites have begun to approach the end user relationship like the owner of a prison colony who believes the entire sordid affair can only be improved by a good, industrialized delousing or the outsourcing to bigger, meaner prisons.

In reality studies have found that comment sections can be dramatically improved — simply by treating site visitors well and by having somebody at the website make a basic effort at fundamental human-to-human communication:

One surprisingly easy thing they found that brought civil, relevant comments: the presence of a recognized reporter wading into the comments.

Seventy different political posts were randomly either left to their own wild devices, engaged by an unidentified staffer from the station, or engaged by a prominent political reporter. When the reporter showed up, ?incivility decreased by 17 percent and people were 15 percent more likely to use evidence in their comments on the subject matter,? according to the study.

With the daily struggle to produce more and more content in a sea of more and more competitors, it’s simply easier to pretend that the comment section doesn’t matter.

But what’s being pushed as enlightened evolution by editors is just willful obliviousness driven by lazy thinkers, incapable of embracing anything that can’t be clearly, graphically monetized. It’s thinking built at media empires with the multi-million dollar backing of giant conglomerates, where actual human interaction is already more easily obscured by the daily shuffle of incessant bi-coastal conference calls. Since the comment section is perhaps the most valuable source of corrections, it’s also a wonderful way for such giant companies to avoid advertising that their writers may have made a mistake.

I’ve been at the heart of one smaller, community-driven website since 1999 (DSLReports.com) and a writer here at Techdirt for several years, so it’s perhaps more obvious to me that scrappier upstarts don’t have the luxury of telling their entire community to piss off to Twitter if they want to leave public feedback.

Not too surprisingly, Spayd’s idea was received poorly by some in the news media who believe public interaction with readership on site is either beneath them or wholly irrelevant in the social media era. MIT Technology Review Editor Jason Pontin was quick to declare that Spayd’s comments reflected a “disastrous first outing” as the Times’ new public editor, going further to suggest that anybody who gives a damn about public comments has the “wrong priorities”:

Slate was also quick to deride Spayd’s outlandish treatise (which again, is to simply give a damn about your on-site community) as the “phony populism” and “willfully naive” rhetoric of a bygone era:

After writing that the paper is trying to move in the direction of more comments, she adds that the speed at which it has done so has been hindered by “other newsroom priorities.” I?m not sure what those other priorities are, but to spend your first column focusing on something like a comments section is another sign that Spayd?s priorities are bizarre and even?this will sting?out of touch.

Yes, how gauche. As we all know by now, you don’t build community by treating site visitors well, you build community by telling them all to fuck off to Facebook, where their infectious, intellectual detritus can be more easily ignored.

Filed Under: comments, journalism, liz spayd, public editor, reporters
Companies: ny times

Ohio Court Sanctions Lawyer For Sharing Publicly-Available Court Documents With Journalists

from the seems-kind-of-shady,-this-sharing-of-public-documents... dept

The sort of thing that happens all the time — the sharing of public documents concerning public litigation — has resulted in sanctions against the lawyer who shared them with a local journalist. An Ohio judge has issued a chilling decision [PDF] (currently being appealed) that basically says that any sharing of public information that could be viewed as adversely affecting the other party in litigation is not permitted. The ACLU’s Jonathan Peters has more details.

A few times during the representation, [plaintiff’s attorney Peter] Pattakos communicated with the editor of Cleveland Scene, the alternative newsweekly. He provided the editor, a friend of his, with public court documents related to the suit, including the complaint, the briefs opposing a summary judgment motion, and the affidavits supporting the motion. Pattakos also encouraged the editor to report on the case when it was set for trial. Notably, none of the documents was under seal, and no gag order had been issued to the parties or their counsel. The court proceedings, too, were open.

Scene published a story on the first day of jury selection that characterized the claims against the school, prompting the judge to question the jurors about the coverage. Two said they had seen the headline but would not be influenced by it. Soon thereafter, the judge declared a mistrial for unrelated reasons. Eventually, a new jury was selected, the trial was held, and Pattakos’s clients won their case.

A few months later, however, the school’s attorneys asked the judge to sanction Pattakos for his “involvement in the publication of an inflammatory article related to this case.” The judge complied and ordered Pattakos to pay nearly $11,000, covering the cost to the school of questioning the jurors after the article’s publication and of bringing a sanctions motion.

A look at the decision shows the judge making a lot of conclusory statements — the sort of thing judges often chastise plaintiffs and defendants for making in their legal filings. In it, much is inferred about Pattakos’ intent, even though there’s little evidence supporting these assertions or their supposed effect on the outcome of the litigation.

Mr. Pattakos’s involvement in publication of the Scene article was a malicious attempt to injure and was intended to “harass “each of the defendants. Mr. Pattakos had a purpose to defame defendants when he instructed Mr. Grzegorek on January 20 “Get your reporting pants on. Or at least tell one of your reporters to get his reporting pants on ” and on March 30, 2015 notifying Scene that the trial was about to begin. He had abandoned hope of settlement.

Mr. Pattakos had previously supplied to Scene all of the information that it ultimately published. Although Mr. Pattakos did not write the article, he knew that the thrust of any reporting was likely to be to discredit the defendants and that, if believed by members of the public, the reporting would “injure” them. Urging Scene to begin coverage constituted initiating harassment.

[…]

While the information communicated to Scene by Mr. Pattakos may well have been protected by Rule 3.6(b) [which allows the dissemination of publicly-available court documents and scheduling information], his urging that reporting begin once the jury was selected raised a substantial likelihood that the jury would read about his clients claims.

Although there is no evidence that Mr. Pattakos knew when an article would be published, what it would contain, or that particular adverse comments about the defendants would be generated, he did know what information he had already provided to Scene. Thus, he knowingly put in motion both the news media process and the information contained in the article. If one lights a fire in a forest that starts a forest fire, he is responsible for the forest fire even if he did not intend it.

Pattakos’ mild urging that a Scene writer “get their reporting pants on” is akin to shouting “Fire!” in a crowded forest… and then walking away while it burns? Because the defendants claimed this single article adversely affected its settlement attempts, the court has decided this lawyer should be punished for doing something lawyers do every day — and something that is apparently permitted by the rules governing attorney conduct.

But the opening of the same decision condemning Pattakos’ behavior opens with a recitation of the events leading up to this decision, which includes a period of three years (February 2012-January 2015) where the defendants made zero effort to make counteroffers to the plaintiff’s settlement demands. It appears the defendants truly believed the jury would side with it and allow it to escape litigation without having to pay a settlement and are now looking for someone to blame because it ended up paying out $400,000 to the plaintiff and opposing counsel.

But for all the noise the judge makes during this sanctions award, the single article published by the Scene appears to have had zero effect on the outcome. And yet, the judge still felt sanctions were proper, and handed down a decision that turns journalists into misconduct accomplices should a lawyer happen to point them in the direction of publicly-available documents, especially if the opposing counsel doesn’t like the outcome of the litigation. This isn’t a trivial outcome, should the Ohio Appeals Court agree with the lower court’s reasoning.

If upheld, the trial judge’s novel use of the frivolous-conduct statute will create a precedent that could make attorneys wary of any but the most trivial interactions with the press. That outcome would restrict the public’s practical ability to receive information about court proceedings—and undermine the principle that “free and robust reporting, criticism, and debate” about court proceedings, as Justice Brennan once wrote, “can contribute to public understanding of the rule of law” and improve the legal system’s quality “by subjecting it to the cleansing effects of exposure and public accountability.”

Short of a lawyers publishing self-interested takes on ongoing litigation, it’s hard to see how just informing journalists of new documents or upcoming arguments/testimony violates guidelines for attorneys. Just because the outcome was unfavorable to one party doesn’t mean the prevailing party somehow urged the press to push jurors towards a decision favoring the legal rep who gave reporters a head’s up. There’s a lot of implication being drawn from this harmless action by the judge in this case. Hopefully, the Appeals Court will overturn the sanctions and keep the public from being further separated from the judicial process.

Filed Under: court documents, journalism, lawyers, public records, reporters

Eric Holder Says Putting Reporter James Risen Through Hell Is A Good 'Example' Of DOJ Process For Leak Investigations

from the that's-one-way-to-put-it... dept

Attorney General Holder raised some eyebrows earlier this week when answering a question about his Justice Department’s notorious crackdown on leaks, and by extension the press, most notably saying this about its notorious pursuit of New York Times reporter James Risen, while claiming the DOJ did nothing wrong:

If you look at the last case involving Mr. Risen, the way in which that case was handled after the new policies were put in place [is] an example of how the Justice Department can proceed.

The District Sentinel aptly took apart most of Holder’s comments, and they also provoked a stinging rebuke from Risen himself last night on Twitter. However, I think the facts of Risen’s case deserve a closer look to see just how unbelievable Holder’s statement is.

Let’s recap: since the very start of the Obama administration (read: for SIX years), the Justice Department was trying to subpoena James Risen. It fought for him to testify at a grand jury of CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling, which he refused to do, and when they were rejected by the court, it fought to have him testify in Sterling’s trial. They fought Risen on this all the way up to the Supreme Court.

Also, keep in mind, while the “new” media/leak guidelines that Holder bragged about are certainly a step forward, the old guidelines that applied to Risen’s case should have protected him just the same from the start?if they were actually enforced. He doesn’t get to pretend the preceding five and a half years didn’t happen just because he stregthened the Justice Department’s rules after public protest.

The case cost Risen and his publisher an untold fortune in legal fees, dominated his life, took away from time he could’ve spent reporting, and likely cost the taxpayers millions of dollars.

Along the way, we found out that the government had spied on virtually every aspect of James Risen’s digital life from phone calls, to emails, to credit card statements, bank records and more. (By the way, we still have no idea how they got this information. That’s secret.)

The Justice Department argued in court that not only was there no reporter’s privilege whatsoever — either embedded in the First Amendment or in Fourth Circuit common law — but also that journalists protecting sources was analogous to protecting drug dealers from prosecution.

As a result, the Justice Department got an appeals court to destroy the previously established reporter’s privilege in the Fourth Circuit. So now all journalists in the Fourth Circuit — which covers Virginia and Maryland where the vast majority of national security sources live and work — will have no protection if the government comes after them in future cases.

After all this (along with a large public outcry), the government decided to drop its pursuit of James Risen. And of course were able to easily convict Jeffrey Sterling anyways, using evidence gleaned from digital surveillance.

Now the Justice Department wants a pat on the back. While it is unequivocally excellent news that Risen will not be forced into jail, the DOJ’s behavior in this case was and still is deplorable. It has done damage to long-term press freedom rights that will be very hard to undo, and the idea that this should be looked at as a “model” for future leak investigations is troubling to say the least.

Reposted from the Freedom of the Press Foundation

Filed Under: doj, eric holder, investigations, james risen, journalism, leaks, reporters

Eric Holder Says He Regrets Lying To A Judge And Saying A Reporter Was A 'Co-Conspirator' But The Law Made Him Do It

from the uh,-no-it-didn't dept

Giving a talk at the Washington Ideas Forum, outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder spoke about two different (though, similarly named) journalists that the DOJ has been absolutely egregious in trying to abuse for the sake of questionable leak investigations. Regarding James Risen, the NY Times reporter who the DOJ has been pursuing and demanding he reveal sources concerning a leak (when it’s clear the DOJ already knows the source and is just doing this to destroy Risen’s credibility with sources), Holder says that the DOJ expects “a resolution” in the near future. That’s not too surprising. Holder and the DOJ seem to realize that actually putting Risen in jail (the next step in the process) probably wouldn’t go over very well.

But it’s the other journalist where things get a bit dicier. That’s Fox News reporter James Rosen (note the different letter from Risen). Rosen, you may recall, had his phone, email and security badge records grabbed by the government, after the DOJ told a court that Rosen wasn’t a reporter, but “an aider and abettor and/or co-conspirator” in the “crime” of leaking classified information about North Korea from the State Department. It later came out that the DOJ actually pretended Rosen was involved in a bombing in its motions to the court.

Holder was asked if there was a decision during his tenure that he regretted, and he brought up the Rosen story:

Holder: I think that — I think about the subpoena to the Fox reporter, Rosen. I think that I could have been a little more careful in looking at the language that was contained in the filing that we made with the court. He was labeled as a — as a co-conspirator. I mean, you had to do that as a result of the statute, but there are ways in which I think that could have been done differently, done better. And that’s one of the reasons why I thought the criticism that we received because of that — and the AP matter as well — was something that we had to act upon and why we put in place this review of our — the way in which we interact with the media.

Except, as Julian Sanchez points out, that’s completely bogus. Holder claiming they had to do that because of the statute is flat out opposites-ville. They had to do that because the statute doesn’t allow them to spy on journalists. The law was designed to stop the DOJ from spying on journalists, and so the only way to break that was to lie to the court. The law in question — 18 USC 793 is designed to only apply to the people actually committing the crime of leaking defense information — and not to reporters.

Holder claiming that the statute effectively “forced” him into declaring Rosen a co-conspirator is ridiculous. The statute compels him not to seize Rosen’s records. Holder is admitting that the DOJ lied to the court here and trying to blame the statute for that lie. That’s astounding.

Filed Under: doj, eric holder, investigations, james risen, james rosen, leaks, reporters, terrorism, whistleblowers

Police In Ferguson Back To Threatening And Arresting Reporters: Tells Them To 'Get The Fuck Out Of Here'

from the wonder-what-they-say-to-protestors dept

The situation in Ferguson seemed briefly like it was getting better last Thursday, but that didn’t last long. Over the weekend, the militarized and threatening police fired tear gas at protestors and continued to escalate the situation, rather than de-escalate it. The governor declared a state of emergency and instituted a curfew — which created some more problems, and resulted in continued protests, but also some looting. In the last few hours, however, things have gone from bad to worse again. Police went back to arresting journalists, including Robert Klemko from Sports Illustrated and Rob Crilly from the Telegraph (who, believe it or not, is the “Pakistan and Afghanistan correspondent” for that paper — now reporting live from… Ferguson, Missouri). While both were quickly released, police appear to be quite aggressive towards reporters. Chris Hayes, the MSNBC TV host reports that he was threatened with being maced:

Riot cop to me just a few minutes ago: "Get back! Or next time you're gonna be the one maced."

— Christopher Hayes (@chrislhayes) August 18, 2014

A live stream from the local radio station KARG (Argus Radio — which is a local volunteer run radio station that has been doing amazing work) caught police screaming, “Get the fuck out of here or you’re going to get shelled with this” while pointing a gun at the reporter. Many reports claimed that he was saying, “You’re going to get shot,” but it’s pretty clearly “shelled.” Not sure it really makes a huge difference. As you can see from the video (thankfully clipped and uploaded by Parker Higgins), another police officer, “Captain Todd,” claims that the lights from the reporters are the problem, not that that somehow makes it okay to point guns at reporters and threaten to “shell” them (or to arrest them). Meanwhile, Ryan Reilly of the Huffington Post reports that reporters were ordered to “leave the area and head back where we wouldn’t be able to witness anything for ourselves.”

We are being told to leave the area and head back where we wouldn't be able to witness anything for ourselves.

— Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) August 18, 2014

All of this really ought to make people wonder: if this is how the police act when they know the world is watching them and live streaming what they’re doing, how do you think they act when no one is watching? The photos from Ferguson feel unreal, but are, in fact, quite real:

Biggest barrage of gas so far. Multiple flashbangs #Ferguson pic.twitter.com/EXJzmj3lKZ

— Jon Swaine (@jonswaine) August 18, 2014

The situation has become so ridiculous that Amnesty International has sent in a human rights team, saying this is the first time ever that the group has done so inside the US. Think about that for a minute or two…

The situation in #Ferguson has prompted us to send human rights teams. First time we've deployed inside the US. http://t.co/09HQClqy76

— Amnesty New Zealand (@AmnestyNZ) August 18, 2014

And then recognize that the press are almost certainly being treated significantly better than the residents who are protesting.

Filed Under: ferguson, first amendment, free speech, michael brown, militarized police, missouri, police, police brutality, reporters

Ed Snowden Helps A Reporter Having A Seizure While Interviewing Him Remotely

from the wait,-what? dept

Here’s a bizarre story. A German reporter, Julia Prosinger, spent a week in the NYC offices of the ACLU with Ben Wizner, one of the key lawyers working with Ed Snowden. There, she reports about the Robot Snowden that is set up in the ACLU offices, allowing Snowden to “hang out” with ACLU folks any time he wants (assuming people are around). You may have seen the robot Snowden on stage at TED, but apparently Snowden is still using a version of that thing that’s just kept at the ACLU’s offices, allowing him to zoom around and talk to folks. They’re even talking about having more Snowdenbots around the globe so he can pop in virtually wherever he wants.

But, that’s not the craziest part of the story.

It’s that during the interview with Prosinger, she happens to have a seizure, and Snowden apparently both talks Wizner through what to do and calms Prosinger as she comes to.

Suddenly, during the attempt to explain German, I faint. I wake up, my head lies bedded on a sand bag, my body is in the recovery position. A calm voice is coming from the screen. “The first fits are always the worst,” Snowden says. I am lucky: Snowden is not only a patriot or traitor, he is also an epileptic. He instantly recognised what was happening to me. He tells me that he was only diagnosed when he was 23 years old. When he fled the US a little more than a year ago, he told his employer that he had to go away for a few weeks for treatment for his epilepsy. Then Snowden apologises for making me look at the flickering screen, it had triggered the fit, he says.

Ben Wizner brings a glass of juice. He is moved. He has been travelling for a year, because Snowden is stuck in Russia. He speaks where Snowden doesn’t have a voice. For a year now he has literally been Snowden’s right-hand man.

He just followed Snowden’s advice via Skype and stopped me from falling against the metal filing cabinets in his office. “That’s Ed how I know him. The empathy, the clear voice, the care,” says Wizner.

Of course, now we wonder how Mike Rogers will spin this into more evidence of Snowden being a Russian spy…

Filed Under: ben wizner, ed snowden, julia prosinger, reporters, robot snowden, robots, seizure, telepresence
Companies: aclu